The Phillies ended the month of May with a performance that screamed mayday, mayday, mayday.
They seemingly overslept for a 2 p.m. matinee with the Cincinnati Reds on Monday and ended up with a humiliating 11-1 loss on the banks of the Ohio River.
Vince Velasquez’ magic-carpet ride ended with a thud as he was tagged for six runs in three innings and the offense — 0 for 9 with runners in scoring position, 10 men left on base — was as lifeless as driftwood as the Phillies lost for the third straight day to fall to 2-5 on the road trip and 10-19 on the road overall.
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The gory numbers are starting to stack up for this team as it heads into a treacherous month of June that features 14 games against NL East opponents and a West Coast trip that will include stops in Los Angeles and San Francisco, where the Dodgers and Giants are a combined 27 games over .500.
The Phillies have lost nine of their last 12 ballgames and have ended May a season-high four games under .500 at 25-29.
Back on May 7, the Phillies ran a season-best winning streak to five games and were a game up in first place in the division. Since then, they are 7-14 and have fallen 4½ games back.
“It’s not early. It’s not,” manager Joe Girardi said after Monday’s loss. “We need to turn it around. And I know we’re missing some guys, but other teams are missing guys, too. We just need to play better. We need to do all three facets of the game better. If not, we’re putting ourselves in a tough spot.”
MLB
The Phillies are still without Bryce Harper and Didi Gregorius, both of whom are on the injured list. It’s possible that both could be back on the next homestand, which begins on Friday night, however there is no official timetable. Harper seems to be ahead of Gregorius.
The Phils have scored just 13 runs in the last six games.
Do the math. Not good.
“Guys are frustrated, no doubt about it,” Girardi said. “But you’ve got to be able to clear your head each at-bat, understand what the situation is, what they’re trying to do to you as a pitcher, where the defense is, and you have to find ways to get hits, and right now we’re struggling to do that. We’re struggling to score runs.”
There are no upgrades at Triple A.
“Every day, I worry about just managing the guys in that room," Girardi said. “I’m not really one who, in a sense, is in charge of the roster. That’s not my job. My job is to manage the guys in the room and that’s what I focus on. I don’t say, ‘What if?’ There’s a lot of times, like around the trade deadline, when you can say, ‘What if we get this guy?’ It doesn’t do me any good. I’ve got to manage the guys in the room and we’ll continue to do that.”
Does Girardi expect this group to hit?
“I do,” he said. “But there’s some guys really scuffling and they have to get going, and we’ve got to get some people back and see if we can put together a good lineup that will score some runs.”
Velasquez, who opened the season as a long man in the bullpen, had given the Phillies a nice lift at the problematic back end of the rotation. In four starts this month, he had allowed just three runs in 23 innings. He pitched six shutout innings in Miami earlier in the trip.
But Velasquez reverted to his old inconsistent ways in this start. He allowed two-run homers in the second and third innings as the Phillies fell behind early.
“Walks hurt him,” Girardi said. “He lost command. This is a team that hits the ball out of the ballpark and we didn’t keep it in the ballpark today and that was a problem. His location wasn’t very good today.”
Max Schrock belted a two-run homer in the second and Kyle Farmer added one in the third inning. Schrock and Farmer combined for six hits and eight RBIs.
Even during his success earlier in the month, Velasquez had trouble limiting the walks. The problem continued in this start. He walked three batters in the second inning and all of them hurt. One preceded Schrock’s homer and one turned into a run when Tyler Naquin stroked a two-run single after Velasquez had extended the inning with a two-out walk.
Cincinnati starter Wade Miley held the Phillies to a run over six innings. He allowed five baserunners in the first two innings, but the Phillies got nothing in those frames.
“When a team has a chance to score and it doesn’t, I always feel like it gives the other team momentum and they kind of built on it and kept scoring, and we weren’t able to shut them down,” Girardi said.
Aaron Nola will try to do so on Tuesday night.
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