“The first three innings were too quick for us,” Abreu said. “I think we had to change our approach and see more pitches and try to get a mistake.”
The efficiency gave Phillies manager Don Mattingly flashbacks to Hall of Fame Braves ace Greg Maddux.
“You’re thinking ‘Maddux’ at that point,” Mattingly said. “It’s going to be a ‘Maddux’ game.”
Get Starting Point
A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.
On the way to a 2-1 loss, the Sox lineup had no answers for Wheeler and by the time he was done with his 7⅓ innings of work, it was too late to come up with one.
It wasn’t until the fourth inning that the Sox decided to settle into the box for a while.
“The guys were aware,” interim manager Chad Tracy said. “They’re smart enough to know. They looked up in the fourth and saw what the number was.”
Duran stretched his second at-bat to nine pitches, but couldn’t resist swinging. The mini-battle ended when he waved at a 95.8-mile-per-hour fastball up and in. Gasper, Abreu, and Masataka Yoshida all tried to show traces of patience the second time around, but Gasper still flew out after five pitches, Abreu singled on four, and Yoshida lined the fifth pitch he saw to shortstop to end the inning.
“At that point there, they kind of realized, like, we at least got to try to drag it out a little bit, and that’s when the at-bats started to improve,” Tracy said.
Through four innings, Wheeler was still sitting at a modest 36 pitches. After striking out Duran to end the sixth, Wheeler walked off the mound at 59 pitches thrown.
Brayan Bello leaves the game in the eighth inning after allowing one run on four hits in 6 1/3 innings.Barry Chin/Associated Press
Still, protecting a 2-0 lead, his margin for error was thin. Kyle Schwarber gave him an early lead with a 386-foot homer off Sox opener Jovani Morán into the Phillies bullpen in the first inning. It was his fifth homer in as many games — a Phillies record — and his 17th this season. Bryson Stott’s ground-rule double over the short fence off bulk starter Brayan Bello pushed the lead to 2-0 in the second.
After using the Morán-Bello combination last week against the Tigers and seeing the results in a 10-3 win, Tracy decided to go back to it to keep Bello from dealing with Philadelphia’s lefthanded hitters.
“It was awesome last time we did it coming out,” he said. “I think that probably one outing is not enough to say that [it’s helping Bello]. More like, [with] Harper and Schwarber, if we can try it again, it seems like a good way to try it.”
Despite Wheeler’s early dominance and the pair of early runs, the strategy still gave the Sox a chance in the final frames. Bello gave the Sox 6⅓ innings, allowing one run on four hits with five strikeouts.
“I mean, the opener gives up a run, and then Bello gives up a run in the bottom half, so not, you know, the exact result you wanted,” Tracy said. “But [Bello] was outstanding. . . . It was really good from that perspective.”
Given the results, Tracy didn’t rule out the possibility of using the strategy again the next time Bello takes the mound.
“We’ll look at it as we get closer, take a look,” Tracy said. “It’s always going to be dependent on the bullpen or whatever. We haven’t talked about it yet, but we’ll definitely look at it. But obviously no secret about how well he’s done so far.”
The Sox lineup eventually cracked Wheeler in the seventh inning, getting a Wall-ball RBI single from Ceddanne Rafaela that cut the lead in half.
Wheeler allowed one run on six hits with four strikeouts before handing the ball over to José Alvarado to finish the eighth inning. Jhoan Duran closed the door in the ninth on a Sox offense that had no answers all night and didn’t find any late.
With three losses in their past four games, the Sox fell to 17-24, 7-13 at home, and 7-7 since replacing manager Alex Cora.
Said Trevor Story, who went 1 for 3 with a walk: “I know it doesn’t look good right now, but we’ve just got to keep pushing.”
Julian Benbow can be reached at julian.benbow@globe.com.