Zack Wheeler makes Phillies history during a 5-1 win over the Rockies

Zack Wheeler took a breath, came set, and uncorked a full-count curveball, his 105th pitch of a cold, wet Wednesday night.

Strike three.

Of course.

There are certain things that you just know. The sun will rise. The sun will set. And every fifth game, Wheeler will pitch a gem for the Phillies.

» READ MORE: The Phillies will meet next week with the company that makes torpedo bats

Maybe that sounds like a variation of a bad baseball cliché. But whenever anything occurs with such robotic regularity, what else are we left with?

Because between the raindrops, in a 5-1 victory over the Colorado Rockies in the first night game of the season at Citizens Bank Park, Wheeler did exactly what he has now achieved in 13 — count ‘em, 13! — consecutive regular-season starts dating to last year.

Last at least six innings? He went seven.

Allow two runs or less? He gave up one.

“Jeez,” Aaron Nola said. “I mean, that’s pretty impressive. It’s really impressive.”

Also, historic. It’s the longest streak of six or more innings and two or fewer runs by a Phillies pitcher, eclipsing Dutch Leonard’s 12-game run in 1947, and the longest by any pitcher since the Rays’ Shane McLanahan’s 13-start stretch in 2022. It’s tied for the third-longest such streak since 2000.

And it enabled the Phillies to wait around again for their late-arriving offense to kick into gear in the seventh and eighth innings.

Wheeler leaned on his fastball, as usual. But he got swings and misses with six different pitches — and 25 in all, a regular-season career-high.

» READ MORE: He’s baseball’s top big-game pitcher at the peak of his powers. Is a Cy Young Award next for Zack Wheeler?

Save for Hunter Goodman’s seventh-inning homer, Wheeler controlled the game, just like he always does. In all, he finished with 10 punch-outs, his 26th career double-digit strikeout game.

Rinse and repeat.

“Fastball command, I was struggling just a little bit,” said Wheeler, who has a 1.81 ERA in his last 13 regular-season starts. “Maybe it didn’t look that way, but in the bullpen, it was. I was kind of just throwing it up there tonight, hoping for the best.”

If only every pitcher had such problems.

“Seeing him all these years now, it’s just kind of what he does,” Nola said. “It’s almost like a nonchalant, ‘OK, here’s six innings — at least.’ But that’s what he does, man. He commands the ball. Even when sometimes he doesn’t have the velocity, the ball just moves even better. It’s almost like two or three different pitchers in one, which is lethal.”

Said manager Rob Thomson: “He’s a great pitcher. He really is.“

There were other superlatives to dole out after the Phillies won a second consecutive series to open a season for the first time since 2021.

Trea Turner, back in the lineup after a four-game absence due to low back spasms, got three hits out of the leadoff spot. José Alvarado ended the game by striking out Michael Toglia on a 96-mph cutter. Edmundo Sosa, starting at second base, picked up three more hits, including a two-run double in the eighth inning, and is 9-for-15 through five games.

“I’m going to call MLB and see if we can play 10 [starters],” said Thomson, who will be hard-pressed to take the reserve infielder out of the lineup.

» READ MORE: Phillies’ Bryson Stott says torpedo bats aren’t for him, but teammate Alec Bohm is already trying them

Oh, and then there was Johan Rojas, who dropped down two bunts — one for a hit, one sacrifice — stole a base and scored two runs.

“This was the best major league game he’s played,” Thomson said, “in my opinion.”

Said Rojas: “I agree. I moved the runners, I did my job. I saw the runner with no outs at second base, and I said, ‘I’ve got to bunt, move him to third base. I’ve got Trea Turner behind me to put him in good position to hit.”

It was enough to overcome this statistical oddity from the first week of the season: the Phillies haven’t scored a run in the first three innings of a game.

Strange, isn’t it? In fact, all but four of their 30 runs have come in the sixth inning or later. No matter the starter, from the Nationals’ MacKenzie Gore in the late-afternoon shadows to the Rockies’ Kyle Freeland in the April chill, the Phillies hit snooze for two-thirds of the game.

The sample is too small to extrapolate much. And it’s not like they’ve been muted entirely. They had Freeland on the ropes in the fifth inning with the bases loaded, but Bryce Harper, Alec Bohm, and Kyle Schwarber struck out.

Schwarber did give the Phillies a lead in the fourth inning with an RBI double. And from there, they played small ball, with Schwarber breaking for home and scoring on J.T. Realmuto’s tapper in front of the mound.

“When the conditions get a little tougher, you’ve got to do those things,” said Turner, noting the 47-degree chill at first pitch and the rain in the middle innings. “That’s what good teams do. They win a bunch of different ways. We’re going to slug for sure, but tonight was good at-bats, putting the ball in play, hitting the ball hard, running the bases well, bunting.”

» READ MORE: The 2025 season is here. These four Phillies topics are worth watching all year.

And letting Wheeler be Wheeler.

“He’s the total package,” Turner said. “He’s been really good for us for a while. The only way to beat him is to kind of get lucky.”