Phillies May Be Starting Down Road to Nowhere
By Matt Veasey
Final. 1. 6. 3. 63
The Philadelphia Phillies lost a second straight game to the Detroit Tigers at Comerica Park on Tuesday night.
Is this it? Is the clock about to strike midnight on the Phillies’ Cinderella 2016 season? It’s sure starting to feel like it.
The host Detroit Tigers defeated the Phillies by a 3-1 score on Tuesday night at Comerica Park, giving the Tigers victories in the first two games of this Interleague series.
For the Phils, that makes four losses in their last five games. It also gives them a 3-6 record over their last nine, a stretch that has seen them fall from a tie for first place in the NL East back to 3rd place, three games behind the Washington Nationals.
The Phillies are also now just four games over the .500 mark, the closest that they have been to that break-even measure of ultimate mediocrity in almost two weeks.
As the team continually found ways to win one-run games thanks to a pitching staff that propped up a feeble offense, many pundits and fans wondered how long the winning could possibly last. Perhaps the answer now is: not much longer.
The Phils will need to win on Wednesday afternoon in this series finale to avoid having lost three consecutive games for the first time since the opening week of the season.
And they will then face the daunting prospect of moving in to Chicago over the weekend to face the best team in baseball, the Chicago Cubs.
While we hope for the best, there is a growing fear that this could turn into an 0-6 road trip that begins what some believe is an inevitable slide back to the depths of Major League Baseball’s overall standings.
On this night it was the combination of two longtime Tigers’ favorites, pitcher Justin Verlander and 1st baseman Miguel Cabrera, who did in the Fightin’ Phils.
Verlander (4-4) worked eight fabulous innings, allowing just three hits while striking out 10 and walking two. After Freddy Galvis doubled with one out in the top of the 1st, the Phils never again got a runner to 2nd base off Verlander.
Jeremy Hellickson (4-3) tried to match him pitch-for-pitch, and kept the Phillies close for a while. Hellickson ultimately allowed seven hits over seven innings, striking out seven and walking one.
Related Story: Miggy Gives Hellickson a Thumbs-Up After Striking Out
Cameron Maybin led off the bottom of the 1st with a base hit, and came around to score the game’s first run on a one-out RBI double by Cabrera that just missed being a two-run homer.
It would remain a 1-0 pitcher’s duel into the bottom of the 6th inning, when the Tigers got two more thanks largely to some questionable defense from Phils’ 3rd baseman Maikel Franco.
The red-hot Maybin again got the rally started with a base hit. That was followed by a ball off Franco’s glove by J.D. Martinez that looked like a possible double play ball, but that instead rolled down the left field line for a double, with Maybin motoring around to 3rd base.
“He got to a certain spot, and he stopped,” Phils’ manager Pete Mackanin said per MLB.com reporters. “He tried to snag it instead of taking one more step toward it. I don’t think he could have gotten in front of it, but he could have gone through the ball instead of stopping and trying to snag it.”
Cabrera then grounded out productively, with Maybin scoring on the play to make it a 2-0 game. When Victor Martinez followed with an RBI single to score Martinez, the lead was up to 3-0.
That would be it for the scoring. Francisco Rodriguez came on to record his 14th Save of the season, and for ‘KRod’ it marked the 400th Save of his big league career.