Bad Baseball

This sums it up for the Phillies and Freddie Galvis this week.

Last Sunday I wrote an optimistic post about these Phillies after they took two of three from the Nationals and stood at 15-14 on the season. I even sent an email to a few of my friends sharing my disgust with the Phillies ranking from Grantland baseball writer Jonah Keri. He had them 26th out of 30 MLB teams and I was appalled, at the time.




That's not great, Bob.
 

After watching the absolutely putrid baseball the Phils have played over the past 4 nights, Keri might be right on point with his ranking. Historically, the Phillies have been a bad inter-league play team, they are 51-67 dating back to 2007 (the Phils made the playoffs in 5 of those 8 years). However, that does not excuse them from playing historically bad baseball in a split home and home four game series with the free swinging Toronto Blue Jays. Wow, just wow, were they bad the past few days. This Toronto team didn't exactly come in touting anything particularly good as you can see from their place in the same rankings, but the Phillies sure made them look like world beaters.

 

 

 

The Phillies allowed the Blue Jays to bust out their brooms for a clean four game sweep because of a complete and utter lack of ability from their hitters and their pitchers. This wasn't a "we almost had em a few times sweep" this was a "how are the Phillies capable of being that bad sweep?" There were small to large tidbits that can't really be explained as to how the Phils managed to fall flat on their faces for four days straight, but we'll note them at least.

Let's start with the large. The offense has been pathetic, basically since Saturday. When Chase Utley singled home the only run in Sunday's 1-0 victory in the first inning the Phils neglected to score for 23 straight innings. Games are only 9 innings long last I checked.. so, do the math on that. 

On Monday night the Phils were shutout by JA Happ. JA ___ing Happ shut the Phillies out Monday night, just to reiterate. In that game the Phillies had 7 hits and 5 walks but none of them meant anything. They went 0-6 with runners in scoring position and Ryne Sandberg batted Freddie Galvis 2nd with Jimmy Rollins unavailable due to a groin pull. Freddie Galvis went 1-5 in the game and raised his average to .056 on the season, same as his slugging percentage. What is Sandy trying to prove there?

The next night got worse for Freddie. Watch these two videos and ask yourself if you believe Freddie Galvis belongs in the Major Leagues considering his batting average.

Whoops!

 

 

That's your play Freddie.

 

 

Watching Freddie Galvis play baseball lately has been like watching a slow-moving car wreck. He’s swung and missed at more balls in the dirt than a blind golfer. I like Freddie just as much as the next guy and he can certainly pick it from any infield position, but his head and his swing are not where they need to be right now. The Phils sent him to the minors after Thursday night’s game. Where's Darin Ruf when you need him?

So the Phils had to score Tuesday night right? Well, they were down 5-0 before they knew what hit them after Cole Hamels came out and performed like lukewarm garbage for his second consecutive start. That's alright Cole, the ballclub is only paying you $22.5 million this year, not a lot riding on you.

The Phils did manage to breakthrough with a 5 run 6^th inning highlighted by Cody (Sm)Asche’s two out grand slam to tie the game at 5. That was a short lived positive feeling as the Phillies were now going to have to go out and win a game while relying on their bullpen.

Guess what happened in the 10^th inning (The bullpen, including Jonathan Papelbon was solid from 7-9)? Antonio Bastardo allowed the leadoff man to get on with a single. This was Bastardo’s 15^th apearance of the season; he’s allowed the leadoff man to reach in 9 of those appearances. 9 times. So when Bastardo induced a shallow fly to center that Ben Revere needed to throw home and nail the runner in order to preserve the tie, the ball game was essentially over. Marlon Byrd would have had a better chance to throw out that game winning run had he caught the ball just right of center while running Revere over on a dead sprint. Alas, the Phils dropped that one 6-5 and headed to Toronto.

Wednesday night’s matchup was scheduled to be a pitcher’s duel between Jays’ lefty Mark Buehrle and the Phillies’ ace Cliff Lee. Well it was, until it wasn’t. Trailing 1-0 in the 7^th, the wheels came off for Cliff and the Phillies. In the 7^th inning alone, the Jays sent 12 men to the plate, recorded 8 hits, 3 of which were home runs, and they needed to ground into a double play just to end the inning. Former Phils catcher, Erik Kratz, went 2-2 in the inning including a massive two run home run off Lee. Once again, the Phils could not get one hit with runners in scoring position finishing the game Oh fer five with three total hits and two walks. Blue Jays win 10-0. Thud.

If you're keeping score the Phillies had scored in two of their previous 41 innings enterting Thursday night's game. Maybe it's best we don't keep score if that's the kind of stuff that gets reported.

AJ Burnett took the mound for the Phillies Thursday night and he came in perhaps the hottest pitcher in baseball having allowed three earned runs in his prior four starts. Well, he gave up three in the second inning and ended his night with the following line: 6 IP 9 H 7 R 6 ER 2 BB 4 K 3 HR. For good measure, brand new callup Luis Garcia entered the game in the 7th and promptly gave up back-to-back home runs to Edwin Encarnacion and Juan Francisco. This pushed the Jays lead to 10-3 but that wasn’t enough as Garcia allowed another two in the 8^th. Ryan Howard managed to hit a two-run home run that only felt good for his statiscits in the top of the 9^th. The Phils lose 12-6.

Wow. The Jays just swung heavy lumber all series long and made the Phillies pitching staff look completely overamatched, and the Phillies’ offense woefully feeble in comparison. This, my friends, is what we refer to as a shellacking. The Blue Jays took the Phillies to the woodshed and it wasn't pretty. The four game skid places the Phillies in the cellar of the NL East.

 

Here are the totals for the series:

Blue Jays        Totals             Phillies

     31                Runs                11

     43                 Hits                30

     11             Home Runs*         2 

    3.09              ERA                 9.97

    .216              BAA**              .309


* Edwin Encarnacion had 4 himself. Swingin at the knees.
** Batting Average Allowed