Categories: 2010 Game RecapsPosts

Phillies’ Offense Left Behind for Second Straight Night

As I watched the Phillies’ offense do next to nothing for the second straight night in Wednesday’s 4-1 loss to the Chicago Cubs at Citizens Bank Park, all I could think of was Domonic Brown.

No, not because I think they should call him up in order to light a spark under a flagging lineup (c’mon, people, that’s a terrible idea). No, I thought of Brown because of what the two starting pitchers who have iced the Phillies the past two nights have in common: they’re both left-handers (OK, mediocre left-handers, to be specific).

If the Phillies can’t afford to give Jayson Werth the massive payday that surely is coming his way, his logical replacement in right field would be Brown, who was hitting .327 with seven homers and 23 RBIs heading into Wednesday night. Problem is, Brown bats left-handed. So if you assume that Raul Ibanez will be back next season – he is due $11.5 million in the final year of the three-year, $30 million deal he signed in December 2008 — (and while he’s off to a slow start, that’s a pretty safe assumption at this point) the Phillies’ lineup goes from lefty-heavy to lefty-morbidly obese.

As it is, the lineup’s orientation sets it up to be tamed by southpaws such as Tom Gorzelanny and Zach Duke – pitchers who don’t have dominant stuff but who can move the ball around and change speeds. And that’s what happened the past two nights. In 12 2/3 innings against Duke and Gorzelanny, the Phillies mustered one run on nine hits – amazingly, all singles.

In addition to their weakness against lefties, the Phillies’ bats often go quiet right after a game in which they score double-digit runs. Call it a statistical correction, the law of averages or whatever you want, but it’s been an undeniable pattern for the past few seasons – and evident once again, following the Phils’ 12-run outburst against the Pirates on Monday.

Jon Fogg

Jon joined Phillies Nation in April 2010 and is perpetually grateful that the World Wide Web came along, allowing him to write about the team he has followed since, well, as long as he can remember. At his first Phils game, in 1991 against the Pirates at the Vet, Jon watched wide-eyed from one of those plastic, spine-numbing seats as a lanky outfielder named Barry Bonds cracked a two-run homer off Tommy Greene and a game-winning RBI double off Mitch Williams in the ninth. In those halcyon days, he listened to most games on the radio because cable TV didn’t extend out into in the remote swamps of South Jersey. Most days, you’ll find Jon looking for misplaced commas and devising flashy headlines at a newspaper; these days his publication of choice is the Baltimore Sun; he’s also worked at The (Allentown) Morning Call and The Washington Times.