Braves get to Andrew Painter with three-run sixth, hand Phillies 10th straight loss
A new city, same result. The Phillies’ longest losing skid since 1999 had a familiar look: an offense relying on home runs and a starter failing to complete six innings.
ATLANTA — Garrett Stubbs did the talking. Andrew Painter nodded along with his catcher. After the mound meeting in the sixth inning here Friday night, the Phillies had a plan.
For stymying a Braves rally. For stopping The Skid.
Mostly for restoring order to their world, if for one game.
But Painter fell behind in the count and had to come back with a fastball. Pinch-hitting Michael Harris II blistered it to left field. Maybe the ball was catchable, but probably not. In any case, it went for a go-ahead, two-run double.
And that was how the Phillies lost their 10th game in a row.
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For posterity, the score wound up 5-3. The Phillies, in full freefall and with three of president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski’s most trusted scouts parachuting into town for the weekend, have their longest skid since an 11-gamer in September 1999.
That was a bad team that was supposed to be lousy. These Phillies have a $317 million luxury-tax payroll, stars galore ... and a worst-in-the-majors 8-18 record. They’re 10½ games behind the division-leading Braves, and it’s not even May.
And it feels like they may never win again.
“Yeah, it’s not great,” said Bryce Harper, whose fifth-inning leadoff homer opened a 3-2 lead. “Obviously not the spot where we want to be. I’ve said it multiple times. It’s like beating a dead horse, man. Nobody wants to hear it. We’ve just got to win, plain and simple.”
Their next best hope: Zack Wheeler will make his return Saturday night from thoracic outlet syndrome.
After getting swept in Chicago, the Phillies were met here by pro scouts Charley Kerfeld, David Chadd, and Brad Sloan, three of Dombrowski’s top lieutenants. No amount of organizational brainpower is too much in times of crisis.
The Phillies even jumped to a 2-0 lead when Trea Turner went deep in the third inning. Painter gave up a game-tying two-run shot to Ronald Acuña Jr. But Harper laid off two pitches out the zone from Braves starter Grant Holmes, got a belt-high fastball, and muscled it out the other way to left field.
And now, here was Painter, fighting through a jam and one out from completing the sixth inning for the first time in his fourth career start.
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Rob Thomson had lefty reliever Kyle Backhus loosening. But the embattled manager stuck with Painter, even after the Braves sent up lefty-hitting Harris, scratched from the original lineup because of quadriceps tightness.
“To me, he was still throwing the ball good,” Thomson said. “He’s got to learn to get through that. And he will.”
It was a show of confidence in a prized 23-year-old rookie, a move most managers make in April to pay dividends in August and September.
But for a team on a 10-game slide, nothing works out.
Stubbs’ message before Harris’ at-bat: Be aggressive.
“After the Acuña home run, there was kind of a switch that flipped, and I got really competitive and aggressive in the zone,” Painter siad. “It was kind of, ‘Keep the foot on the pedal.’ But I just fell behind.”
Indeed, Painter threw a curveball in the dirt and a fastball far outside. Painter had to come back with a heater, and Harris was waiting for it. Although it was low in the zone, Harris hit it over left fielder Brandon Marsh’s outstretched glove.
“I always think I have [a chance], but we were shaded a couple of steps,” Marsh said. “Maybe tip your cap. I had a good bead on it. Just a little too far over the glove. Definitely it’s a ball I think that I need to have, especially in a situation like that, but I didn’t get it and we’ve got to move on.”
Said Painter: “I think it was 105 [mph] off the bat. If it’s 105, I’m not really expecting the ball to be caught. ... If I make that pitch [in an] 0-0 [count], it’s probably a lot different. Just falling behind there puts us in a hole.”
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The Phillies paid for Painter’s mistake. But once again, the offense consisted only of home runs. They loaded the bases in the fifth inning and didn’t score. They stranded 11 runners.
And the defense didn’t help again either. With one out in the decisive sixth inning, Turner didn’t charge Dominic Smith’s slow roller. Second baseman Bryson Stott fielded the ball instead and had to throw across his body. Smith reached base to start the rally.
“I thought [Turner] kind of backed off,” Thomson said. “If he’d have played through it, we probably had a better shot to get him there at first.”
Add it all up, and the Phillies have only their sixth losing streak of at least 10 games since 1972.
There isn’t much more to say.
“We’ve got to look in the mirror and understand what our game is,” Harper said. “Each of us, individually, have got to understand what our game is and what makes our team tick. Guys can’t feel that they have to do more than what they’re capable of doing.
“Obviously there’s teams that have come back from where we’re at. We’ve just got to keep going, keep plugging.”
In Trea Turner and Justin Crawford, the Phillies have two of baseball's fastest players at the top and bottom of their batting order. It's a baserunning coach's dream. Paco Figueroa sat down with "Phillies Extra" to discuss his philosophy on baserunning and how the Phillies might be able to leverage the elite speed of Turner and Crawford to boost an offense that has struggled to score runs early in the season. Watch here.
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