Wheeler needed a game like this.\n\nThe Phillies need a win like this.
“When you have a couple subpar games, you want to get back out there and get on the right foot, and that was my goal today,” Wheeler said. “I wanted to get back out there and get a ‘W’ for us.”
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Wheeler had a 5.40 ERA in his past three starts, including Tuesday’s start against the Giants. He carried a four-run lead into the fifth that night, but San Francisco scored four against him in the fifth and sixth on its way to a 10-7 comeback victory. But Wheeler dominated the Cardinals from the jump Monday. He struck out Tommy Edman looking on a 98.3 mph fastball to start the game. He struck out Dylan Carlson on a 98 mph fastball in the next at-bat.\n\nHe continued from there.
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\"If you just watch these great pitchers around the league -- Zack did it today, \\[Clayton\\] Kershaw, \\[Max\\] Scherzer, \\[Jacob\\] deGrom -- these guys, the superstars, they're 0-1, 0-2 on every batter,” Cardinals right-hander Adam Wainwright said. “There's no secret to how you get outs -- make it easier on yourself -- and that's what carries you deeper into the game, too.”\n\nWheeler struck out four Cardinals on his four-seam fastball, three on his slider, one on his curveball and one on his sinker.
\"He's super talented,” Wainwright said. “He's got one of the best fastballs in baseball. To be able to go out there and throw as many as he did today to a bunch of guys who love hitting fastballs ... I know I'm just a pitcher, but if you can make me late on the fastball, you got a pretty good fastball, I can tell you that. There's plenty of breaking balls and that'll make me swing and miss, there's not a lot of fastballs that are going to make me swing and miss. He's got one of them. So he’s easily talented.\"\n\nWheeler is smart, too.\n\nWheeler walked Justin Williams to start the sixth. Wainwright tried to bunt, but he popped up the ball back to the mound. Wheeler had seen plays like this in the past where a heads-up defender lets the ball drop in front of him to turn an easy double play. He told himself to do the same thing if the situation ever presented itself. It finally did. He dropped the ball and turned the double play.
“It was probably literally like a glove length away from me and I was like, 'All right, drop it or don’t catch it,'” Wheeler said.\n\n
Wheeler walked Matt Carpenter to start the ninth, which put