Don’t expect the Phillies’ big bats to stay quiet | Extra Innings

It is possible to win them all, but not in baseball. At least not professional baseball. And so the Phillies finally suffered an inevitable loss, falling by 8-4 to the New York Mets on Tuesday night at Citizens Bank Park.

We also saw the first cracks in the bullpen, as the duo of Vince Velasquez and David Hale combined to allow six runs on two hits and six walks in 3 1/3 innings. When Velasquez entered, the Phillies trailed only 2-1 after getting five solid innings from Chase Anderson in his Phillies debut.

Velasquez’s outing was unique. He faced eight batters and was charged with four runs, but never allowed the baseball to be put into play. During his time on the mound, he walked four and struck out four. Velasquez struck out the heart of the Mets’ order — Michael Conforto, Pete Alonso and Domonic Smith — in the sixth inning before imploding in the seventh.

“It’s hard to explain,” manager Joe Girardi said. “He went through the middle of their order, and I think he struck out the side.”

After getting ahead in the count, 1-2, to Luis Guillorme in the seventh, he walked the Mets’ third baseman, but rebounded to strike out Jeff McNeil, another one of New York’s elite hitters. And then he issued three straight walks to force in a run and walked off the mound to boos from the crowd of 10,752.

After inducing a game-altering double play in Monday night’s win over the Mets, reliever Brandon Kintzler couldn’t put out the fire for a second straight night, and by the middle of the seventh, the Phillies were down by 6-1 and well on their way to their first loss.

Hale allowed a two-run homer to Alonso that padded New York’s lead to 8-2 in the ninth.

The Phillies will try to win the series with Aaron Nola on the mound this afternoon at 4:05.

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— Bob Brookover (extrainnings@inquirer.com)

» READ MORE: Brandon Kintzler will have major role in Phillies’ bullpen, regardless of the inning

If you listed the reasons that the Phillies got off to a 4-0 start before losing Tuesday against the Mets, the offense might have been fourth, behind starting pitching, the bullpen and the defense.

There have been some timely hits — Jean Segura’s walk-off single in the season opener and Alec Bohm’s tie-breaking single in the eighth inning Sunday against the Braves — and Rhys Hoskins is off to a terrific start, hitting .368 (7-for-19) with four doubles, three RBIs and a .947 OPS.

Overall, however, the Phillies’ lineup, which is expected to be the team’s greatest strength, is off to a so-so start. Girardi is unconcerned at this early stage of the season.

“I don’t have a problem with the quality of the at-bats,” Girardi said after Tuesday’s loss to the Mets. “The quality of the at-bats are pretty good. I don’t see us chasing a whole bunch. It’s early in the year. Offenses go through this. We’ve faced some pretty good pitching when you look at the starters that we’ve run into these first five games. It’s probably a combination of those two things.”

Girardi is right about the quality of pitching the Phillies have faced. They went up against Atlanta’s top three starters in Max Fried, Charlie Morton and Ian Anderson in their opening series and, thanks to their own quality pitching, they needed only nine runs to pull off a three-game sweep.

They should have been facing the bottom of the Mets’ rotation in their second series, but instead had to go up against Jacob deGrom, the ace of all aces, and Marcus Stroman to open the series after New York’s scheduled season-opening series in Washington was postponed because of the Nationals’ COVID-19 outbreak.

The Phillies head into the series finale with the Mets batting .259 as a team, which is actually tied for eighth in baseball with the Minnesota Twins. They also have a .344 on-base percentage, tied for 10th with the New York Yankees.

But the Phils have only two home runs — by Andrew Knapp and Didi Gregorius — and that lack of power has them ranked 23rd with a .346 slugging percentage and 13th with a .690 OPS.

The Phillies have scored 18 runs for a 3.6 average, which ranks 23rd in baseball. All you need to do to understand that it’s way too early to worry about the offense is look at some of the other teams that have struggled. The Toronto Blue Jays, for example, are averaging only 3.8 runs and they’re a good bet to be averaging more than 5 before the season is over. And the Braves, after being shut down by the Phillies, are averaging only 2 runs, and they are also likely to be among the top offensive teams in the game before the season is over.

