I saw a tweet on Twitter this morning from a local sports station talking about how the Phillies woes may be the fault of manager Joe Girardi. Does this sound remotely familiar with anyone? Isn’t this the exact same treatment as former manager, Gabe Kapler received. Granted Kapler didn’t have any Major League manager experience. Take a look at his team now. Is it coincidence that the San Francisco Giants are doing much better or is it him?
Bottom line, it’s the players on the field, especially in the case of this year’s Phillies team. The bullpen has been horrible, they hovered around near the .500 level for most of the early part of the season, but now their weaknesses have been exposed in greater detail. Yes, we added a couple of arms to the bullpen in the preseason, but those arms haven’t panned out, there is no lead that is safe with this bullpen.
I was watching the line score last night and the Phils had a lead that they should have been able to keep. But, no lead is safe with them as I said previously. It doesn’t seem to matter who they are bringing out of the mound, they all are getting hit.
What can be done to change this? True the Phillies did somehow manage to win the ballgame last night with the runner at 2nd base.. why don’t they just flip a coin instead? That would save a lot more time, of by the way – are ticket prices going down because the MLB seems to want to shorten game times and to me, this is the most stupid of the not so ‘new’ rules that this organization has put in place.
Ok, celebrate that win a little (after all it is July 4th weekend), because this afternoon at 4:05 PM, the Phils take on the 7-2 Yu Darvish – he’s the ace on the Padres, and the Padres have had a full night’s sleep. The Friars bring in their 49-35 record into today’s game, the Phillies with the win last night are struggling again to get to .500 again, with Zach Eflin on the mound the team brings in a 38-41 record.
