The Lowe-down on Phillies Loss to Braves
The injuries are starting to mount for the Phillies who had another busy day in medical land.
The Lowe-down on Phillies Loss to Braves
Marc Narducci
The injuries are starting to mount for the Phillies who had another busy day in medical land.
After Friday’s 5-0 loss to the visiting Atlanta Braves, righthander Roy Oswalt was placed on the 15-day disabled list retroactive to April 27. Righthander Scott Mathieson was recalled from Lehigh Valley.
Placido Polanco fouled a ball off his right big toe in the seventh inning and left the game. The x-rays were negative.
And of course the Phillies had a bad case of ailing bats, amassing two hits off four Braves pitchers. Derek Lowe, with a bad blister on his foot, set the tone with six no-hit innings before Shane Victorino led off the seventh inning with a single.
Most of all, the Phillies wasted a 16-strikeout performance by Cliff Lee, who also allowed nine hits and three runs in seven innings.
The Phillies are 21-10 and in five of the losses they have scored one or fewer runs.
Lee continues to be hurt by lack of run support.
Here are Lee’s last three games
May 6 – 5-0 loss to Atlanta, 3 runs allowed in seven innings, 16 strikeouts.
May 1 – no decision in a 2-1 loss in 14 innings to the NY Mets. Lee allowed one earned run in seven innings and had five strikeouts.
April 25 – 4-0 loss at Arizona. Lee allowed four earned runs in seven innings, while striking out 12.
The lack of support has to be frustrating but Lee won’t throw his team under the bus.
“I don’t have a hit all year,” he pointed out when asked about his team’s offensive effort.
Most of all, the Braves may not feel like they stole one, but this is the type of game they have to win if they are going to be a legitimate challenger to the Phillies in the N.L. East.
Lowe summed things up best on a wild night at Citizens Bank Park.
“If you can come in here and win a game where their pitcher strikes out 16 in seven innings, you have to take that as an accomplishment in itself,” Lowe said.
That’s for sure.
Lee felt there were pitches he left up in the zone and that the Braves capitalized on them. He feels he can truly improve. Now the question is can the offense do the same?
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With the offense not hitting for him, Lee is like Hamels last year!— PhilliefaninAZ- The Big Piece was batting .302 after last Friday's game. He's now at .267. BA dropped 35 points in a week. In the real world, we're all expected to perform to the level of the paycheck we bring home 2X a month. We can't expect the pitchers to carry the load by themselves every night. Just sayin...— Mello Mel
Comment removed.- Of course you won't respond to anything that runs contrary to your opinion, that's what cyber cowards do. Post one-sided BS and run back to their NYM blog site to brag about your "drive-by" over on a Phillies site. You can analyze and give objective opinions all you want, but you didn't give any coherant arguements in you post. You just bad mouthed the Phillies, the four-time reigning NL East champs who are tied for the best record in baseball as of right now. Charlie has his own way of doing things that make me cring more often than not, but he has a proven track record. We are in an amazing era to be a Phillies fan, and I see the Phillies being very good if not the best for years to come. — PhillySportsPhan007
- lol. I love the name-calling. BTW, analysis and objective opinions = no "coherant" arguments? — Chewey
- Comment removed.
- Hey Mainline, look in the mirror.— Bella914
- the Phils have great pitching but they dont have bats when the hitters are facing decent pitching, this lineup makes decent pitchers look like Cy Young winners. come play off time when they have to face better pitching, it wont matter how many aces we put on the mound because the rest of the guys cant hit decent pitching...... we cant play the Nats every night.
- Ryan Howard was guaranteed to strikeout in the clutch situations last night and he came through and looked pitiful doing it— shawnmac
- anyone remember the offseason after the world series win? we went into that offseason knowing our biggest need was starting pitching. it was amaro's first offseason as gm and he acknowledged this point as he went into the winter trade meetings.. derek lowe was available.. amaro walks out of the meetings with ibanez..— zwarte piet
- I hope you're not suggesting that Lowe is somehow better than our starters. I'd put him above Blanton and that's it. Lowe is a good pitcher but he also signed a 4 year 60 million dollar deal with Atlanta at the age of 36. I'm with RAJ. I wouldn't go near that deal. Do you want to be paying Derek Lowe 15 million when he's 40? — s
- Thanks for jumping off the bandwagon guys. Makes more room for the real fans, the ones who know that there are 162 games to be played.— ESFjellin
- Too bad Cliff Lee's fine outing was wasted. He is starting to look like the Cole Hamels of 2011 in terms of run support.
I was wary of last night's game because of Lowe. The Phillies have a mixed past hitting him. We beat him earlier this year but only because of 7 shut-out innings by Hamels.
The good news is we still have the best record (tied) in Major League Baseball.
Tonight I'm wary because Kendrick hasn't started in a while. However, I was surprised at how well he's pitched against the Braves. And this is the first major league game for Atlanta's pitcher Teheran. We can still win this series folks.— s - Sounds like Teheran may be serving up fastballs, which could be just what the Phillies lineup needs:
http://projectprospect.com/article/2011/05/06/julio-teheran-scouting-report— s
