Lineup in Limbo: Phillies Bats Evaporate as Dodgers Take Advantage

The Phillies' bats have gone ice-cold over the last two weeks, culminating in a rough loss to the Dodgers. We break down the slump and play audio from Kyle Schwarber and Trea Turner. #RingTheBell #PhiladelphiaPhillies #MLBonX

Transcript

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Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to yet another episode here on the 610 Podcast. I'm your host, Jay Hollaghan, back here on this Monday evening, as we are no doubt over 24 hours removed from the Phillies, losing two of three to the Los Angeles Dodgers out in La La Land. And you know, if I told you last week before Monday, if I came on after that Cleveland series and said, you know, the Phillies are gonna go four and two on this road trip, didn't necessarily mention that they were going to sweep one team, but that they're gonna go four and two and just left it at that. You would have you a hundred percent would have signed up for it, because going out to play a red hot Padres team, all I just have to tell you is they're going out to play the Dodgers, and you know damn well, in all likelihood you're not winning that series. You would have signed up for it. You know, you would have signed up for four and two. You would have signed up for being back above five hundred. But I don't think what anyone would have signed up for was to see the way the offense performed in that series against LA. Another game in which they couldn't solve a lefty on Friday night on Apple TV. Phillies go out there, they get just one hit off Roleski. And Wheeler gives you six innings, he gives up four hits. Problem is they're all solo home runs. But you know the the Dodgers are gonna hit home runs. You know the Dodgers are gonna score runs. I mean, if you think you're gonna go out there and your starting pitching is going to pitch similar to the Dodgers they weighed the way they did against a team like Cincinnati or a team like Cleveland, you've lost your mind. The Dodgers are gonna score runs. It get used to it. It's not a matter of if, it's not a matter of when, it's a matter of how much and specifically how much you counter with. And the Phillies didn't counter with anything really at all of substance that you can hang your hat on in this series. Now, we'll hear from Kyle Schwarber and Trey Turner in a moment about the offensive woes in this series. Really the starting pitching did a pretty good job, everyone except for Andrew Painter, who went out and struggled. Now we'll get to him in a moment. But after Friday's loss, the sign of hey, you know what, this team, this Phillies team though, does have a little bit of jolt in it was Saturday night. Trailing the Dodgers 3-1 heading into the eighth inning, it was kind of looked at as, man, ho-hom and other loss are gonna be back now at 500, and you know, they're gonna have to try and salvage one yesterday to get back above five hundred coming home. Because you know that the Padres are awaiting you when you come back home. Now, the Phillies made an interesting decision. At the time, I have to tell you, I was really curious, like, is he is he injured? Why was Brandon Marsh lifted in the game? Uh, the Phillies who had taken an early one-nothing lead gave it back in the bottom of the second. Lozardo gives up a run, able to get out of the inning after giving up a you know, traffic. But they take the two-to-one lead off Espinall's sack fly. Before that, Alex Call doubled and then advanced to third because uh Justin Crawford tried being a hero in the situation. And they pinch hit for Brandon Marsh with runners on first and second or run with the bases loaded with one out, rather, not runners first and second. Bases loaded with one out in the sixth inning. And then Mundo Sosa comes into the game, and at first you think is something up with Marsh? I mean, this is the sixth inning. I you know, they're not just taking him out, right, because there has to be something going on here. And no, it wasn't. The mindset of Don Mattingly was we want to pinch it and go lefty righty. And everyone's saying, My goodness, that's the one player on your team that's actually produced. He's hitting 323 with an OPS of 830. I don't know, maybe taking him out in that situation might not have been ultimately the decision you would have gone with. Now, obviously later on in the game, as the Phillies trailed 3-1, controversial play at the plate. You know, did Pahay's touch the plate? Was he tagged out? All that. In the top of the eighth, Crawford leads off with a with an infield single. Schwerberg grounds out to get him to second. Trey flies out, no surprise there on one pitch. Then Bryce Harper comes through with a knock, two-strike knock. And then Immundo Sosa belts one. You could tell he knew it off the bat, kinda pimped it, gave you a little Ryan Howard-esque with the you know, bringing the bat back. You know, Howard would do it behind his right leg, Sosa's left. Although the the ball did just dip over the wall, but hey, he got it, he got enough of it. And then the Phillies in the home half