After the game, Wheeler admitted that Thomson’s decision to remove him from the game “caught up [him] frantic.” Thomson, for his part, said he believed Wheeler still had good stuff. He just preferred the Alvardo vs. Alvarez matchup. Wheeler’s last line saw him go 5 1/3 innings, surrendering two runs on three hits and a walk. He struck out five and threw 49 of his 70 pitches for strikes. Despite his success through the first five-plus innings and his low pitch count, his removal from Saturday night’s contest probably shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise. First, the Phillies have approached Wheeler with a conservative mindset since he returned from the injured list late in the season. He didn’t throw more than 80 pitches in his last three regular-season starts and threw fewer than 90 in all six of his postseason appearances. The Phillies opted to give him an extra day of rest not once but twice in the World Series — they could have brought him back for Game 5 on regular rest, but instead decided to give him five full days off after his Game 2 outing . Once again, Wheeler was making his third start through the order — typically the danger zone for starting pitchers. Even pitchers as good as Wheeler suffer with more exposure to the opposition. In fact, his OPS ballooned from .609 and .583 the first two times he saw a batter in a game during the regular season to .722 the third time. That’s still better than the league average for a third inning, but that doesn’t mean he was necessarily the best pitcher to face Alvarez. Indeed, Alvarado had allowed a .630 OPS against lefties this season and a .585 OPS overall. It made sense to think he had a better chance of putting Alvarez away — and, perhaps, even inducing a late-fight double play — for other reasons as well. As we wrote as part of our preview of the top five World Series games: People were then quick to point out that Alvarez hit just .265 against the Baptists this season, his lowest for any type of pitch he saw with regularity. Additionally, his .283 average against left-handed sinkers was nearly 60 points lower than his average against any other type of pitch delivered by southpaws. If you’re doing a surface-level analysis like this, then yes, sink is the way to go. Add it all up, and Alvarado was a defensive option at the position. It just didn’t work out. Alvarado, who generated nearly 60 percent groundouts during the regular season, just threw a bad pitch: a sinker that caught too much of the plate. Alvarez crushed it, about 450 feet to center field, and that was that. That’s the beauty and angst of baseball, especially in the postseason: what makes sense on paper doesn’t always translate. Still, you can understand Wheeler’s position. He wanted to deliver for his team and keep them alive in the race for a World Series title. In most respects it did its job. Unfortunately, there is a small margin for error when playing against a team as good as the Astros. Alvarado and the Phillies just fell on the wrong side.
