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Bob Ford: Yes, it's early for the Phillies, but it can get too late quickly

Charlie Manuel wants to remind everyone that it is still early in the season. The manager has 50 years in professional baseball, so we can probably take his word for it.

The Phillies offense has a low slugging percentage and is struggling to put runs on the board. (Ron Cortes/Staff Photographer)
The Phillies offense has a low slugging percentage and is struggling to put runs on the board. (Ron Cortes/Staff Photographer)Read more

Charlie Manuel wants to remind everyone that it is still early in the season. The manager has 50 years in professional baseball, so we can probably take his word for it.

Eight games is not a fair sample of a team, even one that appears to have displayed its dominant personality during a 10-day Rorschach test in which the Phillies have left very few ink blots on the scorecard.

The Phils, as feared within the organization and without, are not hitting the baseball hard enough to leave a scuff mark. Their team batting average (.243) isn't so bad. That's in the top half of the league. Their slugging percentage, however, is solidly in the southern hemisphere.

To score a run, looking at those numbers, they might need three hits and, depending who is on base, maybe four. Say this about the Phillies: They might not have much power, but at least they are slow.

At least that is how it looks now, but, as Manuel reminded, we are still looking through the wrong end of the binoculars. Judging a baseball season in a microcosm is usually a mistake. In 2007 and 2008, at the start of the Phils' streak of five straight division championships, the team began 4-11 and 4-6. In 2009, the second straight World Series year, they came out 6-8. The two most recent years were a lot better, but the 2010 team was still a dawdling 12-10 at the end of April.

What is the lesson? The lesson is that the 2012 team may still surprise you, but at this point, it would increasingly be a surprise.

"There's no sense panicking, or getting all knee-jerk. We're going to score some runs," Manuel said. "We're going to compete, and hold the fort until we get our guys back."

Well, they better start soon, because the daily opponent has little problem circling the fort and shooting flaming arrows into their batting order. It doesn't seem to matter if it is a slopballer like Mark Buehrle of Miami the other night or a hard thrower like Jonathon Niese of the Mets, who challenged the Phillies from the first inning Saturday afternoon in New York's perfunctory 5-0 win.

The Phils didn't get a runner to third base against Niese and the New York bullpen. They got only two runners to second base, and one of them was only because a dribbler down the third base line was too weak to leave time for a force at second base. They didn't bring any more than four men to the plate in any inning and, even for the Phillies, that's really hard to do.

Nevertheless, they pulled it off and, given their historic lack of support for Cole Hamels, they might even be able to make Mike Pelfrey of the Mets look good on Sunday when this alleged showdown series ends. Pelfrey has a 5.37 earned run average lifetime against the Phils, but that has a chance to go down Sunday.

Then, it gets tough. The Phillies begin a 10-day, no-offday road trip on Monday that opens in San Francisco, where they will face Tim Lincecum, Madison Bumgarner, and Matt Cain. The Phils will counter with Roy Halladay, Joe Blanton, and Cliff Lee, but they will have to be thinking "shutout" from the first pitch.

As Vance Worley demonstrated on Saturday, there isn't much chance if you don't have your good stuff and your good luck out there with you. Worley thought it was going to be a good day as he warmed up, but his pitches betrayed him in tough spots.

David Wright, who had missed three games with a small fracture in his right pinkie finger, homered on the first pitch he saw in the opening inning. Worley started him with a four-seam fastball that was supposed to be off the plate, but that's not where it stayed.

"That pitch usually doesn't run back over the plate, but that one did," Worley said.

In the fourth, having given up one run but also just one out from escaping a more serious jam, Worley threw a cut fastball to Lucas Duda that did not come through with the cut part. It stayed up and Duda buried it into the right- field stands. That made it a 4-0 game and, considering how the Phillies were swinging, it might has well have been 40-0.

But, remember. It's early.

"When you don't hit and you don't score, it always looks bad," Manuel said. "It's just eight games. It takes a while sometimes. I still think we're going to score. We need to generate some offense to give our pitchers a chance to win. We want to keep up with the league until we get healthy."

Keeping up isn't a problem yet - even as they slipped 3 games behind New York and 31/2 behind Washington on Saturday. Those deficits can be easily overcome, because, yes, it's still early.

It doesn't take 50 years in the game to know that the middle of April is not the end of the world. But it can also get late very quickly as the games spin past. It got one game later on Saturday.