I watched Alien vs. Predator: Requiem last night. Could be one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. But it was not nearly as horrifying as this:

So much for the end of the road trip, the day off, and getting to play in front of the home fans again. They mustered a grand total of four hits against Valente Bellozo, who made his Major League debut this summer and is so new that he does not yet have a profile picture. They made him look like the second coming of Sandy Koufax. Kyle Schwarber? 0-4. Trea Turner? 0-4. Bryson Stott? Another 0-4 and calls for him to be sent down to the minors or platooned alongside Edmundo Sosa. The Phils couldn’t hit, couldn’t draw a walk, and found themselves in a 2-0 hole early with Taijuan Walker on the mound and that was all she wrote.

The last few weeks have been a somewhat feckless exercise of “is this just a bad slump or are they really in trouble?” You thought after winning the Dodgers series they might have snapped themselves out of it, but you blink and now it’s a four-game losing streak, this one bleeding into the return home. Miami and Washington were supposed to be respite series with Atlanta and KC on the horizon.

What’s particularly concerning is that there are 43 games remaining and they need 21 wins to reach 90. That means they’ve got to play .500 baseball down the stretch here to even match what they did last year, and playing .500 baseball feels like a pipe dream at this point. 14 of these games are against the Braves and Mets, the Phils go to Milwaukee in September, and who the hell knows how that six-game Toronto and Miami road swing will turn out. The vibes are not good! Either we boo the shit out of these guys to send a message or give the world’s best standing ovation. It’s more than a slump at this point. It’s been going on since they lost 2 of 3 at home to Oakland all the way back on July 12th. Does a “slump” last more than a month? A question for the baseball philosophers.