of the eighth, they bring in Brad Keller. You hold your breath. Keller actually goes one, two, three. Phillies do nothing. Top nine, bottom nine, Johan Duran, twelfth save of the season in the bag, and the Phillies win the game four to three and are now thirty-and-28. You're gonna be at least above five hundred for the West Coast trip. Can you get to three games above five hundred and be five and one and win this series? That was the question heading into Sunday's matchup. But first after the game, explaining more about the Edmundo Sosa situation here was Don Manning. Yeah, just like the matchup. Honestly, uh I felt like that was a spot we need to try to score there. And just the left on left, although March has been playing for the most part, still like so there. No, uh, you feel good for him because he's been you know he's been scuffling a little bit, but still you gotta trust your guys, what they can do, and what they're capable of. So a good guy felt like for the first spot obviously coming through. It's good to see that for him. Such a good kid, right? Probably not a kid kid, but uh you just you just want good things for him. You know, he works hard, he works all the time, you know, he plays sparingly, but he's always ready and with a good look on his face every day, so it was good to see him come through. I'll s I I will say this for a guy who you know is managing a team in the National League now that you have the DH, you don't have to make as many pinch hitting decisions, you know, as you did before, where the pitcher would obviously bat. Don Mattingley uses his bench. That's the one thing I've really noticed about him. And sometimes it's for the best, sometimes it doesn't exactly pay off, but he's using the bench a whole heck of a lot more than we saw with Rob Thompson than we saw with Joe Girardi, even though Joe Girardi only had about two months with the DH before he was fired. But Rob did not use the bench nearly as much as Mattingley did, and it was just about always obvious what Rob's decision w was going to be. When he would pinch hit for guys, who he would pinch hit for. It never was the case if he was gonna let someone continue to, you know, p start a full nine innings. He was gonna bring in Sosa for Stott, he was gonna bring in Marsh for Rojas, and you know, vice versa at times. Kepler was gonna come into the game like you always knew what was about to happen. And i for Mattingley, I would not have thought pinch hitting for Brandon Marsh in that situation. No way, no how. Now, as I mentioned, you have an opportunity to go three games above five hundred if you can pull off the unthinkable and and win a series against the Dodgers. Problem was the Phillies didn't do that, and even though ten runs were scored in the collective of the game, nine were scored by the Dodgers. Now, had the Phillies lost this game six to four shown some life with the at-bats, and you know what, the Dodgers just got to your own pitcher, and the only thing we're sitting here saying is having debates with people about whether or not Andrew Painter needs to stay up in the bigs because people are debating that, which I think is a little bit ludicrous. Listen, but uh what do you expect? You know, you're going against the Dodgers. You know the Dodgers are gonna put up runs. That's to be expected. Is it a bummer he couldn't get out of the fourth? Yes. And is it a bummer that he couldn't go out there and give you six innings pushing to seven innings of you know, one run baseball? Absolutely. You know, he didn't give you it he didn't give you much of a chance. But your offense couldn't help themselves. Now, the other problem is Yoshinobu Yamamoto is facing you on the other side. And I thought for the majority of the game, the Phillies' plan against Yamamoto was actually not bad. They drove his pitch count up. He only went five and a third. He did, however, strike out ten. The Phillies were able to get in him into some deep counts, but they could not they could not get the big hit. They could not continue to keep the line moving. It just didn't happen. For whatever reason, shape, or form, the Phillies just could not do the minimum of just let's continue to push the line, let's continue to get to the next hitter, you know, all of that, and then some it it just and it's what we've seen from this offense throughout the majority of the season, it's just kind of become, unfortunately, to this point what they are. They had a good series against Pittsburgh, where they came out of two pretty, you know, laxadaisical series offensively, but the last two weeks they've been pathetic. And here was Kyle Schorber and Trey Turner after the game talking about the offensive struggles. I feel like the the early kind of start can throw things off a little bit, right? I know there might be some underlying numbers, but I feel like I've probably been playing some really good baseball stuff. Um there's gonna be times where it's hard to score. It's really good. I guess that we have some way to get that. It's a little bit weird that I feel like we we kind of showing function as a team. Um, you