Howard urges Phillies fans to cheer up
The Phillies third baseman continued his hot streak Sunday with a walk-off homer
Ryan Howard had a message Sunday for the home crowd about this current group of underachievers.
PHILADELPHIA >> If the Phillies are going to keep abreast of the National League’s wildcard race, they are going to need more of what Maikel Franco is providing them.
The Phillies’ streaky third baseman is again trending warm at the plate, guessing right on a Matt Grace first-pitch fastball with one out in the ninth inning Sunday, and driving it into the left field seats for a 4-3 victory that not only avoided a sweep at the hands of the hot Washington Nationals, but also put the Phillies at least momentarily ahead of the other hopefuls in the fight for the second wildcard playoff spot.
At midseason and with a slide of 18 losses in their previous 28 games shadowing them, well, at least that’s something.
Franco’s home run was something worth celebrating, however, since it was his 15th homer of the season, second career walkoff and the 100th home run of his career.
“When he’s swinging the bat well, when he’s the best version of Maikey, he can’t come out of the lineup. We can never take him out of the lineup. He’s just that good. He makes us that much better and deeper.”
– Phillies manager Gabe Kapler on third baseman Maikel Franco after Sunday’s game.
The century mark? “Yeah, man, the 100th,” Franco said. “It’s a beautiful thing.”
Actually, it’s a necessary thing for Franco, who is almost a prototype for streaky hitters with power. With Andrew McCutchen down for the season, Odubel Herrera summarily sentenced to a year’s shame amid domestic violence charges and people like Bryce Harper and J.T. Realmuto struggling more often than not, it’s up to Franco to provide more consistency than he has in earlier seasons.
“When he’s swinging the bat well, when he’s the best version of Maikey, he can’t come out of the lineup,” manager Gabe Kapler said. “We can never take him out of the lineup. He’s just that good. He makes us that much better and deeper.”
Of course, Franco knows the time for him to reach a higher level of consistency could never be better, primarily because the Phillies’ pitching is trending toward implosion.
Just a blink or so after finally coming off the injured list and beginning his season, reliever Tommy Hunter is heading back to the IL with the familiar forearm strain. Not good.
What’s more, there’s a starting staff aced by a recently rolling Aaron Nola that needs help. Vince Velasquez and Nick Pivetta can’t seem to do it for longer than a game or two. Zach Eflin was good for a while, but has been a touch awful lately.
Then there’s the tale of Jake Arrieta and the bone spur in his elbow which he says he’ll battle ‘til the dawn’s early light! Or something like that. “I feel like from this point on, it’s going to be tough each and every time I go out there,” said Arrieta, who gave the Phillies 88 pitches over a fiveinning start Sunday, allowing only one run via four hits. Not bad considering he can barely throw one of his best strikeout pitches, the cutter.
“I can deal with pain and I’m going to do the best I can to continue to go out there and give my team a chance to win every fifth day,” Arrieta said. “Some situations of the game were tough, but I was able to make some good pitches and get out of some big situations.
“The more pitches I throw, the more difficult it becomes. There are going to be days when I’ll be able to get deeper than I went today.”
Arrieta was only touched for a run on an Anthony Rendon double followed two batters later by Matt Adams’ RBI single. But after Arrieta escaped a fifth inning jam by striking out Adam Eaton, Kapler had seen enough. And was appreciative enough.
Arrieta was lifted for a pinch-hitter in the fifth but Kapler indicated the veteran starter would have been calling it a day either way.
“That was enough for Jake,” Kapler said. “He was reaching that 90-pitch mark through five innings. That’s a lot of work for anybody and, in particular, a guy who is not fully healthy.”
The Phillies probably know they’ll need a healthy Arrieta – or maybe some real outside pitching help by the July 31 trade deadline – to survive into August and beyond.
They just hope general manager Matt Klentak knows it, too.
“It’s going to be a pretty consistent theme, it’s going to be painful,” Arrieta said of his elbow. “The good thing is I’m not going to injure it any further. It is what it is. We’ll get it taken out when the time is right, but I can do what I did today for us. Sometimes it is going to be even better, so the pain is just something you get used to.”
As for Franco, it’s more gaining confidence than getting past the pain of past failures that could be a key to him providing the kind of offensive lift a hurting pitching staff needs more than ever.
Franco had a superb start to the season, with four homers and an OPS above .900 over the first three weeks. Then he promptly hit .179 over the month of May, which sadly seemed a typical turn for him.
Riding the bench by midJune, Franco bottomed to a .204 average with a .643 OPS amid a 6-4 loss to Miami on June 23, which completed a series sweep by the visiting Marlins and a seventh straight Phillies loss.
They haven’t been a whole lot better the past few weeks, but Franco has been busy trying to bring them, and his game, to life.
Against the Nats in this lost series, he had six hits, two of them home runs. Franco is now hitting .240 with a .752 OPS. He’s come a long way in the past three weeks. He knows he has a long way to go.
“We’re coming together every single day, man,” Franco said. “We can think about it day to day and game by game and go out there every single day and try to do anything we can do for our team.”