Hitting slumps will happen

A robot threw out the first pitch at Citizens Bank Park on Wednesday afternoon. University of Pennsylvania engineers worked hard to construct it, but RoboFlop still bounced the throw - and got booed.

Even if the robot had fired a strike, it would have been helpful - as Sarge and more than a few worried fans noted before the game - if the machine could hit. Yes indeed, the stands were packed yesterday - with Phils fans and a little fear, too.

If you had under 20 games in the-Phillies-offense-can't-hit panic pool, congratulations. You're a winner. John Brazer - the Phillies director of publicity and fun and games and tomfoolery and maddening mind tricks that he still won't explain to me - will contact you shortly to tell you how to claim your prize. It's a pretty sweet straitjacket stamped with the Phillies logo, along with a giant duffel bag stuffed with a season's worth of Schedule II sedatives.

Are these freak-out sessions going to happen all year? Because it's a long grind, and you're not going to have any fingernails left if you gnaw at them whenever the Phils go into a collective slump at the plate. It's going to happen again - likely more than a few times.

But, hey, good news: You can wipe the flop sweat from your greasy brow and relax for a bit. The Phils snapped out of it on Wednesday. They got some hits and avoided the sweep and beat the Brewers, 4-3. If they hadn't, the city might have broken a record for the most people who simultaneously curled up into the fetal position.

In the four games before Wednesday afternoon's clash with the Brewers, the Phils scored just nine runs total. With Roy Halladay on the mound the other night, the Phils didn't score at all. Nor did they score while Cliff Lee was in the game on Wednesday. There was a span of 10 straight innings without a hit and 17 straight innings without a run. All of that conspired to give a little nudge to a fan base that never wanders too far from the cliff of concern. Good thing Placido Polanco and Shane Victorino hit homers and helped everyone off the ledge.

Mama said there'd be days, or rather stretches, like that. So did Charlie Manuel and a lot of other people, actually. So why wasn't everyone prepared?

Weren't we all supposed to be braced for periodic power outages and rolling batting blackouts? We were given warning. Maybe the Phillies didn't go the Peco route and leave automated messages on our voicemail, but they did point out, more than once, that this team isn't quite as capable offensively as some of the Phils clubs of the recent past. Manuel said exactly that before the season began. In fact, he said it while last season was still underway and the Fightin's were in the process of losing the NLCS to the Giants.

"I see gaps in our hitting," Manuel said out in San Francisco in October. "Basically, what I see that you don't see, you see our hitting from [2008]. I see our hitting today. Does that make sense? You follow that? You see the numbers. You see the homers. I haven't been seeing those. Really, our offense is down. And I'm not talking about one guy. Our offense basically is down."

And that was when they still had Jayson Werth in right field and Chase Utley at second base. Now they have Fingers in right and Crossed at second. Werth and Utley combined for 43 home runs and 150 RBIs last year. That's a lot of production to replace.

"I sort of expected this," a major-league scout told me. "If you look at their age, the lineup, the bench - they're not the same team they were three years ago. They're just not."

So all of us expected this - or at least we should have. Alas, recent history is soon forgotten around here. A quick review, then: Last year, the Phils scored three or fewer runs in 75 games (46 percent of the season). During one horrid stretch from mid- May to early June, the Phils scored three or fewer runs in 12 straight. It was pretty grim there for a while and almost everyone freaked out. Then the Phils won 97 games and reached their third straight NLCS.

That doesn't mean the Phils will necessarily duplicate that success. It just means they've been streaky at the plate before and managed to overcome it. It's also a reminder that plenty of games are left - 145 to be exact - and they will undoubtedly go into slumps again. Pace yourself. A lot will happen between now and October, and not all of it will be positive.

Besides, the aforementioned scout said the bullpen - not counting Ryan Madson and Jose Contreras - is the biggest issue, anyway. Maybe change it up and focus on that for a few days. Variety can be cathartic.