know, it seems to be like kind of hard enough that you guys are gonna figure that out a little bit just uh I feel like today we got the lead off coming on, but then we just gotta keep that line moving. Um I feel like we got some pitches to hit and over zone and missed them. So I don't know, it's just to keep it a little bit simpler, not trying to do too much. Uh I mean all those cliche things, but we could kind of figure out ways to uh keep the innings going and and kind of have those big innings. And I think uh you know our pitching stats can be really good for the most part, obviously. Um historic things happening there. So it's it's you know on us to to give them guys a uh a lead and just let them settle in. You know, you can look at all sorts of numbers and stats, and I think that's what's frustrating is I feel like some guys are getting at swings, hitting the ball hard, and just not finding holes. It's at the end of the day, it comes down to whether or not you score the runs, and um, we haven't done that. So um I think there's positive things to look at in there, but it's you know, how do you get production out of that? Um I think that's a hard question. So um I think that's uh a lot of why I'm frustrated. It feels like, you know, every ball I hit over 95 miles an hour of the series, I think it was out. So it's it's just like, you know, you put the bat on the ball, you're you're hitting the middle of the barrel and um not finding success. So um, you know, where do you go? What do you do? And I think you know some other guys in here like that as well. They think that they're doing things right and it's just not uh not adding up to runs and wins. And um I think we have the players from women capable of it, but it's uh like I said at the end of the day, you gotta you gotta do it. Those comments from Schwarber actually were from Friday. Trees were after yesterday's game, Sunday in the finale. But let me and let me just say this. So I put something out there about how the Phillies offense, at first I prefaced it the exact same way I started off this episode. I mentioned if you someone told you you sign up for a four-in-two season or four-and-two road trip, you would sign up for it. Absolutely, you'd sign up for it. Going out west, playing the Padres, playing the Dodgers, you know, you would have said, Where do I sign? Doing the math in your head, they're gonna be back above 500, coming home, where they then have to play the Padres again. So that's a test in and of itself. However, the way they played against the Dodgers, you know, that is your yardstick. That's how you measure yourself. Now your starting pitching did okay aside from Painter. Your offense, not so much. And I mean in the in the slightest, especially in Sunday's game. But so here's what someone said to me. Four and two isn't bad against good teams on the West Coast. JT getting hurt sucks, but it's baseball. Hitting hopefully soon will figure it out. Don't hold your breath. I'm assuming you're not an actual Phil's fan, just one when they're crushing it. Stop posting this drivel, they will be fine. This negativity is getting annoying by Fairweather fans. Okay. At Mike Lackey. Honestly, do people like you have stake in the baseball team? Do you own part of Citizens? Do you get some type of money off of tickets? Are you a seasoned ticket holder, dude? Because are you trying to tell me people can't be critical of the team when they averaged about two and a half runs in those six games? Are you that big of a simpleton and that big of a dope that you have to sit there and pretend like you're some know-it-all baseball historian when you're not? I mean, give me a break. You know, get a clue. I mean, w you're gonna sit there and you're gonna sit on your high horse and take the high road on the entire situation and go, oh, it's okay, it's fine, they're paying this offense this much money, but they can average two and a half runs per game. Oh, June's just around the corner. Oh, because of the marketing team of the Phillies, I know Kyle Schwarber is going to hit a bajillion home runs first game back. I mean, are you that stupid and naive? You look at the offense, there's two guys hitting above 250. You rank in the bottom of the league in batting average, you rank in the bottom of the league in OBP, OPS, your offense stinks, you've got an outplaying right field, you've got a glorified out at third base a majority of the time, in out at second, in out catching, in out and left, not an out in center, in first, you've got an out out of your reigning batting title champion that you're playing all this money to. Dude, clean your ears. Clean your eyes, put some eye drops in. Take a Q-tip. I mean, honestly, you sit there and listen to the Dave Dombrowski comments and you take it as the gospel. Is that what you're telling me right now? I mean, some people really. And there are people that do it, and it's like, okay, you know, it's an elderly woman, you know, probably someone that's may or may not pay attention to a couple games in a season. Just loves the team because they love the team, alright, whatever. Doesn't