MVN - Most Valuable Network

Phillies Finally End Losing Streak

The Phillies ended their longest losing streak since July 2006 with a 4-0 win over the Oakland Athletics. During the six-game losing streak, the Phils provided little offense, hitting just .170 while leaving 77 men on base. That’s a whopping average of 13 LOB per game.

Chase Utley hopefully put an end to his uncharacteristic slump, in which he was 1-29, by going 4-5. He was stranded on base several times and thrown out at home by A’s right fielder Ryan Sweeney, so while you won’t see any runs scored or driven in for Utley in the box score, his four hits were crucial to the Phillies pulling this one out.

Kyle Kendrick (7-3) was brilliant, pitching eight shutout innings for the longest outing of his career. He also surrendered a career low five baserunners (four hits, one walk.) The only time the A’s threatened against Kendrick was in the 8th, when they had runners on 1st and 2nd with one out. Kendrick struck out Mark Ellis and fielded a groundball off the bat of Ryan Sweeney to end the inning, and the potential rally. J.C. Romero pitched a scoreless ninth to complete the shutout.

The Phils created several runs for themselves in this game by executing a double-steal in the 1st inning that led to a sac fly, and using the tremendous speed of Shane Victorino to score him from first on a single by Chris Coste. The first inning sac fly was a bang-bang play, as was Sweeney’s throw to the plate that gunned down Utley, but the Phils showed that they will be as aggressive as possible while trying to break out of this rut.

The Phillies still struggled with men on tonight (11 LOB), as this game should have been a blowout. They left Utley on third with one out in the 5th, left men on 1st and 2nd with none out in the 7th, and stranded the bases loaded with no outs in the 8th. The Phils have been a good situational hitting team all season, as evidenced by their .393 batting average with men on 3rd and less than 2 out, but simply have not picked up the timely hit since the first game of the Red Sox series.

Other thoughts:

• Utley’s slump was well chronicled, but nobody has seemed to notice how awful Geoff Jenkins has played lately. Jenkins is 0 for his last 23, and 2-38 over his last twelve games. His average has dropped from .286 to .243 in the process. Jenkins has an extremely low .295 OBP and .385 slugging percentage for the season. It might be time to make Jayson Werth the everyday right fielder. Jenkins may have been an expensive offseason acquisition, but that money wasn’t spent on a guy who would have a lower OPS than Paul Bako midway through the season.
• These next few series are crucial for the Phillies. This losing streak saw their N.L. East lead shrink by several games over the Mets and Braves, but thanks to the poor play of every team in the division, the Phils are still in a pretty good position. After finishing this series with the A’s tomorrow and traveling to Texas for three, the Phils close out the road trip in Atlanta, where they swept the Braves before this skid started. Those three games are followed by a series at home with the Mets. All in all, the next week and a half will be VERY important, as you don’t want to allow the Braves or Mets to get back in this thing or rejuvenate them in any way.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 at 12:24 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.