The old adage in baseball is that you're only as good as your pitching. This is true to a certain extent. Allow me to point out the 2003 LA Dodgers who led the NL in ERA with a 3.16 team ERA. This is unheard of in baseball today. Offensively they were putrid, finishing last in the NL in offense with just 574 runs scored.
And, you know what happened to this 2003 Dodgers team with that great pitching staff? They finished 2nd in the west with an 85-77 record and missed the playoffs.
I'm not trying to discount pitching, but I don't give a damn how good your pitching is, you still have to score some runs.
And, the Phillies right now have been getting quality starting pitching on the most part. Except for a couple bad starts by Kendrick and Eaton recently their starting pitchers have been allowing 2-3 runs a game. The offense has crawled into a dungeon somewhere in an abandoned rowhome in Philadelphia and scored just 11 runs during this 6-game losing streak.
Do the math and the offense hasn't even scored 2 runs per game during this losing streak and during their June swoon they have scored 56 runs in the past 13 games-good for 4.3 runs per game. And, that includes that 20-run fluke against the Cardinals. Take that game away and the offense has been offensive-averaging a putrid 3 runs per game.
The power outage continued last night as they came up with a measly 2 runs against Joe Blanton, who came into the game with a 3-10 record.
Earlier this season the Phillies were a formidable offense against any starting pitcher. Now, they are the elixer a pitcher needs to get out of a slump. And, forget about it when they face studs. They're mince meat.
Charlie Manuel needs to do some drastic things with the lineup and make some bold moves. If that means batting Jimmy Rollins 7th to send the message then by-golly do it. If it means benching Ryan Howard after going 0 for 3 in his first three at-bats with 3 strikeouts, then do it.
Maybe a small-ball lineup built around guys like Coste, Werth, et. al will be the remedy. The only thing more putrid then the strikeouts in this lineup is their runners left on base statistic.
They had 13 left on base last night, including 3 in the 7th inning. Once again, a 2-out situation and they came up with nothing with bases loaded. As if that wasn't bad enough, Jamie Moyer, who had given up just one hit all night was lit up in the bottom of the inning.
And, then the score was 3-1, but that's all the A's needed. Jamie Moyer pitched his ass off, easily one of his best starts as a Phillie, but it went to waste.
It's absolutely disgusting and these players should be ashamed to be wearing Phillies uniforms right now because they are letting the entire pitching staff down night in and night out.
To quote the infamous Lee Elia, he said the key is to "hit the f***ing ball, pitch the f***ing ball, and get the f***ing job done." Right now the Phillies doing one of those things right-and that won't win you many games.
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