Not since he joined the Phillies.

He entered the bottom of the seventh inning yesterday against the San Francisco Giants at AT&T Park with a one-run lead and a remarkable 4-0 record with a 0.30 ERA (one earned run in 30 innings) in his previous 37 appearances, dating to Sept. 2 of last season. But Romero proved fallible when he served up a two-run home run to catcher Steve Holm in a 4-3 loss to the Giants.

"It was a fastball, man," Romero said. "It was a bad fastball. Like they say around the league, 'You hang it, they bang it.' It was a horse-crap pitch with a horse-crap result."

The homer was Holm's first in the majors.

It ended a disappointing road trip for the Phillies, who dropped four of seven in Arizona and San Francisco. The Phillies lost back-to-back games for the first time since April 18-19, when they lost twice to the New York Mets at Citizens Bank Park.

"It's baseball," Romero said. "You show up to play. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, you know? But I'm still standing."

He is.

"He's been real good for us, man," manager Charlie Manuel said. "He's been real good for us. He's been about as good as you can get. He's human, too. He's going to give up some runs. If he didn't, I think we'd have a pretty good team."

The Phillies' bullpen has a 2.72 ERA, which ties them with the Los Angeles Dodgers for the best bullpen ERA in the National League. Credit Romero (3-1) for some of that: He has allowed a run in just seven of his 69 appearances since he joined the Phillies late last June after they claimed him off waivers from the Boston Red Sox.

But while it was easy to focus on Romero yesterday, the offense failed as well. They had six hits. They hit just .212 (42 for 198) and scored 24 runs in the final six games of the road trip.

Manuel was frustrated that the Phillies did not have better results against Giants lefthander Jonathan Sanchez.

"Every team in baseball saves their lefties for us," Manuel said. "Atlanta has three against us this week. They save them for us. They'll call up guys for their bullpen because of us. We've got to start hitting them."

Few teams have hit the Phillies' only lefty in their bullpen since last June, but that was no consolation to Romero.

"I'm very disappointed we lost," he said. "I really take this to heart. We lost because of me."

Read Todd Zolecki's

Phillies blog every day at: http://go.philly.com/pzone.

Read his blog at http://go.philly.com/phillieszone.