Let’s Play The Blame Game: Who’s At Fault For Tuesday’s Loss?

The Phillies have lost heartbreakers before, hell they’ve even done it this year. Who could forget the absolute meltdown by the Phils in the ninth inning of a 7-1 lead against the Mets? While Tuesday night may not have been as bad as that, it was still an absolute catastrophe.

 

One thing we’ve learned through the month of June, a month that has seen the Phillies lose just two games, is that this Phils team is good. They have an elite offense and a truly solid starting pitching staff. The problem, of course, has been the utter abomination of a bullpen the Phils have employed for the last few years.

 

What Tuesday night’s loss proved is that the bullpens success during the winning streak was an anomaly. Add that with the fact that the Phillies are one of the worst defensive teams in baseball, and you have a team who’s biggest problem is that they can’t get out of their own way.

 

The bullpen has an inability to throw pitches in the strike zone, as Phils relievers have the fifth most walks in the league. Defensively, the Phillies tend to screw up even the most routine plays, and Alec Bohm still looks like a lost puppy at the hot corner.

 

When it comes to Tuesday night, the Phillies simply cannot lose those kind of games if they want to make the postseason. You can’t blow two separate leads in the final 3 innings of a ball game and expect to be where you want to be in October.

 

I know in team sports, you’re not really supposed to blame individuals or play the “what if” game, but quite frankly I don’t buy into that. That’s especially true when you can point to specific performances by players that shaped the outcome of the game, and say if exhibit A doesn’t happen then exhibit B never has the chance to occur. That’s what happened last night with not one, not two, but three different Phillies. Let’s play the blame game.

 

Corey Knebel

 

This is the obvious one. Knebel has been h-o-r-r-i-d over the past few weeks, as in his last seven appearances he has a 4.26 earned run average and a WHIP of 2.21 in just 6 and one-third innings. For a guy who’s only objective is to come in, slam the door, and secure a win for his ball club, those stats are in another dimension of awful.

 

When you watch Knebel pitch, it is so glaringly obvious that he has no command of his pitches. That, and the fact that he literally only throws two pitches are a massive problem. If you’re going to have such a small repertoire, you have to be dominant with those pitches. Knebel can’t even find the right grip for just one of his pitches.

 

In one of the most jarring pitching lines I have ever seen, Knebel threw 16 pitches in Tuesday night’s contest. FOUR of them were strikes. I’ll say that again so you know it’s not a typo. FOUR of his SIXTEEN pitches were strikes. Four strikes, yet he’s the team’s closer. I can’t even begin to comprehend it.

 

Knebel walked two straight batters after Phillie-killer Miguel Rojas reached base on an error by Alec Bohm (it should not have been ruled an error). He then looped a curveball over the heart of the plate to Jacob Stallings, who somehow only managed to hit a grounder to left field to score a run. Knebel left the game with the bases still loaded and had not recorded a single out. Seriously, what are we doing here?

 

 

I don’t want to hear that crap about Knebel being hurt either. I know he felt shoulder tightness the other day, but if that’s the reason you can’t locate a pitch, WHY DO YOU MAKE YOURSELF AVAILABLE?! I can’t believe we have to say these things to professional athletes. If your shoulder doesn’t feel right, go on the injured list and get it right you buffoon.

 

If Knebel continues to get chances as the team’s closer, more fire will start to come in the direction of Rob Thomson. I’m not ready to blame Thomson just yet, because for the most part he’s made good decisions. I know he wants to show trust in his guys and have his guys backs, but at this point Knebel has given Thomson no reason to trust him. And would you look at that, just as I typed those words I get this notification.

 

 

You’re welcome, Philadelphia. In Thomson we trust.

 

Jeruys Familia

 

Why Dave Dombrowski wanted to give this man $6 million is so far beyond my realm of rational thoughts. This dude has been absolutely cooked for the last couple of seasons. He had a 5.70 ERA in 2019, and was relegated to a lesser role the past two seasons, all of which were with the hated New York Mets, and didn’t pitch much better.

 

This season with the Phils, he’s been downright atrocious. He’s allowed 14 runs, 26 hits, ten walks, and four homers in 22 innings of work. He hasn’t fooled a single batter at the plate this year. His stuff was extra terrible last night, as he allowed a walk and a hit before he gave up a three-run homer to a guy who stepped to the plate with 18 home runs in his seven year career. He did one thing better than his friend Knebel though, as he did manage to record a single out.

 

People will say that Familia shouldn’t have been in last night’s game because it was a high-leverage situation. To that, I call bullshit. He came into the game with a four-run lead pitching to a below-average offense who hadn’t even put up a threat of scoring a run since the first inning. You mean to tell me that’s a high-leverage situation? I can’t blame Thomson for using him in that situation, especially considering the use that Connor Brogdon and Seranthony Dominguez have gotten the past few days. He had to use Familia at some point.

 

 

Yet, Familia couldn’t even rise to the occasion in that situation. At this point, he may just need to go. I don’t care about the dead money, Phillies fans will probably start a gofundme if they haven’t already. I just can’t see this dude pitch anymore. This is what you get for signing a Met. Never do it again.

 

J.T. Realmuto

 

Let me preface this section by saying I’m not on the “Hate J.T.” wagon as much as some other Phillies fans are. I can admit he is vastly overpaid and his contract looks pretty bad in hindsight. I’ll also maintain that catchers have a much lower ceiling for offensive success compared to every other position on the field.

 

Factoring that in with the fact that he remains one of the best defensive catchers in baseball with a level of speed that no other catcher in the game even comes close to, and I can still confidently say that he hasn’t been as bad as some may think. Sure, Realmuto’s .243 batting average and OPS are the lowest they have ever been in his career, but as far as catcher’s go it’s still not all that bad.

 

It’s just that Phillies fans like you and I have grown accustomed to Realmuto being the best catcher in baseball. He’s been an all-star participant in each of the last three games, and deservedly so. I think that because of the lofty expectations he’s created for himself through his play, along with the hefty contract, fans have higher expectations for him. We don’t want him to be an above-average catcher, we want him to be the best catcher. 

 

Over the course of this season, and especially the last couple of games, Realmuto has not been even close to those expectations. Between Sunday and Tuesday, Realmuto came to the plate with the bases loaded and less than two outs three separate times. In those three chances, he grounded into two double plays, and barely avoided a third because the Marlins didn’t throw the ball to first base. Three opportunities, three should-have-been double plays.

 

 

Then, in the ninth inning of a tie game with one out, Realmuto had a chance to get a huge second out for Andrew Bellatti with runners in scoring position. In a play Realmuto makes 999 out of 1,000 times, this was the one time that he dropped a pop-up that landed directly in his glove.

 

Lo and behold, Jesus Aguilar got another chance and ended up poking a double past a flailing Nick Castellanos that would score the two go-ahead runs for the Fish. The game could have been tied heading into the ninth, instead the Phils got an improbable defensive blunder from the least likely source.

 

A crushing loss with plenty of blame to go around. After a loss like that, we have a great chance to see what this team’s made of on Wednesday afternoon. See ya at 1:05.

By Matt Szczypiorski | June 15, 2022
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,