Phillies Bats Cold as the Weather

The Boston Red Sox (2-1) dumped the Phillies (1-2) by a score of 6-2 on what was a 2nd straight cold, wet night at Citizens Bank Park. In the 3-game season-opening series, the Phils bats mustered just 6 runs and 11 hits.

Justin Masterson gave the visiting Bosox a solid outing, allowing just 2 earned runs on 3 hits in 6 innings, with a stellar 7-2 K:BB performance. 64 of his 95 pitches went for strikes. Craig Breslow, Tommy Layne, and Edward Mujica followed him with single shutout innings of their own to nail down the Boston victory.

Offensively, the Red Sox got to Phils starter David Buchanan with two outs and nobody on in the top of the 3rd. David Ortiz began the rally with a ground single to right. Hanley Ramirez then beat out an infield single on a ball that Buchanan probably should have stuck in his back pocket.

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Instead, Buchanan threw the ball away, allowing Ortiz to go to 3rd base and Ramirez to 2nd base. Buchanan then seemed rattled. He walked the Panda, Pablo Sandoval, to load the bases. Former Phils hero Shane Victorino then grounded to deep 3rd base. Cody Asche made a nice play to field the ball, but had no chance to get any baserunners. Ortiz scored on the play, and it was 1-0 Boston.

Buchanan then continued to hurt himself, walking Ryan Hanigan to force in a run and make it 2-0. Then the wheels completely fell off for the young righty when Xander Bogaerts blooped one down the right field line that Jeff Francoeur just couldn’t quite get to. It would go for a bases-clearing triple, and the Red Sox had blown it up at 5-0.

Masterson then helped himself, smashing a clean single back up the middle to score Bogaerts, extending his lead to 6-0. When the inning ended, so did Buchanan’s night. He allowed 6 earned runs on 7 hits and 4 walks, throwing just 44 strikes in his 75 pitches on the night.

The Phillies bullpen matched the Red Sox pen, shutting Boston down over the final six frames. Both newcomer Dustin McGowan and Justin De Fratus tossed a pair of shutout innings, with De Fratus registering 4 strikeouts. They were followed by solo shutout innings each from Luis Garcia and Jake Diekman.

Meanwhile, the cold Phillies offense looked at first as if it might get back into this one. They got a pair of runs back against Masterson in the bottom of the 3rd. With two on and one out, Masterson threw a wild pitch, allowing Freddy Galvis to score the Phils first run. Chase Utley then lined an rbi single to center, scoring Ben Revere and cutting the deficit to 6-2.

That would be as close as the home nine would get, however, as the Phils hitters collectively reached base just 3 more times over the final 6 innings, and left 13 men on base.

On the night, Cody Asche went 2-3 with a walk, while Freddy Galvis was 2-4 with a run scored to pace the club. Phils’ batters struck out 10 times in this game, and K’d a total of 26 times over the three games, with just 2 extra-base hits.

It won’t get any easier for the Phillies hitters, who now have to face the Nationals vaunted pitching rotation over the next two weekends, including Max Scherzer twice, surrounding a trip to New York where the Mets are scheduled to throw 2014 phenom Jake de Grom and the rejuvenated Matt Harvey.