Girardi to ‘think about’ Neris as closer
PHILADELPHIA >> It’s not like Hector Neris didn’t have his chances this season to keep his closer’s role. Neris, who blew his third save in his last five tries Wednesday to hand the Washington Nationals a 13-12 victory at Citizens Bank Park, had been the subject of fan and media scrutiny in recent weeks, but had received manager Joe Girardi’s support all along.
That support seem to waver Wednesday after this back-andforth, frustrating Phillies experience.
Asked yet again about Neris as the closer after yet another blown save, Girardi said, “I’ll take an off day and think about it.
“I think that’s what you do,” Girardi added. “You’re always re-evaluating. You take an off day and look at it. Today was not a good day for most people, so I think the only guy that came in and got through a clean inning was (Jose) Alvarado. And our bullpen was great yesterday, but today was a bad day and we need to be better.”
The path to getting better, of course, often starts with change.
Neris had been OK in his last two spot outings, one each against the Giants and Dodgers. But he’d given up four earned runs in the prior two, and this time, in a game in which the Phillies had already blown two leads, it was vital for him to hold a one-run lead in the ninth in
ning.
He blew it pretty quickly. Two ground singles and a sacrifice bunt put runners in scoring position with one out, then Starlin Castro’s liner that just cleared the outstretched glove of shifted Rhys Hoskins brought home the tying and go-ahead runs.
Add it all up and Girardi concluded: “Really frustrating.”
“What killed us was, I think we walked seven guys in those two innings,” said Girardi, referring to a five-run Nationals fifth and a six-run Nationals sixth innings, “and maybe six or maybe seven of them scored.
“We had leads. We gave them away by issuing so many bases on balls and you just can’t do that.”
Neris’ trashed lead loomed largest, of course.
“It’s a bad day. It’s a game lost,” Neris said. “I just have to focus on what I need to do to help the team win . ... It’s the game. It’s the season, it’s the baseball. You have to be focused on what you have to do and don’t think about the bad moments.
“So I don’t think about the last five games. Just stay focused and repeat what I do good.”
When the subject of Girardi’s pending decision was raised, Neris added, “I’ll be behind the manager. I want to support the team, and if he thinks he has to move me right now, I know Joe will have me still working to help the team. It doesn’t matter when I pitch, I just want to help the team.”
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Neris wasn’t the only one not helping. The bullpen that didn’t allow a run in six innings the night before (which didn’t help the club win, either) combined to allow nine earned runs in 4 innings Wednesday.
Starter Vince Velasquez had been cruising through four innings and entered the fifth with a 5-0 lead. Naturally he walked the first two batters, gave up a run-scoring double to Castro, then had the misfortune of having backup Brad Miller try to catch a pop over his shoulder.
Geez, that was ugly. For some reason it was ruled a hit and was another RBI. Velasquez did strike out Gerardo Parra but it took him nine pitches to do so to push his count to 86. So Girardi decided to make a move for hardthrowing reliever Archie Bradley.
Oops.
“We looked at (Velasquez’s) walks, we looked at the (pitch) count he was getting into ... he was not locating anymore,” Girardi said of Velasquez. “We brought in Archie, who’s been pretty good in those situations when we bring him in to get a big out, and he hung a breaking ball.”
Bang, game-tying three-run homer by Kyle Schwarber.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Bradley’s bullpen successors gave up six runs the next inning.
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Better news on this day was that Girardi didn’t get into a staring contest with any pitcher because he didn’t call for any extra illegal substance checks by umps. He had done so the night before, causing a bit of a rift with Max Scherzer, and moving Nats general manager Mike Rizzo to rip Girardi on a radio talk show earlier in the day.
Said Rizzo: “It’s embarrassing for Girardi. It’s embarrassing for the Phillies. It’s embarrassing for baseball.”
Well, two out of three ain’t bad.
After all, when was the last time Big Baseball was embarrassed by anything?
But Bryce Harper, for one, didn’t like what he saw Tuesday.
“I think that’s just how it’s going to be right now,” Harper said of new rules of umps checking pitchers and their, well, accessories for traces of sticky stuff. “I think we need to take it out of the umpire’s hands. Give it to somebody outside that world, kind of like a referee outside the ring, where they check them or viceversa. We just need to figure out what works for both sides and go from there.”