Nola, Neris throw one astray
PHILADELPHIA » It was just about the perfect metaphor for the thoroughly forgettable season the Phillies are almost finished stumbling through.
Aaron Nola had started the fifth inning against the Colorado Rockies Sunday with his 200th strikeout of the season, the third time he’s reached that round number of pitching achievement. Then came a single, then a fly ball that Bryce Harper, unable to budget enough from his $313 million in earnings for a decent pair of shades, lost in the sun for a little league single.
Nola, that one-time ace of Phillies teams who won nothing, had one foot out of the jam. He worked eight-hitter Garrett Hampson down 0-2, a pinch-hitter looming on deck. What followed was a glimpse at everything Nola is not as a pitcher, and everything the 2021 Phillies are not as a team.
And it would have been an oddity had another Phillie not suffered the same fate to the same batter two innings later.
Two homers by Hampson, both on 0-2 pitches from Nola then
Hector Neris, were enough to see the Rockies to a 5-4 win, taking three of four from a Phillies team supposedly battling for a playoff spot.
“I just made a bad pitch to Hampson there,” Nola said. “Three curveballs, the last one hung. I should’ve tried to throw it 50 feet. But he put a good swing on it, as he should’ve.”
That’s two 0-2 homers, from the eight-hitter lighting up the hitting charts at .238, on a team all-but-eliminated from playoff contention playing on the road, with a starting pitcher in his second appearance above Double-A. Miss anything?
“It’s bad execution,” manager Joe Girardi said. “… He got ahead with breaking balls. It’s just bad execution. And it has to get better, or this is what happens.”
The inability to finish off batters, games, a division chase: Sunday’s matinee provided it all, like a Russian nesting doll of unremitting mediocrity.
The loss drops the Phillies to 72-71, and 4½ games back of Atlanta in the National League East. They are three games (and two teams) behind San Diego for the second Wild Card spot.
The two homers make 16 surrendered by Phillies pitching on 0-2 counts this season. Boston entered Sunday leading baseball in that category with 15. (On the other side of the spectrum, the Pittsburgh Pirates, hardly exemplars of baseball excellence, have allowed three 0-2 home runs all year).
Only six teams have allowed more two-strike homers than the 68 served up by the Phillies; of the six, only Toronto is above fourth place in their division. Colorado had hit just six 0-2 homers in 2021.
It’s the 10th career 0-2
home run Nola has allowed, three of them this season.
“We’re not executing our pitches when it comes to 0-2 counts,” said J.T. Realmuto, the catcher calling so many of said pitches. “I think we have the least amount of wasted pitches 0-2, which means we’re throwing more pitches in the strike zone 0-2 than anyone in baseball. With today’s hitters, there’s a lot of chasing in the game. … I think our guys have the right intent. Obviously they’re not trying
to throw the ball in the middle of the plate in an 0-2 count; we’re just not doing a very good job of executing those counts, and it’s something we need to work on.”
Nola didn’t last the sixth inning again, something he’s done only three times in 11 starts since a mid-July stint on the COVID-19-related injured list. He’s got a 4.67 ERA in those 11 starts. His career ERA in September and October, not that he wants to talk about it, is 4.55, his second highest for
any month.
At least on Sunday he gave his struggling offense a shot in the arm with an RBI single in the fourth inning.
Hampson, to his credit, capitalized on mistakes in the third multi-homer game of the light-hitting outfielder’s career. After getting him to wave at two straight curves, Nola went to the well one too many times, hanging one that Hampson golfed 376 feet into left in the fourth.
Any lesson conveyed by
pitching coach Caleb Cotham lasted two innings. After an infield single, Neris got Hampson to 0-2 before catching the heart of the plate with his relentlessly average fastball. Hampson didn’t get all of it, but he cajoled it into the flower boxes, behind the Yuengling sign and the outstretched glove of Matt Joyce for his 11th homer. Lest you think Hampson some two-strike savant, he was a career .129 hitter with zero career home runs on 0-2 counts before Sunday. He was hitting .216 off righties this season with four home runs in 296 plate appearances. Make that now six in 300.
And make it one more perplexing entry into the tome of 2021 Phillies disappointments.
“When you’ve got a chance to expand the zone, you’ve got to be able to expand the zone,” Girardi said. “That’s where (Nola) struggled, I think. And his pitch count was down. It seems like he gets beat on a lot of breaking balls where he makes mistakes.” NOTES » It’s now 25 solo home runs for Harper this year, out of 32 blasts by the MVP candidate. His solo job in the top of the eighth got the Phillies to within 5-4. … Realmuto went 3-for-4 with an RBI and two runs scored, the second to tie the game at 3 in the sixth when he singled, stole a base and scored on a wild pitch. Realmuto had been hitting .206 in his previous 29 outings. … Joyce was signed to supply pop off the bench against righties. So naturally, after Freddy Galvis led off the ninth with a single, Joyce was lifted from the game against righty closer Carlos Estevez so Ronald Torreyes could sacrifice. Joyce had entered in the sixth for Luke Vierling. In his first atbat since June 18, Joyce flew out gently to center. … Ryan Feltner gave up six earned runs and three homers, including one on his first bigleague pitch, in his Rockies debut last Sunday. In start No. 2, the righty promoted straight from Double-A recorded 11 outs, allowing just four hits and two earned runs. … The Phillies finish the season 13-19 against the NL West, including 2-5 against the Rockies. … The Phillies are off Monday before the Chicago Cubs visit for a three-game set. Of the Phillies’ six remaining series, five are against teams outside the playoffs, the outlier being a three-game penultimate set in Atlanta.