BALTIMORE — The third tarp pull was the charm for the Phillies on Sunday afternoon.
After a pair of delays that saw the Orioles’ grounds crew put the tarp on the field three total times, the Phillies won 8-0 in six innings at Camden Yards, marking their first rain-shortened game since Oct. 2, 2022, in Washington. Right-hander Zack Wheeler pitched for Philadelphia in both of those games; he earned the win against the Nationals four seasons ago, but he lasted only two innings in Baltimore due to the first delay that lasted an hour and 49 minutes.
Wheeler looked much sharper than he did in his three-inning, five-run outing on Monday in Miami. He just wasn’t able to go deep due to the elements. “It is what it is,” Wheeler said. He threw about 40 pitches in the batting cage to get closer to a normal pitch count.
Outfielder Bryan De La Cruz gave the Phillies (59-53) an early 2-0 lead with a two-run opposite-field home run to right-center field in the top of the third inning, and the game was put into a delay before the bottom of the frame began. The crew tried to work on a muddied infield that had numerous puddles. After a handful of minutes, the delay was called. Wheeler threw the ball from his warmup pitches into the stands as he walked from the mound to the dugout.
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“Not great,” first baseman Bryce Harper said of the conditions. “Obviously, it was raining pretty good, a couple puddles here and there. The mound wasn’t very good. Batter’s box was not very good either.”
The grounds crew dragged the tarp onto the field for the delay, took it off for a bit to work on the infield and placed it back over the dirt as the delay continued. When the game resumed, left-hander Kyle Backhus entered for the Phillies and worked around trouble to throw a scoreless third. Fellow lefty Tim Mayza followed with two scoreless innings.
The offense, meanwhile, added six runs before the weather picked back up. Bryson Stott walked with the bases loaded and Justin Crawford grounded home a run in the fourth, Harper hit a two-run homer in the fifth and the club scored three more in the top of the sixth as Crawford hit an RBI single and De La Cruz and Kyle Schwarber each had a sacrifice fly.
Right-handed reliever Orion Kerkering ran in from the bullpen for the bottom of the sixth, but the umpires signaled for the tarp once again before he threw a pitch. Following a X-minute delay, the game was finally called. With the truncated victory, the Phillies clinched their first series win since the All-Star break by taking two out of three versus the O’s. And they did it while battling the weather in their final game before Monday’s 6 p.m. trade deadline.
“Both teams lost their starter,” interim manager Don Mattingly said. “I know they’re trying to make the best decision, but that was a little frustrating.”