have that big of an emotional stake in the ball club. But buddy, come back to us. So that's all I have to say about that while I'm done peeling the paint off the walls here. About some slob that doesn't even deserve two minutes of my time that I gave him. Now the Padre series is what's coming up. You got another one against them. You're currently sitting for the wild card, you're a game and a half back. You got the Cardinals holding that last spot, Pirates below them, the Cubs have come completely down to earth, back down to earth. The Reds are a game above 500. You've got the Diamondbacks five games above 500, Padres six games above 500, Phillies are a game above 500 and a game and a half back. Tied with the Reds, and the Reds, of course, because they took two of three, own the tiebreaker, so they're above the Phillies for the wild card. So you're sitting 10th. Now, while you're sitting 10th, you're looking up at a lot of NL Central teams. Now, I typically like to think the Reds, the Cubs, the Pirates, and the Cardinals will eventually start beating the crap out of each other. As will the NL Central. So maybe there's a chance one of those teams you're gonna move up from. But you gotta play good baseball, first of all. That's first and foremost. I'd also like to think the Cardinals are gonna come back down to Earth. No one expected the Cardinals to be doing this. Everyone expected where the Rockies are right now at 23 and 38, the Cardinals would actually be below them. The Pirates, that doesn't surprise me. Cubs, that doesn't surprise me. The Reds, that doesn't surprise me. The Diamondbacks, that doesn't really surprise me either. Five games above uh maybe a little bit because I didn't account for their starting to pitching to be all that fantastic in their plus eleven in the run differential. But the Phillies, right now, you're minus twenty-six in your run differential. And big part of that is because if you're starting pitching. But your offense has to start hitting. They have to start bringing the lumber. And I and uh well, when I said that because if you're starting pitching, it's climbed down from where it was before because of starting pitching. The reason why it's so low is because your offense you know, you've lost 29 games, and in some of those games, you're not even keeping it close. You gotta do that. You did big time. You gotta get back into some of these ball games. You know, uh like a game like yesterday against the Dodgers I'm not saying against a team like the Dodgers, but in those kinds of games you gotta be able to slug with teams. And the Phillies have not been able to slug with teams, which is weird. And as I mentioned a couple minutes ago, Adoli Scarcia has stunk up the room. Dave Dombrowski has done a horrific job at these one-year prove it deals. I mean, he Went Merrifield was a bust. Max Kepler was a bust. Jordan Romano not in the lineup, but he was a joke. And Adoli Scarcia is turning into kind of a joke. He's got a great glove out there, that's fine. We could bring certain guys up that could give us a good glove in right field. And I don't mean to disparage anything that of what he's done, but I'm just saying. You also have the fact that he can't even make contact at this point. I mean, it's like, dude, just go you know what you do? Go up there, walk to the batter's box, and just stand there and watch these pitches. Because that's all he's basically doing. Why even pull the bat off your shoulder half the time? He's not even making contact. I mean, he might as well just forfeit the at-bat. Yeah, we'll take the out. And we don't need his confidence continuing to get ruined. He's down in the batting cage. We'll see maybe by his fourth at-bat, depending upon how he's feeling. But for the meantime, you know how it's like four wall four four fingers for a free pass, three three-finger salute strikes. He's gone. There's a strikeout for the pitcher. Honestly. It's ridiculous. At that point, if he's up there with a runner on, I don't care if it's one out, I don't care if it's two outs. You might as well just tell him to bunt. I don't even know if he could do that. Now the problem with yesterday's game, big time, is because we get into starting into the starting pitching previews. You have JT Rio Muto hitting on the hand, wrist injury, comes out of the game, X-rays were negative. It was labeled as a contusion. We'll see if he's going to hit for the Phillies tomorrow night. We'll see if he's going to be in the lineup. Hopefully, you know, we will see him at some point in this series, but I'd imagine he might be day-to-day. And with tomorrow, Aaronola going, and with the day off, potentially it could be him because you'd Raphael Marchand. No. I would rather have like Andrew Knapp on this team, like 20 whatever version of Andrew Knapp at this point, than Marshawn, then Stubbs, than any, because this is just this is pathetic. Why this is the however many th year in a row, and your backup catcher is a position of just. And I get it. They trade away Logan O'Hopi, they traded away Eduardo Tate, but my lord, the backup catcher