A microcosm of Vince Velasquez’s career with the Phillies was on full display in just 1 1/3 innings during his relief appearance Tuesday night against the New York Mets, and that was not a good thing for his team.

The Phillies made a big bench investment when they paid free agent Brad Miller $3.5 million this offseason, and it paid off when he started the team’s game-winning rally Monday night against the Mets.

Columnist Marcus Hayes explains why Bryce Harper and this Phillies team will be “predictably productive.”

Here’s a look at the Phillies’ first loss through the lens of Inquirer photographer Charles Fox.

» READ MORE: Jacob deGrom’s early exit gave the Phillies a fighting chance for a comeback | Bob Brookover

Today: Aaron Nola goes against the Mets’ David Peterson in series finale, 4:05 p.m.

Tomorrow: The Phillies are off.

Friday: Georgia native Zack Wheeler faces Atlanta in the Braves’ home opener, 7:20 p.m.

Saturday: Zach Eflin goes against the Braves for a second time, 7:20 p.m.

Sunday: Matt Morris faces Atlanta in series finale on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball, 7:08 p.m.

» READ MORE: The Phillies might not go undefeated, but they are much better than the last time they started 4-0 | David Murphy

Vince Velasquez’s very odd relief appearance Tuesday night took me back to the very forgettable 1997 Phillies season and a similarly strange performance by Scott Ruffcorn in Atlanta. Velasquez, as we mentioned above, faced eight batters without allowing a ball into play. He walked four, struck out four, and was charged with four runs. You might never see that pitching line again.

Ruffcorn, on June 29, 1997, started his third game for the Phillies and was working on a no-hitter against the Atlanta Braves at Turner Field when rookie manager Terry Francona emerged from the dugout and removed him from the game. It was not a bad managerial decision, either.

Despite not allowing a hit, Ruffcorn had walked four batters, hit two others, and thrown two wild pitches. He had walked 10 in 4 1/3 innings during his previous start.

“When I went out to the mound, I told [Ruffcorn] I’d never done this before,” Francona said. “But I just thought he was losing it. It was his best outing so far, and I wanted to get him out of there [while he still had a chance for his first major-league victory]. I was also trying to win the game, so it was in the best interest of everyone that I got him out of there.”

Ruffcorn left with the bases loaded and a 1-0 lead, but reliever Ron Blazier surrendered an RBI single to Mark Lemke and a grand slam to Keith Lockhart and the Phillies eventually lost the game, 6-5. Ruffcorn, a first-round pick by the Chicago White Sox in 1991, never did get a big-league victory. He appeared in 52 games and was 0-14 with an 8.57 ERA.

Ruffcorn said he understood why Francona pulled him from the game.

“The no-hitter wasn’t even a concern,” he said. “With all the walks and everything, it didn’t feel much like a no-hitter.”

Send questions by email or on Twitter @brookob.

Question: Yeah I’m glad the Phillies won (in 10 innings on opening day) and I’m glad neither team wasted their bullpens when it was so cold. but baseball STILL has to figure out how to speed up the pace. Way too slow STILL!!!!!.2 and a half hours is my limit..and I’m old and retired. What can they do? — Bill M., via email

Answer: Unlike the NFL, NBA and NHL, baseball is never going to be able to completely control the time it takes to play a game, but commissioner Rob Manfred is trying and the extra-inning rule should prevent some of the long games we’ve seen in the past, much to the chagrin of many. I’d like to see a 20-second pitch clock. Other than extra commercial time, I think that is the biggest difference in the length of games today and 30 years ago.

Make the pitcher throw the baseball in 20 seconds and make the batter stay in the box, and games will move faster. The pitchers and the hitters might hate it at first, but they will adjust, especially if they are penalized a called ball or called strike if they are responsible for a delay in the game. The fielders will love it because they have always loved pitchers who work quick. And the fans will benefit most. We might never see games being played in less than 2 hours again, but it’s reasonable to expect most games to be played in less than 3 hours.