Sam Donnellon: Silent bats could drive Hamels away

HE STOOD A few feet behind the mound, staring a hole through Freddy Galvis, or maybe Hunter Pence, or maybe beyond both and through the scoreboard in rightfield.

"Just trying to collect my thoughts," Cole Hamels quipped with a smirk later in the clubhouse, but really they were thoughts that needed to be dispersed, and fast, lest they hurt someone near and perhaps dear.

This was in the sixth inning of Monday's home-opening, 6-2 loss to the Miami Marlins, amid an initial outing filled with misfortune and meager Phillies swings, a continuation of the woeful 1-3 start for the five-time division champions.

Hamels had fielded a leadoff bunt and thrown to an unmanned first base, with first baseman John Mayberry Jr. standing to one side of him and second baseman Galvis scrambling frantically from the middle of the field as if a trip back to Allentown rode on it.

It was Mayberry's fault. Everyone, from the manager to the players, agreed on that. He's supposed to read it and run back to the base. It was practiced this spring. Everyone agreed on that, too. Everyone agreed, too, that the play had little effect on the game's outcome, leading to a four-run Marlins lead rather than a three-run lead, a lead that already seemed so insurmountable given the early productivity of Manuel's plug-and-play lineup.

But it underscored the challenge of this season, at least in the early part. Mayberry had one of the Phillies' six hits in the game. Galvis, who weighs about the same as one of Chase Utley's ailing knees, had the only extra-base hit and the Phillies' only runs batted in.

"We haven't been hitting the ball hard, bottom line," Manuel said. "Can we? I dunno . . .

"We've got guys who are supposed to be able to hit."

After their latest lifeless loss, the Phillies' 2012 line score reads thusly: 37 innings played, eight runs scored, a team batting average of .198. Carlos Ruiz leads the team in hitting, followed by Roy Halladay. At this rate they will score about 320 runs this season, or just more than a third of what they scored when they won their first division title in 2007.

The Opening Day that followed that season was one of hope, buzz and energy, of excitement over a team about to collectively reach its prime. But once you've won a world championship and been to the World Series twice, celebrating a division title just doesn't have the same oomph it once did.

The muted crowd that greeted this year's lineup as it entered from the centerfield bleachers Monday underlined how much has changed. A division title is no longer celebrated, it is assumed. The banner handed out to fans only reminded them of last season's unfulfilled expectations.

Similarly, once you've scored 892 runs in one season (2007), 799 the next and 820 after that, sending out the kind of lineup that has trickled out offense these first four games of 2012 is not going to capture the public's imagination. These days, that's the Marlins.

"They're gonna score a lot of runs," Manuel said of the Marlins. "And also they've got talent enough to get better."

"Oh, yeah," Hamels said. "They're definitely more powerful, especially because they have their young guys coming into their prime. And they're not inexperienced anymore. Most have had 30 or 40 at-bats against us, so they know what they're doing."

And then he said what everyone is thinking: "It's like '07-08 was for us. It's going to be a lot tougher all year . . . "

This may be the greatest danger of losing Hamels, the sense of a team in decline. Some reports speculate that he wants 7 years in his next contract, but he very clearly wants to win, too. He cares far more about that than the color or design of any uniform or the climate of any town, and that includes those located in Southern California. You want to be scared, here's a better way to scare you: His father is from South Boston. Almost all of his cousins from that side of the family live around that city. Earlier this spring Hamels complained, jokingly, that any time he gets a bunch of tickets when the Phillies play up there, his guests arrive in Red Sox hats and gear.

The tough part is that his adopted city now gets him and appreciates him. Hamels surrendered a home run and a couple of doubles, but he was dominating for most of his 96 pitches and was at his best when things got bad. And when he walked from the mound with one out in the sixth, trailing 4-0, he heard cheers from the sellout crowd, not the boos that once marked his unsuccessful exits. And when he, um, collected his thoughts afterward, he sounded more determined than hopeful, like he believed the great run here can be extended, and maybe his contract, too.

"Things aren't going to be easy every year," Hamels said. "You're not going to have the team that hits the most home runs in the league or steals the most bases. Our job as pitchers is to go out, pitch deep into ballgames and minimize the runs. That's something we've always been able to do regardless of the scenario on the offensive side."