position stinks. And in game one tomorrow, so as we get into the starting pitching preview, it's Aaron Oll on the bump. 3-4 with a 5-7-2 ERA. Last time out against the Padres, his last time out pitching. He won six strong, gave up two runs on three hits, no walks and five strikeouts. Randy Vasquez, 5-3 with the 3-2-80RA. Last time he pitched also against the Phillies. Won 5-2-3, gave up four runs on eight hits, a walk and four strikeouts. Now, these two games are carbon copies of each other. The Padres are going to be more motivated than ever. You swept them at their place. They're going to want to sweep you at your place. Short memories because, you know, hey, it's been within a week since they faced each other. It'll be interesting to see how the Padres come out. Christopher Sanchez, 6-2 with a 1480RA, won seven innings, allowed no runs on six hits with a whopping nine Ks. Can he keep the streak alive? And listen, he's going to give up a run at some point. But the hope is it's not going to be anything crazy, and you have to be able to score for him. Walker Bueller's going to be on the mound for the Padres. He's 3-3 with the 488-8 ERA. Gave up two runs on three hits and five and a third with two K's against the Phillies last week. Can they please put up some runs against some of these guys? Can they figure it out? Because here's game three. Zach Wheeler, 4-1 with the 2-2-7 ERA, 3-0 with a 1-8-5 ERA versus the Padres since 22. That's five starts, and he's gone six complete innings in each start. Luis Hilito is on the mound for the Padres. 2-0 with a 4-9-7 ERA this year and three starts. He dealt with elbow issues last year, so the first month and a half he was pitching in the minor leagues. Now, he's 1-1 with a 5-7-4 ERA and three starts versus the Philz since 22. I am begging in these three starts, it's there for you to average more than two and a half runs a game. It's there for you to, I mean, if they score four runs a game, it's like they scored nine for this team. It's like, oh great, we got four runs tonight. Yippee, because we know with the starting pitching, they will probably win that game. But could you take a little stress off these guys? I mean, honestly, could you take a little stress off your starters? Could Johan Duran maybe get a couple days off his feet? Can we maybe get some of your higher leverage relievers into some lower leverage situations? Like, hey, you know what? We're turning the ball over to Brad Keller. It's six to two, dude. Just get three outs in this inning. Keep us in front. Keep it to within. It's not, you know, heart palpitation time for Duran to come in. Like, can we just do that at minimum? Put up runs. I mean, this off this team is meant to at even if it's not to their 22 and 23 versions in which they're able to go out there and outslug you. But could you at least outslug teams on the occasion? Could you at least scratch together? Well, I shouldn't say scratch together, but could you at least hit the in my opinion, and from what we've all seen at this point, do the unthinkable and get like five runs on the occasion? Can you at least do that? And boy, I hope I'm not sounding too critical of the team when I talk about this. I would really hate to upset some of the babies out there that may or may not be listening to this episode. But fellas, boys, we're in June. And if you've been listening to this podcast for the last four seasons, you know how I feel about the month of June. This team has had make or break seasons, has had their best seasons when they've done well in the month of June. The month of June is so important. It is so important. Because if they go, so for the month of May, let me get the exact number here, but for the month of May, they crushed it in the win-loss. It's what Bryce Harper talked about. He said, hey, we went out there, we won the month. And that's what we gotta do. We gotta win the month of June. You keep winning your months, you're gonna like your record at the end of the season. But in the month of May, the Phillies went 18 and 10. They're 30 and 29. At the end of June, if you have that record of 18 and 10, I'm not saying they will, but say they did. Let's just play pretend here. I don't even know if they play 28 games in the month of June. They'd be 48 and 39. I feel a whole hell of a lot better about 48 and 39 than I do 30 and 29. Than I do being just a game above 500. I would feel a whole hell of a lot better at that being a record than 44 and 43. So it's imperative, and as the weekend of June, it's gonna start to warm up. And it should be a good week here, three games to put up some offensive numbers. Now, on the flip side, it's also a good opportunity for the Padres, who just lost two of three from the Nationals. But for the Phillies, come on, guys. You gotta give me two of three. If the offense produces, and the starting pitching pitches to their ERA for the Phillies, they could sweep the Padres again. It's doable. It's very doable. But you gotta go you gotta do it, and you gotta want it. So let's see if the Phillies can do both. Thanks everyone for tuning in. We'll talk to you later.