It is completely understandable if you woke up Tuesday morning excited by the prospect of two Phillies-Mets games and six-plus hours of baseball later in the day.

It is also completely understandable if you woke up Wednesday morning ranging anywhere between bummed out to flat-out concerned following two losses that featured a punchless offense and a team that failed to do the little things needed to win games with a punchless offense.

First, let’s do the disclaimer thing to walk everybody back from the ledge. It’s early. It’s just two games. The Phillies are still a game over .500 and tied atop the National League East in the midst of a grueling stretch to open the season.

There.

With that out of the way, a rough 4-3 walk-off loss in the opener was followed by a listless 4-0 defeat in the nightcap. Both games accentuated problematic trends.

Let’s break down a tough day of Phillies baseball with five thoughts from the doubleheader sweep.

Centerfield, I mean…

Exactly one month ago, I wrote about the Phillies’ centerfield problem. It’s far worse than I imagined back then.

Nearly two full weeks into the regular season, Roman Quinn and Adam Haseley have combined to give the Phillies virtually no production in any phase of the game. It has been a miserable start for both players, but today was the low point — at least I think it was the low point.

First, some hideous offensive numbers:

  • Quinn: 1-for-17, .059 BA, .297 OPS, 0 XBH
  • Haseley: 4-for-21, .190 BA, .429 OPS, 1 XBH

Combined, Quinn and Haseley are just 5-for-38 (.132 BA) through 10 games. As if that wasn’t bad enough, both players have found additional ways to hurt the team when not in the batter’s box.

Quinn was the day’s first offender.

With the Phillies trailing by a run in the fifth inning of Game 1, Rhys Hoskins came to the plate with two men on and two outs.

Quinn made a questionable decision when he took the bat out of Hoskins’ hands by attempting to steal third base. While he successfully reached the bag, he quickly made a move away from it for home, allowing Mets third baseman Luis Guillorme to apply a tag for the third out.

After the game, Phillies manager Joe Girardi shared his thoughts on the play.

“I think he thought it went over the third baseman’s head, and he kind of started to stand up, and the third baseman came down and pushed him off the bag,” he said.

Yes. I agree. In fact, that’s exactly what happened.

Girardi, who declined to divulge if the steal came from the dugout, indicated that he had no issues with the attempt.

“I’m not going to talk about strategy, but I didn’t have a problem with him stealing third base, I’ll tell you that,” he said.

From this perspective, it was a bad strategic gamble, one providing nearly no upside, that was compounded by a total lack of awareness from Quinn. Ultimately, the play ran the Phillies out of one of their few legitimate scoring threats in either game.

Not to be outdone, Haseley helped spark the Mets’ fourth-inning rally in game two when he failed to make a play on what appeared to be a rather routine soft liner off the bat of Kevin Pillar.

Pillar reached with a single, putting two men on with one out.

Jonathan Villar followed with a double that plated the go-ahead run. Three batters later, Brandon Nimmo broke things open with a two-run single to give the Mets what felt like — and proved to be — an insurmountable 3-0 lead.

While many, including myself, are wondering at what point the team would consider making a roster move to help fill this gaping hole, Girardi doesn’t sound like he expects a change in the coming days.

I don’t know if this is a manager who is just trying to protect his guys by downplaying the situation, or what, but it’s hard to imagine the players currently stationed at the Lehigh Valley alternate site playing any worse.

Length Matters (Part I)

What the hell is up with the Phillies and doubleheaders?

Dating back to last season, the Phillies are 28-25 in scheduled nine-inning games. They are now 5-13 in scheduled seven-inning doubleheader games.

Length Matters (Part II)

Granted, today’s contests were abbreviated and thus the shortened length impacted how Girardi deployed his pitching staff, but he’s not getting enough length from his starting rotation right now.

Since Matt Moore’s first start against the Mets back on April 5, Phillies starting pitchers have recorded an average of just 13.9 outs (just less than 4 2/3 innings) over their last eight starts.

That’s not good enough.

Aaron Nola, in particular, has been fairly disappointing each of his last two times out. Last week, he struggled through four innings but held the Mets to just one run. Last night, with the Phillies desperately needing an “ace-like” effort in the second game after using several high-leverage relievers earlier in the day, Nola once again fought his command and produced mixed results.

Defensive Woes

When a baseball team loses games, the natural tendency is to focus on the lineup and pitching, but defense also quietly plays an important role.

The Phillies defense right now? Woof.

Remember that opening series against the Braves? Didi Gregorius made two unbelievable catches. Roman Quinn nailed Ozzie Albies with an outstanding throw to the plate. The Phillies defense looked, I don’t know, decent? I was surprised.

Well, I am no longer surprised.

This team’s rapidly deteriorating defense handed the Mets several extra outs throughout both losses. Whether it was Gregorius failing to turn a double play, Haseley’s aforementioned poor read, or Alec Bohm dropping a pop-up (among other missteps), a number of blunders further highlighted a glaring weakness.

Didn’t See This Coming

The Phillies’ lineup managed just three runs over 15 innings on Tuesday, and one of those runs scored because Andrew McCutchen began the eighth inning on second base with no outs.

The ugly numbers included a collective 12-for-52 (.231 BA) effort from a lineup that produced just one extra-base hit all day.

It’s early, and maybe you can chalk these games up to a bad day at the office, but this lineup has gotten very little production from the leadoff spot as well as the bottom-third of the order.

There is little wonder why the Phillies have scored three runs or less in five of their first 11 games and just a total of 12 runs in their five losses.