Effort apparent, but results lacking
PHILADELPHIA » There’s a weird dichotomy brewing within the Phillies, one that reared its ugly head in Sunday night’s 8-7 loss to the Mets.
On the one hand are baseball plays that, generously, could be called sloppy. On the other is a team that manager Joe Girardi praised for its fight in coming back once, then coming a baseball’s width from rallying again in the ninth.
It’s all a little hard to square for a team that is approaching a month without consecutive victories.
“I think the fight is a constant you need to be a successful team,” Girardi said Monday before opening a four-game set with the Milwaukee Brewers.
“I think overall, playing all sides of the baseball, you need to play well to be a successful team. At times our defense has let us down, at times our offense, but the fight is always there. That, I’m very proud of our guys.”
It’s a testament to the occasionally rough brand of baseball they’ve played that all the fight back is required just to get the Phillies, one month into the season, back to 13-15. And it’s had them slogging through a stretch where just one of their last 14 games was decided by more than three runs.
Since the four-game mirage to open the season, the Phillies haven’t won consecutive games. Their only consistency had been managing to alternate wins and losses for 11 games before Sunday night’s six-run eighth ended that streak at the hands of the slightly-lessbad New York Mets.
The decisive blow in Sunday’s six-run capitulation wasn’t Jose Alvarado’s bases-loaded walk to Michael Conforto or Pete Alonso’s bases-clearing double on the first pitch from David Hale. It was the way the game got tied, with Jonathan Villar scoring from first base on a single that glanced off the glove of Rhys Hoskins at first. That Villar made it from first to third was fine, running with the pitch and scampering to third as Hoskins’ glove skimmed a hot shot by Jose Peraza.
It became a catastrophe when Villar stopped at third, saw Hoskins 10 steps into the outfield grass lollipop the ball to Nick Maton at second and dashed home for the tying run.
Hoskins owned up to the mistake and tried to atone with a three-runhomer-turned-two-rundouble in the ninth. But it was still too little, too late.
Mistakes like those have the Phillies stuck in neutral. Girardi is correct in saying that the reasons for the stop-start beginning are myriad. Some are out of his control, from disruptions in the bullpen due to injuries and COVID-19 brushes to five of their eight Opening Day starters missing time. Some are easier to locate, from holes in the rotation to the lineup.
But there continue to be plays that plague them. There’s Dominic Smith Sunday getting a double when Andrew McCutchen turns the wrong way on a fly ball. Zach Eflin fielding a comebacker to the mound with runners on first and third and Smith giving him a play at the plate by straying off third, but Elfin throwing wide to second to get no outs. Hoskins losing track of Villar at third.
When you have a lineup that isn’t producing (23rd in runs) and a rotation trotting out Vince Velasquez every fifth day, the miscues and lapses are turning every game into a coinflip. This is, after all, a team that has lost on an extra-innings wild pitch and won on a tworun passed ball in the last week.
“Some of it are mental lapses, too,” Girardi said. “And that’s something that has to be corrected, too. It will be addressed and it will be worked on, but I think you have to have that passion to have an opportunity to be great.”
There’s been a clubhouse chorus saying that the luck or whatever else will flip eventually, that all will come up heads where for weeks it’s alternated. In a season of dampened spending, it’s unlikely that new talent will arrive, but the belief remains high.
“I feel like we played with fire the whole night,” Eflin said. “Regardless of what happened, our guys battled, put together some great ABs, had some really clutch hits. That’s really all it takes to start a fire, to continue to play like that. Each and every person in the clubhouse wants to win more than anything, and it’s going to catch up to us.
“I keep telling you guys, it’s going to happen, where we’re going to go on a streak. But just to see that fire and that heart down four in the ninth inning against an extremely good closer is extremely promising.”
Passionate as the defense is, this is a team that has gone 80-82, 8181 and 28-32 over the last two years. FanGraphs’ ZiPS projections forecast the Phillies to go 7983 this year. It’s a league where all but five teams are within four games of a division lead. So middling baseball will continue to pay off.
It’s just a matter of if that fire Girardi is so proud of can change the Phillies from toggling between good and bad to between good and great.
“The first thing you want is that desire and passion to be great,” Girardi said, “because I don’t think you could ever get to that point if you don’t have that.”