Jeff Hoffman allowed a walk-off homer on the first pitch he threw Friday night to Diamondbacks catcher Adrian Del Castillo, a lefty bat with huge minor-league numbers who made his major-league debut earlier in the week.
The Phillies’ 3-2 loss was a fast-paced, competitive pitchers’ duel between Zack Wheeler and D-backs right-hander Ryne Nelson, who didn’t allow a baserunner until the fifth inning and threw first-pitch strikes to the first 17 hitters he faced.
Nelson entered with a 4.65 ERA and modest strikeout numbers but has been on a roll the last month, along with a D-backs team that has won 13 of 16.
The Phillies are 69-47 with a 7½-game lead over the Mets and an 8½-game lead over the Braves, whose season is slipping away after six straight losses.
The D-backs, meanwhile, appear poised to make another second-half run to the playoffs after toiling in mediocrity most of the first half.
“They have a good group over there, they’ve been together a while now,” Wheeler said. “I’ve pitched against them a few times in big games and regular season. They’ve seen me, they know what I’ve got, I know what they’ve got. It’s always fun when you know each other well and have to really pitch and compete.”
It speaks to Wheeler’s excellence that an outing like this — two runs over six innings — felt somehow below his standard. He dealt with bad luck in the first inning with a run scoring on a jam-job and allowed a solo homer to Joc Pederson with one out in the third.
Pederson is one of the most dangerous matchups in baseball for a right-handed pitcher but Wheeler had dominated him previously, holding him to two hits in 19 at-bats with eight strikeouts.
“First inning, three hits weren’t hit very hard,” manager Rob Thomson said. “Even the pitch to Pederson wasn’t all that bad, he just beat him to the spot. He was struggling to find his split which would have helped him against lefties, but he was effective.”
Wheeler added the splitter this season to better combat left-handed hitters. It’s been a high-quality pitch most of the year, especially for someone’s sixth offering. The Diamondbacks had six lefty bats in Friday’s lineup capable of changing a game with one swing in Corbin Carroll, Pederson, Josh Bell, Jake McCarthy, Del Castillo and Alek Thomas, so the split sure would have been helpful.
