Phillies Walked Off by Marlins in Worst Outings of Season From Zack Wheeler, Jhoan Duran
Jul 27, 2026; Miami, Florida, USA; Philadelphia Phillies starting pitcher Zack Wheeler (45) throws against the Miami Marlins during the first inning at loanDepot Park. Mandatory Credit: Rhona Wise-Imagn Images
The arguably two best Phillies pitchers on the team had their worst outing of the season.
2026 has been a fantastic year for Phillies ace Zack Wheeler, as after missing the final two and a half months of the 2025 season due to venous thoracic outlet syndrome and underwent season-ending thoracic outlet decompression surgery. Despite the recovery time for the injury being projected to keep him out until sometime into the summer, Wheeler pushed and pushed and made his season debut just one month into the season.
While it took a few starts to get him going, Wheeler eventually got rolling, tossing two runs or less in eight of his next nine starts. His ERA dropped to nearly 2.00 and was close to getting to the innings needed to get it qualified.
He was putting up All-Star-esque numbers, despite missing the game for other reasons, and that continued into the second half of the season. However, every stud has their off night, and Wheeler put the Phillies in quite the hole to kick off the night, allowing five runs on six hits, with two of them being home runs. Five earned runs were the most Wheeler had allowed in a start all year, and the most he’s allowed in a start since
Despite allowing the five runs, the Phillies offense came alive in the middle of the game to give them the lead, but Jhoan Duran, who has blown just one save all season long, blew his second save, allowing five hits and three earned runs in the ninth, both the most he’s allowed in an appearance all year, to lose 8-7. It’s the first loss this season for the Phillies when they led after eight innings, as they were 49-0 when taking a lead, if not the ninth. It also moved them to 3-7 since the All-Star break and handed them their 50th loss of the season.
While offense had been hard to come by over the past two weeks, it seemed like the Phillies’ bats came prepared for their first game in South Beach. Kyle Schwarber worked a walk, putting an early runner on, and up came Bryce Harper, who during July has posted his worst stretch as a Phillie offensively.
Harper has batted .158 over his last 21 games, striking out 28 times, totaling just one homer and eight RBIs. What goes down must eventually come up, and Harper looked like his rough stretch could be coming to an end after smoking a 1-1 sinker to deep center for a two-run home run.
With the early lead, the Phillies assumed they could coast to an easy victory to kick off this six-game road trip. Unfortunately, the Marlins bats looked like they were primed to end their 12-game losing streak. Otto Lopez kicked off the inning with a single, and after stealing second, he’d make it all the way thanks to an errant throw from J.T. Realmuto and another error from Trea Turner.
The errors didn’t matter as much as Heriberto Hernandez homered on a deep fly ball to left two pitches later to tie the game at two. While they only scored two runs in the first, the offensive attack continued against Wheeler, with Griffin Conine smoking a solo shot to lead off the inning, giving Miami the lead.
Javier Sanoja then walked and came around to score on a double from Jakob Marsee, and Marsee scored on an RBI-triple from Lopez for the fifth run of the night for the Marlins. It’s the first time all season that Wheeler has allowed five runs in a start all season long.
While he was able to make it through the second and thrd inning withput allowing any more runs, Wheeler clearly didn’t have his best stuff in tonight’s outing, which forced Don Mattingly to make the tough decision to pull Wheeler after just 68 pitches and three innings of work. Wheeler’s four-seam fastball averaged 93.5 mph, down 1.7 mph from his season average, and was the second-lowest four-seam average in any game in his career.
The Phillies bullpen had six innings of work on their plate with Wheeler’s night cut short, and Kyle Backhus gave them some life with two innings of shutdown pitching, keeping it a 5-2 game. In the sixth, after four innings of little to no offense, the Phillies bats finally woke up.
Harper walked and later scored on an RBI-single from Alec Bohm, and another single from Bryson Stott put two runners on for Realmuto. On the seventh pitch of his at-bat, Realmuto smoked a ground-rule double to right field, scoring one run and cutting the Phillies’ deficit to one.
With two runners in scoring position and two outs, Justin Crawford, who had two total RBIs in July heading into the game, dug in. Crawford smoked a ground ball through the left side, scoring the tying run, and after a bad throw from Hernandez, Relamuto scored to take the lead.
Now with the lead, it was on the Phillies bullpen to close out the game. Jose Alvarado was the next man up, and he worked through a clean inning, and Jonathan Bowlan did the same in the bottom of the seventh. The Phillies added an insurance run in the eighth thanks to a leadoff triple from Stott and a sac fly from Realmuto, extending the lead to two.
Orion Kerkering, who missed the previous couple of games due to having the flu, made his first appearance since July 22. Kerkering allowed a leadoff single, but that was all Miami could muster up in the eighth.
In the ninth, Duran came on for save No. 25 on the season, but you could tell that the Phillies closer maybe didn’t have his best stuff like Wheeler. Duran allowed back-to-back singles to open the ninth, and hit Kyle Stowers to load the bases with no outs. Hernandez came up next, and he smacked a two-run RBI single to center, tying the game at seven.
With still no outs, Xavier Edwards bunted his way on for the fourth hit of the inning, loading the bases once again, and after a forceout from Liam Hicks, Conine smoked a single to right, bringing home Hernandez to score the winning run, with Miami walking off the Phillies 8-7, ending their 12-game losing streak.
Matt Brown
Matt has been a Philadelphia sports fan all his life and spent four years at Penn State University majoring in Broadcast Journalism and minoring in Sports Studies. He previously covered Penn State’s field hockey, men’s and women’s basketball, and baseball teams while writing for a Penn State blog called Onward State. He has now covered the Phillies, Eagles, and Sixers for Philly Sports Reports since October 2024 and wants to pursue a career in Sports Journalism.
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