Phillies Yankees Series Recap - Underwhelming
After taking 3 out of 4 games from the Marlins right out of the break, the Phillies made a quick road trip to the Bronx for a 2 game series against the 27 time world champion New York Yankees.... and well it did not go as planned, to say the least. The Phillies dropped game one by a score of 6-4 and dropped game two by a score of 6-5 in 10 innings. The story of these two games for the Phillies were missed opportunities offensively and sloppy play defensively, but there were a decent amount of positives to take from this series as well so with that let's break both games down real quick.
Game 1 saw this team lose by a score of 6-4. The loss went to Aaron Nola who to say the least has not been the Aaron Nola we know and expect through 19 starts. Nola is posting a 6-6 record in 106.2 innings with an era at 4.64 and a WHIP at 1.23 to go along with 131 strikeouts. To put it lightly Aaron Nola's personal era is the exact sam.e as the Phillies combined bullpen era this season which is on pace for historically bad numbers this year. He needs to be better. I didn't think he pitched terrible on Tuesday, unfortunate that Gardner's home run per statcast only would have left the ballpark in Yankee Stadium and got unlucky having to try to get extra outs after a throwing error by Didi which would have been an inning ending double play but that's no excuse...for a so called "ace" you need better against a weakened Yankees lineup. Phillies left 11 on base in this game as well.
Game 2 was not much different than game 1 losing instead of 6-4, they lost 6-5 instead in 10 innings. Spencer Howard threw the ball real well in this ball game going 3 innings, allowing one hit, walking one, punching out two on 42 pitches, 26 of them for strikes. I did not like the move of Girardi going to Sanchez in the 4th after Howard was in a groove and it proved to not work with giving up 2 runs on 3 hits in the 4th putting the Yankees back in the game. Cristopher Sanchez and Hector Neris were horrible out of the pen in this game giving up 5 runs combined but are we really shocked about that by now? The Phillies left 12 on base in this game making it 23 for the series which is horrible in any series but especially in a two game set. This is an issue that needs to be addressed and fast if this team is going to contend.
These next 8 games will define the rest of this season and will tell Dombrowski if the Phillies should buy or sell. They have 4 this weekend at home vs Atlanta and 4 next week vs Washington before the deadline so this team needs to take at least 5 of these games if they want a shot at buying come July 30th. I would love to see this team get out hot and take at least the first two games vs Atlanta to kick off this 8 game home stand. So will the Phillies buy or sell? We just have to wait and see. Game 1 vs ATL starts tonight with Matt Moore starting for the Phillies and Charlie Morton going for the Braves. Lets see what happens folks.