Five things we learned from the Phillies-Cardinals series
By John Town
Drew Hutchison finally falters
The first of Philadelphia’s two losses in the series was an ugly one. The Cardinals won handily with a score of 12-4. Pedro Florimon made his second outing of the year in mop-up relief.
The deluge started when Jake Arrieta gave up four runs to the Cardinals in the third inning. The first two were earned, but the second two were unearned as Scott Kingery made a throwing error at third base. His error allowed the inning to continue and ultimately led to two more runs on a Jedd Gyorko single.
With Arrieta at 64 pitches through three innings, Drew Hutchison came in to replace him in the fourth. Up until then, Hutchison had been quite effective in a long relief role. In his first nine outings, he had a 2.76 ERA and 1.29 WHIP. He did have a high walk rate of 11.9 percent, but he had only allowed more than one run one time.
Things were much different for Hutchison against the Cardinals. He gave up a run in the fourth and fifth innings, then allowed three in the sixth on an RBI single and two-run home run. Altogether, Hutchison surrendered six hits, three walks, and two home runs. He did not record a single strikeout.
After his poor outing, Hutchison now has a 4.66 ERA, 6.04 fielding-independent pitching, 1.55 WHIP, and 1.45 strikeout-to-walk ratio. He remains in the bullpen for now, but if he continues to struggle, Mark Leiter, Jr. may wind up replacing him.