CINCINNATI (AP) — Zack Wheeler tied a career high with 14 strikeouts, Kyle Schwarber hit his major league-best 31st home run of the season, and the Philadelphia Phillies beat the Cincinnati Reds 4-1 on Tuesday night.
The Phillies got on the board in the third inning when Trea Turner had an RBI groundout for a 1-0 lead and Schwarber hit a two-run shot over the right-center field wall to finish a three-run inning.
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Cincinnati Reds pitcher Andrew Abbott throws during the third inning of a baseball game against the Philadelphia Phillies in Cincinnati, Tuesday, July 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Philadelphia Phillies' Trea Turner grounds out as he runs to first base as Derek Hill scores, at left, and during the third inning of a baseball game against the Cincinnati Reds in Cincinnati, Tuesday, July 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Philadelphia Phillies' Kyle Schwarber scores after hitting a two-run homer during the third inning of a baseball game against the Cincinnati Reds in Cincinnati, Tuesday, July 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Zack Wheeler throws during the first inning of a baseball game against the Cincinnati Reds in Cincinnati, Tuesday, July 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Derek Hill doubled and Justin Crawford singled to put runners at the corners to get things started.
Turner scored in the eighth on a sacrifice fly by Edmundo Sosa.
Wheeler (9-1) threw 104 pitches over seven innings. He allowed four hits, an earned run, but no walks. Jhoan Duran earned his 22nd save of the year, striking out all three batters in the ninth.
Eugenio Suárez hit a solo home run for the Reds in the seventh.
Reds starter Andrew Abbott (5-5) pitched six innings, striking out eight. He gave up five hits and had three earned runs.
RHP Chase Burns (10-1, 2.40 ERA) will start on the mound for the Reds on Wednesday. Philadelphia has not yet named its starter.
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb
Cincinnati Reds pitcher Andrew Abbott throws during the third inning of a baseball game against the Philadelphia Phillies in Cincinnati, Tuesday, July 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Philadelphia Phillies' Trea Turner grounds out as he runs to first base as Derek Hill scores, at left, and during the third inning of a baseball game against the Cincinnati Reds in Cincinnati, Tuesday, July 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Philadelphia Phillies' Kyle Schwarber scores after hitting a two-run homer during the third inning of a baseball game against the Cincinnati Reds in Cincinnati, Tuesday, July 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Zack Wheeler throws during the first inning of a baseball game against the Cincinnati Reds in Cincinnati, Tuesday, July 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — New Wisconsin athletic director Shawn Eichorst, who spent the last eight years at Texas, believes his new and old schools have much in common.
Both are well-regarded research universities in state capitals that belong to major conferences and have relatively similar enrollments.
He also pointed out one difference.
“There’s swag at Texas, right?” Eichorst said Tuesday during his introductory news conference. “There’s 30 million people in Texas. We’ve got swag, too, but we have a little humility with that deal. We need to get our shoulders up. We need to feel good about what it is that we’re doing.”
Wisconsin could gain more of that Texas swagger if its football program gets back to winning the way it did the last time Eichorst was employed in Madison. Eichorst, who most recently worked as a deputy athletic director at Texas, received a five-year deal worth $1.6 million annually, with provisions for increases and incentives. He was hired 2½ months after Chris McIntosh left to become the Big Ten’s deputy commissioner for strategy.
Eichorst worked at Wisconsin from 2006-11 when Barry Alvarez was AD and Bret Bielema was leading the football program. He followed that up with stints as an athletic director at Miami (2011-12) and Nebraska (2012-17) before Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte hired him in 2018.
He returns to Wisconsin with the Badgers coming off back-to-back losing seasons in football, a notable fall for a program that had 22 straight winning seasons from 2002-23. Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell has gone 17-21 after posting a 53-10 record with one College Football Playoff appearance in his last five years at Cincinnati.
Eichorst hasn’t worked with Fickell before but said he’s encouraged by their initial conversations.
“Obviously he’s won every place he’s been,” Eichorst said. “My expectation is more of me than him, meaning I need to pour into him, learn more about his program, how he has things set up, how his athletes are taken care of, how we’re supporting that endeavor. And then we can figure out, as we move along, what that might look like.”
Football struggles led to Eichorst’s downfall the last time he was an athletic director.
He fired Nebraska coach Bo Pelini in 2014 and hired Mike Riley, who had gone 93-80 in 14 seasons at Oregon State. Eichorst was dismissed shortly after Nebraska suffered an early-season loss to Northern Illinois in 2017. Riley was fired at the end of that season after going 19-19 in three years.
When Eichorst’s hiring was announced last week, he spoke about how much he had grown from that Nebraska stint. Wisconsin interim chancellor Eric Wilcots led the search and has emphasized Eichorst’s accomplishments at Texas, which has won the Learfield Directors’ Cup all-sports standings five times in the last six years.
Texas ranked anywhere from fifth to ninth in the Directors’ Cup standings in the five years before Wilcots’ arrival. Texas’ football team went a combined 23-27 from 2014-17 but has made two College Football Playoff appearances in the last three years.
“Everybody looks at the end result of what we did at Texas,” Eichorst said. “When we got there in 2018, we weren’t very good in a lot of areas. And that didn’t change overnight.”
Eichorst said one thing that has caught his attention about Wisconsin is the overall quality of its head coaches.
“You’re going to be as good as your coaches,” Eichorst said. “That’s it. If you have an elite group of coaches who are working together and uniting and galvanizing and learning from one another and taking it out to their individual programs, I think you can start to build something special. I go back to Texas. We built a room of really elite head coaches and put them at the top of everything we did to help guide us.”
Eichorst said this job is particularly important to him because of his Wisconsin roots. He was born in Lone Rock, about 45 miles northwest of the Madison campus.
He treasured his previous stint at Wisconsin and says he believes this school “represents everything that is great about higher education and college athletics.”
“Nobody will work harder for Wisconsin athletics,” Eichorst said. “I love this state, and I love everything that it represents. The passion is there. You can see it. I don’t have to make it up. I’ve lived it. It’s in my heart.”
AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports
Wisconsin athletic director Shawn Eichorst, right, speaks at his introductory news conference while sitting next to interim chancellor Eric Wilcots on Tuesday July 7, 2026 in Madison, Wis. (AP Photo/Steve Megargee)
Wisconsin athletic director Shawn Eichorst, right, shakes hands with Interim Chancellor Eric Wilcots at an introductory news conference on Tuesday July 7, 2026 in Madison, Wis. (AP Photo/Steve Megargee)
