The "P" On Their Hats Stands for "Painful To Watch"

My Fellow Phans,

After feeling good about the Phillies winning the first two games against the Padres, their losses in their last two games killed any positive feelings that were drawn from those two first games. Let’s face it, Friday night was Halladay once again pitching his behind off and saving our miserable offense like he did during that perfect game. Lidge looked spectacular getting the save in the 9th inning. Saturday, it was all Moyer this time completing the game and saving the disappointing Phillies offense with his stellar performance. Our offense is not coming back; its not even close.

However, these last two games, our starters were not able to make up the atrocious offense that we are putting on the field these days. Blanton was not good on Sunday and really hasn’t had that many impressive performances this season. Our offense was helped by a critical error, but one wonders how many, if any, runs we would have scored if that error had no occurred. The Phillies stranded something like 15 base runners in that game. 15! 15 runners in just 10 innings; that is more than a runner per inning! I am running out of negative adjectives to describe our offense at this point. I’ve used bad, sad, pathetic, horrendous, atrocious, miserable, disgusting, terrible, disappointing, and probably more that I just forgot to list here.

Last night, Hamels started out with 6 no hit innings. As the night went along, the Phillies couldn’t even muster up a single run for the guy. Once he gave up that run in the 7th, we all knew it was over. The better the pitching performance, the worse the Phillies’ offense seems to perform. Hamels was great; we couldn’t have asked more out of him. All we needed were a simple 3 runs, I guess that is too much to ask of our hitting these days. We could have and should have swept this series. The Padres are not a good hitting team. We let them off the hook in those last two games. Oh well, such is the Phillies these days. Kudos to Jayson Werth for blowing two key opportunities in that game. He may be the worst offender of them all this time. Oh and Baez needs to go. There has to be better options in the farm system, free agent market or on the trading block that are better than him. He’s horrible.

I wanted to use a new word for this post, so I turned to my trusty thesaurus to find just the right term. Here’s one you may agree with: painful. Is this offense as painful to watch, listen, follow, and root for me as it is you guys? Every time we get a few runners on base, we strike out or hit into a double play. Don’t believe me? Check out nearly all of Jayson Werth’s at-bats. Chase Utley has done nothing recently; he, out of any Phillie, is too good for this slump business. I’ll throw this idea around again; could Chase be bothered by something that he is not telling us? A hip perhaps… Why not make his get a physical. Ryan Howard seems to get the occasional hit, but still nothing near his potential.

The only hitters getting any sort of offensive swing are Shane Victorino, Placido Polanco and Carlos Ruiz. It doesn’t matter if Victorino and Polanco are getting on base if the middle of our order is specializing in strike outs and double plays. They just sit out there on base as the big RBI guys falter behind them. It truly is painful to watch, isn’t it? Maybe Ruiz needs to hit third so he has some RBI opportunities or at least 6th, I mean Raul Ibanez hasn’t done anything all season, period.

Of course this whole slump dates back to the “Binocular Sign-Stealing” incident in Colorado. Scary to consider? Yes, I think so. Coincidence? I sincerely hope so. But, the long this slump goes on, the more that cloud will hang over this club. I mean it has to be pretty bad when it starts weighing on my mind, ask anyone I know about that. I know we’re not cheaters, right? Right, now I really don’t know. Well, let me rephrase that. I know we’re not. However, the longer this slump goes, the more and more people are talking about that incident and how timely all this is. The only way to prove people wrong is to hit and, right now, nobody is doing that. We couldn’t hit ourselves out of a paper bag right now, and it is painful to watch.

I recently read an article entitled “Manuel baffled by latest Phillies flop”. In it Manuel states, "I don't know what to say, really, if you want to know the truth," Manuel said. "I want to us to come out, have fun, hit balls and score runs like we know we can. It's not happening." Maybe Manuel should get a clu, make some changes in our lineup, bullpen, and or bench. We need something, anything that can help us right now.

Later in the Article: “"This team's not going to quit," leftfielder Raul Ibanez said. "There's too much talent in the room. There's a lot of season left. But obviously it doesn't take the sting out of what's going on right now.
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Excuse me for playing Captain Obvious here Mr. Ibanez, but I watch this team and it appears to me they have quit or at least stopped trying or maybe they’re over-trying. I don’t know, in all my years of baseball, I have never seen anything like this. Even with our “bad” teams of the past who couldn’t hit water if they fell out of a boat never had slumps this past. There is too much talent for this slide to keep going on like this. Although having talent is only as good as wanting and caring enough to use it. Are they at this point? I really don’t know.

I am working on some plans that I think the Phillies should take in order to improve; look for them at a later post.

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