The Baseball Continues to Evade Phils' Bats, Gloves in Latest Loss
In the movie Groundhog Day, defeated television reporter Phil Connors, played by Bill Murray, opens his standup from Gobbler’s Knob as the crowd readies to greet Punxsutawney Phil by saying, “Well, it’s Groundhog Day. Again.”
Couldn’t help but think of that scene as I sit here and work through what to write after the Phillies struggled to both catch and hit the baseball.
Again.
Indeed, there was a Groundhog Day feel to the action at Citizens Bank Park on Thursday night, as not even the powder blue “Throwback Thursday” jerseys could prevent another series loss to the Miami Marlins. This latest loss sunk the Phillies to a disturbing 4-9 record against the Marlins since the start of last season, further continuing the trend of their maddening inability to beat a team carrying a fraction of the payroll.
Since the start of the 2019 season, the Marlins are 19-13 (.593) vs. the Phillies and 89-144 (.382) vs. everyone else.
— Joe Giglio (@JoeGiglioSports) May 21, 2021
In other words, that’s a 62-win pace over a 162-game season against all teams that aren’t the Phillies and a 96-win pace over 162 games against the Phillies.
Sure, there were some built-in excuses.
Scheduled starting pitcher Vince Velasquez was scratched roughly 25 minutes before the game with numbness in his right index finger. His absence meant a tag team of relievers David Hale and Matt Moore to open the game.
Hale actually gave the Phillies a chance early on, allowing just one earned run over three innings, while Moore was a little less impressive in his two innings of work.
KEEP THE GOOD TIMES ROLLING @CoopaLoop1.#JuntosMiami pic.twitter.com/eoYBSr5NSX
— Miami Marlins (@Marlins) May 21, 2021
The Phillies once again played with a compromised bench, spurring manager Joe Girardi to use Zack Wheeler as his first pinch-hitter after lifting Hale during the bottom of the third inning.
But those less than ideal circumstances don’t excuse a listless Phillies offense which produced just two hits through six scoreless innings against Marlins starter Sandy Alcantara (and three more scoreless innings with just one hit against the Miami bullpen), nor does it excuse a defense that once again displayed a junior varsity-like inability to consistently execute routine plays.
The box score shows just one error, Alec Bohm’s fifth of the season, but there were a handful of other poor routes, bad reads, and bobbles. Bryce Harper didn’t see — nor did he move for — a foul ball early in the night. Nick Maton couldn’t cleanly pick a suspect infield hit later in the game. Standard fare these days.
https://twitter.com/BrodesMedia/status/1395551690917654532?s=20
Through 44 games, the Phillies are .500, and there are reasons to be optimistic, even as this team spins its wheels. Andrew McCutchen’s bounce back month, Odubel Herrera’s offensive stabilization of center field, and the front end of the starting rotation are among such reasons.
And yet, it remains difficult to envision great future upside, even in a thoroughly mediocre division, for a team that too often struggles to accomplish the most mundane of baseball tasks — hitting the ball and catching it:
- According to Fielding Bible, the Phillies entered the night 29th overall with -22 defensive runs saved. Only the Angels (-30) were worse.
- The Phillies also entered the night with a National League-worst 27.2% strikeout percentage. Only the Rays (27.7%) and Tigers (28.7%) were worse. Their 15 strikeouts in the series finale raised the overall number to 27.5% for the season. Ugly stuff.
And then there’s Girardi, who offered a postgame explanation of his team’s latest slog that fans will be sure to love.
“I think part of this is just Alcantara tonight,” he said. “His ball so many times appeared to be a strike and then it darted out of the zone, and that’s really, really tough hittin’ when that’s happening. It’s one thing when it’s out of the zone, out of the hand, but it wasn’t. His stuff was just really good.”
A pitch that appears in the zone but then…isn’t?
Whoa.
Alcantara, of course, has good stuff and he was tough on Thursday night, but Girardi’s willingness to chalk up a 15-strikeout performance, six of which came over the final three innings against three different Marlins relievers who, too, must have been throwing those crazy deceptive appears-in-the-zone-but-wow-shit-it’s-actually-out-of-it pitches, comes across as disingenuous.
My guess is he knows the problems in play here run much deeper than his lineup simply running into a good arm on a given night, and my other guess is that he was probably looking to strike some peaceful balance only a few days after his dugout confrontation with Jean Segura became an unwanted public storyline.
The man can’t be angry every night, but at the same time, these comments were a feeble dismissal of reality — the type of dismissal that helped create a disconnect between the team and its fans under the previous manager.
Speaking of balance, how about achieving some with these answers?
This was just one of 162 and the loss came in a tough spot, so I think a scorched-earth approach is totally unnecessary in this case, but maybe go with a simple, “We sucked. That sucked. We have to do better. We will.” That answer would have gotten the job done tonight after the Phillies didn’t, no?