Roy Halladay shelled as Phillies routed by Indians, 14-2

CLEVELAND - While his teammates around him ate, dressed and put the finishing touches on their workday, Roy Halladay sat in the center of the room with a furrowed brow and stared.

Nearly a half-hour after last night's ugly, 14-2 defeat to the Cleveland Indians became final, Halladay's in-game focus had carried over to the middle of the visiting clubhouse at Progressive Field. Without a video room for the visiting team, Halladay was in the middle of the quiet room, looking at a computer screen and intensely scrutinizing his abbreviated outing that went awry early and never got right.

"I think it was a combination: I wasn't real sharp and we ran into a hot team," Halladay said when his lengthy, postgame video work was finished. "Especially when they're swinging like that, you have to be pretty sharp."

Halladay was not sharp and he and the Phillies got hammered.

Halladay allowed eight runs and nine hits in 3 2/3 innings. Three of those hits were two-run home runs.

After sweeping the Mets in a three-game series over the weekend in New York, the Phils went to Cleveland for the first time in 6 years and were down 8-1 when Charlie Manuel came out to get Halladay with two outs in the bottom of the fourth.

With Manuel back in town, the Indians' offense probably reminded their old manager and hitting coach of their All-Star-laden lineups of the mid-'90s: Cleveland clobbered 17 hits.

"I don't know how you stop them - everything they hit was hard," Manuel said. "That's about all you can say . . . The best thing was that we got through it. I guess."

The Indians mashed seven home runs. The first five were of the two-run variety.

Six players in the Cleveland lineup homered and eight-hole hitter Ryan Raburn had two.

It was just the fourth time since 1916 that the Phillies had allowed seven home runs in a game and the first time since 2005, when Vicente Padilla served up five to the Mets at Citizens Bank Park.

Halladay gave up those three two-run home runs, including two in his latest uneasy first inning.

With all of his impressive accomplishments over the course of his celebrated career, Halladay has had a history of skittish starts. Entering play on Tuesday, opponents had hit .276 against him with a .321 OBP in the first inning of his starts.

Halladay had walked more batters in the first inning (96) than in any other inning over the course of his career.

Last night, Halladay needed 32 pitches to get out of a four-run first inning and he was gone before completing four innings for the second time in six starts this year.

Halladay, who entered the night with the third-best career ERA (3.32) among active pitchers with at least 1,500 innings, has a 4.01 ERA in the first inning in 16 seasons.

What was odd about Tuesday's rough first inning: Of the 32 pitches he threw in the inning, 23 were fastballs or cutters. In his previous three starts, Halladay had been relying more on offspeed pitches - changeups and curveballs - and having success.

"We threw a lot of fastballs . . . the plan with a lot of them was to pitch inside to them," Halladay said. "They've been getting a lot of balls away from them, they've been doing a lot of damage, so we were really trying to pitch inside to them as much as possible and it's a fine line with them right now. It's got to be black .

"We were going to pitch inside as much as possible and go hard as much as possible. I think we threw very few curveballs and very few changeups. We were really trying to pound them and get off the barrel as much as we could, but like I said, you really had to be spot-on today."

Halladay wasn't, and as a result, the Indians continued their recent surge. Cleveland has scored 33 runs in its last three games, including 10-3 and 9-0 wins at Kansas City. The Indians came into the night with the third- best OPS in baseball (.764).

By the time they came to bat in the sixth, the Indians were up 12-1 and Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins found spots next to Halladay on the bench. With the game out of reach, Kevin Frandsen and Freddy Galvis replaced the veteran infielders.

The lopsided final score began and ended with Halladay, however. After going 2-0 with a 1.71 ERA in his previous three starts, Halladay evened out his uneven first month of the season with his third clunker of 2013.

The two-time Cy Young Award winner has a 6.75 ERA in six starts this season. Although his latest rough start sunk him back into his early-season funk, Halladay was not discouraged.

"I think the progression's there and I feel good," Halladay said. "I didn't make as many good pitches as I wanted to, but the things we've been doing have been working, and they've been working well.

"I had to be spot-on today, I really did, and I just wasn't. You catch any other team any other time and you're OK, but today I had to be spot-on and I wasn't. I'm not discouraged at all. I feel like we've really come a long ways, and I feel good about where I am. The location could be better at times, and I think that's been coming."

The Phils' lone two runs came on solo home runs from Utley (his fifth of the season) and Delmon Young, who was making his 2013 debut.