Horrific fourth inning punctuates Phillies’ 16-2 humiliation by Dodgers

There are rough innings and nightmarish innings and innings that test a manager's belief in his team while simultaneously graying his hair.

And then there was whatever the heck happened to the Phillies in the fourth inning Monday night.

It ranked somewhere between a full-scale meltdown and a raging dumpster fire, and everything that occurred before and after in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ 16-2 obliteration of the Sons of Gabe Kapler -- from the “Let’s Go Dodgers!” chants in the first inning, to reliever Yacksel Rios' ejection for hitting a batter with a first-pitch slider after giving up a two-run shot in the eighth, to a position player being asked to record the final four outs -- somehow paled in comparison.

Embarrassing?

"Certainly not encouraging," said Kapler, who declined to give further description either because he was still shocked by what had happened or to spare the censors of his televised postgame debriefing.

Bryce Harper put it just as simply: "We can't play like that."

To add potential injury to the lopsided insult, shortstop Jean Segura injured his left heel in the ninth inning and received treatment after the game, although he didn’t believe it was serious.

The worst affronts committed by the Phillies in their third 14-run loss of the season and their 24th loss overall in the last 39 games:

--Maikel Franco didn't run hard on a bases-loaded groundout that ended the third inning. It marked the second time in the game that they left the bases full against Dodgers starter Clayton Kershaw. Franco might have been dealing with a groin issue, according to Kapler, although he never left the game.

"Before I get into the details of [why Franco didn't run harder]," Kapler said, "I want to talk to him."

--When the Phillies finally recorded the final out of a six-run fourth inning in which the Dodgers scored runs on singles, doubles, a 50-foot tapper that eluded Franco's barehanded attempt to scoop it up, a squeeze play and even a delayed steal of home plate, several players lingered on the field for a few beats as though they lost track of how many outs there were.

"It was a long inning," pitcher Zach Eflin said. "I thought it was three outs and everybody kind of stayed out there. I guess we were kind of just stuck in an inning. It happens in baseball."

But it never ceases to be a bad look.

"I don't know what they knew and didn't know," Kapler said. "I haven't had those conversations yet. That's another thing that's going to take some question-asking."

Never mind that the Dodgers, who boast the best record in baseball (63-33), played until almost 1 a.m. Monday morning in Boston and had to travel into town after that game. Before they touched off their 19-hit, four-homer annihilation, they dismantled the Phillies in that fourth inning.

Regardless of whether it was a lack of execution or focus, it was a stunning collapse, even for a team that has been stuck in a 15-24 downward spiral since May 29 and plunged from 3 1/2 games ahead of the second-place Atlanta Braves to 9 1/2 games behind them. And it made the pro-Dodgers chants and chorus of “Overrated!” that was directed at Harper in his own ballpark seem benign by comparison.

It didn’t have to be that way, though. The Phillies actually had the great Clayton Kershaw on the ropes early in the game, loading the bases in the first and third innings. But they came away with only one run and left the bases filled both times, with Jay Bruce flying out and striking out, both with the bases loaded.

But if the Phillies were humiliated, it didn’t show in their postgame comments. If anything, they expressed confidence that they will emerge from their six-week nosedive and remain firmly in the wild-card hunt.

“It’s no secret -- and I’ve said it plenty of times -- we have to play better, for sure,” Bruce said. “But as poorly as we’ve played, we’re still right there in the wild-card hunt, and you never know what’s going to happen. So we just need to play like we can and play more consistent baseball and see what happens.”

After this latest horror show, Phillies fans may not want to look.

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