Phillies can’t get the big hit and are shut out by the Rockies

Alec Bohm stepped to the plate in the sixth inning Thursday night with a chance to change the Phillies’ early-season narrative.

But before a pitch was thrown, he had a strike against him.

It was that kind of game. Again. And because the boom-or-bust Phillies have only two offensive modes, Bohm’s bases-loaded strikeout, which began with him getting called for a pitch-clock violation, typified their latest flop, a 5-0 whitewash by the lowly Rockies in the opener of a four-game series at Citizens Bank Park.

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So much for getting hot against the Rockies, who came to town dragging an eight-game losing streak. The Phillies were held to six hits, including four singles, and shut out for the third time in six games, with 14- and seven-run outbursts sandwiched in between.

“That’s been kind of the story,” Trea Turner said. “It seems one day we put up 15, the next day we struggle to get there.”

And there isn’t any rhyme or reason. Rockies starter Ryan Feltner entered with an 8.78 ERA in three starts. The Phillies helped make him look like Nolan Ryan.

Feltner retired Bryson Stott, Turner, and Kyle Schwarber on a total of seven pitches in the first inning. The Phillies got only one runner to second base against him in five innings. They didn’t get an extra-base hit until Turner’s leadoff double in the eighth.

And when they loaded the bases in the sixth, they came up empty. After the pitch-clock violation, Bohm swung through a pitch before having his knee buckled by a sweeper from Rockies reliever Justin Lawrence.

“I think we’re having good at-bats,” Turner said. “It’s just kind of relaxing in those situations and letting it happen. Don’t try to do too much. I think it’ll come. We’re putting some good at-bats together.”

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It’s true, actually. Entering the game, the Phillies led the league in hits (192) but ranked only ninth in runs (87). In time, they expect the former to start leading to more of the latter. For now, it means only that they aren’t getting enough hits when it counts.

The result: Through 20 games, the Phillies have scored seven or more runs five times and been held to three runs or less nine times.

Boom or bust.

It wasted a strong start from lefty Matt Strahm, who gave up little more than a first-inning two-run homer to C.J. Cron. The Rockies nursed the lead until the sixth inning when they tacked on three runs against overused Andrew Bellatti.

Already making his 10th appearance in the Phillies’ 20th game, Bellatti gave up two hits and two walks in relief of Strahm. The Rockies rally began on an overturned call at the plate. Phillies left fielder Jake Cave appeared to throw out Ryan McMahon, but the replay showed McMahon slid in safely under J.T. Realmuto’s tag.

Pin this one on the offense, though, which has been nothing less than confounding.

“It’s baseball, you know?” manager Rob Thomson said. “That’s just the way it rolls sometimes. You’d like to have six or seven [runs] every day. That would be the ideal thing. Baseball doesn’t allow you to do that. We just have to come back tomorrow with consistent at-bats and get after these guys.”

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Bohm wasn’t alone in running afoul of the pitch clock. The teams combined for four violations, two apiece.

Rockies leadoff man Jurickson Profar incurred the most notable penalty in the seventh inning. Down in the count against Phillies reliever Connor Brogdon, Profar got called out on strikes when he wasn’t set in the box with eight seconds left on the clock.

Schwarber began his first-inning at-bat with a called strike when he wasn’t ready to hit. Meanwhile, Felter started in a 1-0 count to Bohm in the fifth inning because he didn’t deliver the pitch within 15 seconds.

Strahm threw his usual variety of five distinct pitches but leaned on what he calls his “new slider,” a variation of what used to be more of a curveball. He threw 24 of them, racking up 14 swings and misses en route to a career-high 11 strikeouts.

“It’s worked out well, and it’s playing good,” Strahm said. “Last year I struggled a lot with my curveball getting it below the zone. [Pitching coach Caleb Cotham] approached me with, ‘Hey, I have this idea. Let me see what you think.’ I threw the first one and I was like, ‘Yeah, I like that.’”

Overall, Strahm’s command was much better than last Saturday in Cincinnati, when he fell behind all but one hitter and exited in the third inning with a cut on his thumb.

Stott notched his majors-leading 32nd hit, a one-out single in the third inning.

After hitting in 17 consecutive games, the longest streak to start a season in franchise history, Stott has at least one hit in all but one game. The only Phillies players with more hits through 20 games are Lefty O’Doul (1930), Bernie Friberg (1929), Cy Williams (1923), and Harry Wolverton (1901), all of whom had 33 hits.

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