PHILLIES 101

 It’s been a little while since I’ve been back here. Part of me was sick of writing the same thing every night. The Phillies weren’t getting on base enough. The Phils couldn’t score enough runs to compete. The Phils were a bad pitching team.

All of that stuff is still true. The Phils pitch poorly. They hit even worse. The bullpen is a mess. Somehow, some way, the Philadelphia Phillies are two games below .500 and only six games out of first place in the National League East.

In the first game against the Washington Nationals this season, the Phillies faced a lot of the same problems. The pitching was inconsistent. They drew ZERO walks. The injuries are starting to mount and there’s not enough pop in the bats.

GAME 1 – Philadlephia Phillies 6, San Francisco Giants 2

The San Francisco Giants entered their three game series with the Philadelphia Phillies on a seven-game winning streak. This particular Phils fan thought we were headed for a disappointing sweep.

The first game saw a great performance from Cliff Lee and a solid performance from the top of the order to get the Phillies the win. Jimmy Rollins was, as usual, bad. He struck out twice and didn’t reach base at all. Michael Young continued his tear with a three hit, two RBI day and pushed his on-base percentage to nearly .400.

GAME 1 – Miami Marlins 2, Philadelphia Phillies 0

The weekend didn’t exactly shape up as good as the end of the week for the Philadelphia Phillies. They dropped their second two games against the Miami Marlins and they did it in stunning fashion.

To put it nicely, the first game was atrocious offensively. The Phillies managed three base runners over nine innings and absolutely zero of them made it in to scoring position. A lot of people are pointing to the Phils acquisition of Ben Revere as a bad move this offseason because he can’t seem to get things right. Well, they should take a look at the whole ball club. This team is anemic            on offense and there’s no protection for a young hitter who still needs time to develop. It will come, but not easily and not on this 2013 Phillies team.

Hey Phillies fans, sorry for the late recap on the first two games of the Miami Marlins series. It's been a crazy week at work. Here we go…

GAME 1 – Philadelphia Phillies 7, Miami Marlins

As it turns out, the Philadelphia Phillies can win and score runs. In other news, it seems as though they are much better at it against the worst team in baseball. The Phillies won their first game against the Miami Marlins in convincing fashion.

They only managed eight hits, but five walks and two unearned runs pushed their total a little higher. Ryan Howard and Dominic Brown both hit their fourth home runs of the season. If the fact that Ryan and Brown have the same amount of home runs doesn’t make you cry, nothing will.

After 28 games, I’m already running out of catchy titles for my recap columns. There are only so many ways to say that the Philadelphia Phillies are terrible on offense or had a bad day on the mound and I’ve expended most of them. Today was no different as the Cleveland Indians held the Phils to three hits in a 6-0 shutout.

The woes were much the same as any other game this season. The starting pitcher got beat, the Phils couldn’t hit with runners in scoring position, we struck out too much…you get it.

In today’s game, the Phils managed nine strikeouts, three hits, and seven walks. They couldn’t turn it in to anything, going 0 for 10 with runners in scoring position. Dominic Brown collected two hits and looked to be the only one with a bat coming out of the away team’s dugout. Carlos Ruiz continued to struggle mightily coming back from his suspension, striking out three times and dropping his batting average to an abysmal .083.