Japanese Starters and Knuckleballers Prove to be Phillies Achilles' Heal

My Fellow Phans,

I have read that Charlie Manuel reportedly held a brief team meeting after their latest shutout loss to their division rival New York Mets. Jayson Werth has gone and shaved off some of his beard. Anything at this point is being attempted to end the Phillies offense woes. Will it work? I guess we will see tonight. How bad is it exactly for the Phillies? Well, they have scored in 1 inning out of the last 37! I guess we should be lucky that Tim Wakefield didn’t pitch that 9^th inning on Sunday or this slump may be even worse than it is.

This recent losing streak has brought my attention to several factors. Firstly, I think the Phillies have two glaring weaknesses; Japanese pitchers and Knuckleballers. In Saturday’s one-hit loss, they lost to a pitcher from Japan. Sunday and Tuesdays losses have been at the hands of knuckleballers and the recent loss was at the hands of another Japanese Starter. Think I’m crazy? Argue that any pitcher can give us trouble the way we are swinging the bats at the moment? Well that may be true, but the Phillies have a history of struggling against Japanese born pitchers. Remember Hideo Nomo? He threw a career 3.92 ERA against the Phillies. We only hit in the 240s against him!

Nomo is not the worst offender. Does anyone remember Tomo Ohka? You may not, but I do. He was an average pitcher from Japan (4.26 career ERA) who dominated the Phillies start in and start out. A big portion of his major league career was played with the old Expos so he had plenty of chances to face the Phillies. In his career, Ohka went just 5-3 against the Phillies, but his career ERA in that time was a pretty good 2.30. In 2002 alone, he went 4-0 against the Phillies with a sparkling 0.96 ERA. Think Japanese born players are not a trouble for us? Well think again.

As for the knuckleballers; who doesn’t have trouble with them? There is a reason that the pitch is still used – it gets hitter out. The Phillies have faced the only two knuckleballers in baseball in back to back days. Here’s to moving on to normal pitching once again since, as the Phillies have learned for sure in these past two days, the knuckleball is not your average pitch.

Tonight we face a non-Japanese pitcher who doesn’t feature a knuckleballer. Maybe if the cosmos align the right way, we will score a run or two against him; that’s all Phillies fans want right now; to see some sort of offensive life in this struggling team.

Until we meet again Phillies Fans; Happy Readings and Go Phillies!!