If you’re wondering what a poor, uncompetitive starting pitching performance does to a team’s morale, find a tape of the third inning of the Phillies’ latest bleep show Friday night.
Dominic Smith of the Atlanta Braves clubbed a solo home run to put his team ahead, 7-0. As he rounded the bases, Phillies infielders Edmundo Sosa, Trea Turner and Alec Bohm all removed their gloves, holding them in their throwing hands, lowered their heads and stared at the dirt in front of them.
The sellout crowd of 43,048 provided the soundtrack to it all with a cascade of boos directed at the man on the mound, Taijuan Walker.
In truth, the offense deserved some of those boos, too, but Walker was the primary target in the early innings.
Unable to recover from the early deficit, the Phillies ended up with a 9-0 loss in the opener of a three-game series against NL East rival Braves. Atlanta has opened the season at 13-7 and sits in first place in the division, 4 ½ games ahead of the slooooow-starting Phils, who have lost three in a row and seven of their last nine to slip to 8-11. Three of the Phillies’ last seven losses have been by shutouts. They are 5-8 at Citizens Bank Park, a place they dominated in last season. They have been outscored, 30-6, in their last three games, all home losses.
“It’s frustrating,” manager Rob Thomson said. “We’re not used to doing that, especially in this ballpark. We’ve got to turn this thing around some way somehow.
“The players are giving effort. They’re preparing. They’re working hard. We’ve just got to put some things together. We’ve got to pitch better, have better at-bats, play better defense.”
Kyle Schwarber, team leader and the man often appointed to face the music, said, “We’re going to have to fight through this. It’s part of the journey of a season. You can start off blazing hot or start off scuffling. We have to keep finding ways to adjust.”
The early innings offered a grim contrast between the Phillies and Braves.
The Braves’ first three hitters of the game all reached base (on two walks and a single) against Walker and two of them eventually scored on a ground out by Ozzie Albies and an infield hit by Mike Yastrzemski that knocked Walker’s glove off.
While the Braves made the most of their opportunities and manufactured a couple of runs in the first, the Phillies stumbled against lefty Martin Perez in the bottom of the inning. They loaded the bases with one out on a hit batsman, a base hit and a walk but came away with nothing when Edmundo Sosa flailed at a pitch out of the strike zone and J.T. Realmuto flied to left.
The Braves scored four times, three on a homer by Austin Riley, in the second and put up a zero in the bottom of the inning when right fielder Ronald Acuna made a brilliant catch on a potential gapper by Trea Turner.
After Smith’s homer in the top of the third, the Phillies got a triple from Harper and a walk from Adolis Garcia to put runners on the corners with no outs in the bottom of the inning. The threat ended quietly with a Sosa pop up and a Realmuto fly ball.
For the night, the Phillies had just six hits. They were 0 or 4 with runners in scoring position and left 11 men on base. They are 2-7 against lefty starters, hitting .179 overall against lefties.
Four of the Braves’ 12 hits were home runs.
“I thought the energy level was still there tonight all the way through,” Thomson said. “We hit some balls hard but didn’t have much to show for it. On the pitching side, four walks and four home runs — that’s tough to come back from.”
Even if the Phillies had cashed in on some of their early opportunities, it might not have gotten them out of the early hole dug by Walker.
The right-hander was tagged for seven hits and seven runs in four innings. He walked three and gave up two homers. He would have been out of the game sooner but manager Rob Thomson clearly did not want to blow out his bullpen in the first game of a series, especially when his team will play nine more games before its next off day.
Walker is holding down a spot in the rotation until Zack Wheeler returns. In four starts, Walker has allowed 20 runs in 18 2/3 innings. His ERA is a whopping 9.16 and the Phils have lost in three of his starts. Of the 20 runs he’s allowed, 11 have come in the first inning. The Phillies tried tweaking his warmup routine before Friday night’s start. He threw more pitches at a higher intensity in the bullpen. It didn’t work.
“My goal is to give the team the best chance to win and I haven’t done that,” Walker said. “Having the offense down 7-0 — it’s not easy to ask them to climb back in. That’s just not doing my part there, not giving them a chance.”
Walker is in the fourth and final year of a $72 million contract that has not paid nearly enough dividend. He is 24-24 with a 5.16 ERA in his time with the club. Even when Wheeler returns, Walker’s spot on the roster is likely assured by the Phillies’ lack of starting pitching depth.
Wheeler is scheduled to make his final minor-league rehab start on Sunday. He could be back in the rotation by next weekend in Atlanta. His return will push Walker out of the rotation. But, the question remains: Can the Phillies afford to send Walker to the mound one more time in the interim? His turn is scheduled to come up again Wednesday in Wrigley Field. It’s bad enough to have an ERA over 9 and not give your team a chance to win. It’s even worse when your team looks so beaten and dejected behind you, as the Phillies’ infield did after Smith’s third inning homer.
Thomson was asked if Walker would go to the mound for his next turn.
“As of now, yeah,” the manager said.
Then he added, “We haven’t discussed anything else.”
Stay tuned.