Had it not been for Pat Burrell's heroics last night, the Phillies' offense would have screwed up another great start by Cole Hamels.
It's time that we throw the towel in on the "they can't possibly be this bad" theory on the offense. Yes they can be this bad. They are this bad.
They just wrapped up a series against the second-worst team in baseball and managed just 6 runs of offense in three games. The Padres are hardly a juggernaut in the pitching department. They sport the 16th ranked staff in the majors and actually trail the Phillies in team pitching (they are ranked 11th). You can thank the Padres' 28th worst offense for this gift this weekend.
And, it was a gift because the Phillies certainly didn't do much to win this series. In their two wins they had three measly runs and nearly spoiled great starts by both Jamie Moyer and Cole Hamels. Their 5th starter (and yes he's nothing more than a 5) Kyle Kendrick had about as awful a week as you'll ever see out of any of their pitchers. He threw batting practice on Saturday night to a bottom-feeding offense and buried the team deeper than if they were a sunken submarine entrenched in the far depths of The Mariana Trench.
The Phillies' offense is still ranked 11th, but it's really because of their output over the first two months of the season. Forget about the runs they've scored overall; they have a .252 team batting average. That's good for 25th out of 30 teams. This team flat out cannot hit and they strike out more times than a military junta tortures civilians.
That is the reason why their season will go down in flames as we head into the final six weeks of play. It's not because of the pitching staff because Hamels, Moyer, Blanton, and Myers are getting it done right now and when they go 6-7 innings they'll take the weight off the bullpen. I'm ready to write Kyle Kendrick off as a 5-starter that you won't know what you'll get, but that's most teams.
We know what they'll get out of this garbage of an offense and it's a low on-base percentage, lots of strikeouts, and more stranded runners than Cheesecake Factory has...well you know what I'm saying.
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