This time, Phils don’t play like a first-place team
PHILADELPHIA » Even when the Phillies were making noise with a surprising string of wins in May of 2016, then-manager Pete Mackanin and a few of the older clubhouse residents didn’t seem to be taking it too seriously.
The Phillies, they knew themselves, were still in the early days of a rebuild. And even at 22-15 in the middle of that May, words of pleasant surprise were usually tempered by testaments to reality.
It took an early summer’s freefall in the standings to show them they weren’t wrong.
But two years and one very different manager later, with a few holdovers sprinkled among several graduated prospects and a couple of key veteran acquisitions, there is a different vibe with this club that Tuesday was in the middle of what they determined to be a very important series with an up-and-coming Atlanta Braves team.
Even though it’s still May and there’s more than a few showers of slumps going on.
Anyway, manager Gabe Kapler was asked prior to the second game of a series between the NL East’s two frontrunning teams, what would it mean to slip into first place with a win?
“I think it would mean a lot, I do,” Kapler said. “More than anything else, I just think it would be a confidence boost, a momentum builder. And I think the clubhouse environment ... this team knows how to celebrate, this team knows how to smile and have fun after wins. I think it would be special if we were able to take control of first place.”
That said, the Phillies showed absolutely nothing special in a 3-1 loss Tuesday night to the Braves, which means no first-place Philadelphia ascension. Not in this series, anyway.
Rhys Hoskins continued slumping, and struck out with two runners in scoring position to end the fifth inning with the Phillies down a run.
Hoskins struck out again in the eighth as his average fell to .237. He isn’t alone in that slumping department, as Scott Kingery is at .217 and Maikel Franco is starting to fall off a bit from his good start, his slash line now at .259/.291/.449.
What has held the Phillies together is their starting pitching, something that was undermined on this night by poor defense. But even if they were left short of enjoying or celebrating the feeling of being a first-place team, it’s best for them to let a 2018 version of reality indeed set in...
It’s May, after all, and there would be another game against the Braves Wednesday.
“You want to say it’s disappointing, but we still have another game tomorrow to come back and bounce back,” said losing pitcher Vince Velasquez. “The series is not over. There’s a lot of game left. There’s no chance of calling it quits now.”
*** On April 26, the fast-starting Hoskins was batting .338 with an 1.103 OPS. He’ll go into Wednesday’s game at .237 and an OPS around .800. It’s been a bad threeplus weeks.
Naturally, Hoskins is handling it with words of wisdom beyond his years.
“You’re never going to be perfect every time with it,” Hoskins said. “If you’re hitting .400 or not hitting at all, it’s not going to be perfect with every pitch of every at-bat, or even every at-bat of every game. So, yeah, it doesn’t feel right all the time. But it never feels right all the time. If that was the case, I don’t think I’d ever get out or anybody would ever get out (of it).
“There have been times where I’ve been a little late, catching the ball a little bit deep. There have been times where I’ve been on-time and not connecting and times where I have connected and it’s just caught. So I think it’s just a combination of those things.” In other words, it’s baseball.
*** Despite the loss, Kapler has certainly enjoyed the ride thus far for his 27-19 team.
“I’m actually just paying attention to how our guys respond to performing well, how our guys respond to wins,” Kapler said before the game. “They get really excited. They don’t hide emotion and sometimes they ride that wave of emotion. My expectation then would be that if we ended up in first place that would be really feel good to our players and our staff and would provide some momentum.
*** Kapler is still getting to know his hottest reliever, too. That would be Seranthony Dominguez, the hard-throwing set-up man with closer stuff. Of course, all set-up guys are closers and vice-versa for Kapler’s club.
His frequent shuffling of his late-innings corps leaves open the question of how often Dominguez can be used, and for how long. He hadn’t allowed a hit or walk in his first six major league appearances.
So it might be a pretty important question. Mainly because he’s a guy you’d like to use every day.
“I think the way to balance it is think about him as, ‘Can we get two out of three outings from him in a three-game series?’ I don’t know that we can do that,” Kapler said. “I don’t know that we can’t (either), but I’m not sure we want to think about him as two (appearances), day off, then two again. That seems a little aggressive, but I don’t think there’s any real science here behind how quickly guys bounce back.
“If I was going to bet on anybody as far as youth, athleticism and body size, I’d probably bet on him to handle that kind of stress. But we’re going to err on the side of being slow with it.”
*** NOTES » Shortstop J.P. Crawford is rehabbing in Clearwater and Monday planted an opposite field home run in an intra-squad game. In other injury news, unseen reliever Pat Neshak continues on his throwing program and starter Jerad Eickhoff, who is dealing with tingling and numbness in his hand and fingers again, may soon be seeking another medical opinion. Kapler said he had “no new information” on that . ... Velasquez went just 4⅓ innings, scattering six hits but allowing just one earned run with three walks and nine strikeouts on 89 pitches. He was done in by two bad defensive plays in the fifth, one by Nick Williams, who slipped twice then overthrew a cutoff man, and a worse one by Carlos Santana, who overthrew Jorge Alfaro on an easy one.
Kapler on the bad defense: “Tonight we had some plays we could have made, no doubt about it. We can always certainly play better defense, something we’re going to stay focused on.”