It's Been One of Those Weeks

The past week at Citizens Bank Park marked what should have been a very winnable stretch for the Philadelphia Phillies who began this ten game homestand last Tuesday against the NL West and Wild Card contending San Francisco Giants.

After that very important series, were challenges against the Washington Nationals and the Houston Astros. The Phils were able to get two out of three against the Nationals, but have imploded against the Astros and part of that has been umpire fueled. 

Philadelphia has been fortunate enough to not have lost any major ground in both the NL East and Wild Card race because the Giants and Braves are going through mini slumps of their own.

Three straight days. three winnable games, three bad losses for the Phillies can be summed up in a couple words: costly mistakes and bad umpiring.

On Monday, in the bottom of the sixth inning when the Phils were up by a run with a chance to score more after an intentional walk to Carlos Ruiz, Jayson Werth was picked off of second base in a blunder that ended the inning and a opportunity for more runs and don't get me started on Rule 7.08.

Game two of this four game set was bizarre to say the least and after four plus hours of baseball, the Phillies threatened to win the game in the bottom of the 14th when third base umpire Scott Barry apparently had his period.

Barry instigated and mocked and ejected Ryan Howard who held up on two pitches which became a critical strikeout with men at second and third with two outs. I have never seen such a blatantly confrontational stance to that degree from an umpire, and he should be disciplined for such outrageous actions.

And yesterday, the Phils made another error on the base pads, it was very reminiscent of game one in the series when in the bottom of the seventh Ben Francisco stumbled over third base when backtracking of was picked off third with the Phillies down a run and runners at first and third.

The Phillies only got one more hit the rest of the game and lost by a run, wasting another good start by Roy Halladay on the mound.

That's how you get three consecutive losses by four total runs to a team 15 games out of first place.

Another recurring issue the Phillies have had this season is random power outages, this team has sputtered in relation to their offense. The Phillies have scored two or fewer runs in six of their last seven games and they're 2-5 in that stretch.

In the process, the Phillies remain 2 1/2 games behind the Atlanta Braves in the NL East and are virtually tied with the San Francisco Giants for the NL Wild Card lead.

Philadelphia will have a chance to salvage at least one game in this four game set when Kyle Kendrick goes to the mound today in a 1:05pm start time against Wandy Rodriguez of the Astros.

Kendrick is 8-6 on the season with an ERA of 4.58 and hasn't pitched well in his last three starts going 1-2 with an ERA of 6.32 and has had mixed success all season long. He's currently in the midst of another bad month, look at these numbers:

April W/L Record and ERA- 0-1: 7.61
May W/L Record and ERA- 3-1: 3.13
June W/L Record and ERA- 0-1: 4.60
July W/L Record and ERA- 2-1: 3.34
August W/L Record and ERA- 2-2: 5.40

Hopefully this means that Kendrick is due for a hell of a September.