Phils Fans Gritting Their Teeth (Photo by yourFAVORITEmartian at Flickr)

Phils fans are gritting their teeth after the Phillies completed a miserable series against the Dodgers today. The loss ended in the Dodgers’ first 4-game sweep of the Phils in almost 7 decades. Cole Hamels, our ace for this year, fell to 8 and 3 after giving up a lead.

Another Injury

Adding to the list of injuries, Freddy Galvis is now on the 15-day DL, and even though that might not sound horrible in terms of offense, he was picking things up and at least gave us some stable defense.

Phillies Are the Worst After 7

The Phillies might not have the worst overall record in the National League, but we now are a league-worst 0 and 23 when trailing after 7 innings, . That is beyond dismal. Not a single late-game come back. No wonder that the Phillies rank 22nd in the National League in leaving runners on base, at a current average of 7.16 per game.

Just a few minutes ago, while writing this post, Robert Ellis commented on 94.1 WIP commented that in previous seasons, “You always felt that we were in it.” I agree. The Fightin’ Phils always had a fighting chance. But now, we get behind even a run in the middle of the game, and it’s hard to feel confident or even hopeful that we can come back.

Getting on Base vs. Getting Them Home

On the positive side, we are getting people on base, but we are not stringing hits together and we’re not getting that double when we need one. Today, for instance, the Phillies had 10 hits, but they were all singles. That’s not going to win us many ball games, especially against teams that do have a good (or even below average) offense.

Horrible at Home

Adding to the horrendous 0 and 23 stat (sorry, I just have to write it again to believe it), the Phillies are 12 and 19 at home this year and have continued their slide in 1-run games (4 and 10 with their loss yesterday). This stat led Charlie Manuel to lament that the Phillies just don’t scare anyone.

“We don’t scare nobody. We used to have swagger. We used to scare people.”

Darren Dalton echoed this opinion on Talking Baseball with Dutch today, and who can disagree with them.

Sure, Charlie has made his mistakes, but what can you do when the team has been devastated by injuries and the remaining players in the line up simply don’t perform. Rollins, Victorino, and even my favorite Phil Hunter Pence have all struggled mightily at the plate.  We really need some good outings against Baltimore and Minnesota before we run into Toronto’s offense or we risk really falling deep into the basement.