Philadelphia Phillies look to avoid West Coast woes
The Philadelphia Phillies have played some bad baseball on the West Coast over the last two seasons. They now look to avoid suffering the same fate in 2019.
To be fair, it’s hard for any team to travel across the continent and play their best baseball. But the Philadelphia Phillies have struggled mightily in that department over the last two years.
Let’s flashback to April 29, 2017.
The Phillies were sporting a surprising 11-10 record despite having lost the opener of a three-game series at Dodger Stadium the previous day. And on this night, they cruised into the bottom of the ninth inning with a comfortable 5-2 lead. Then, disaster struck.
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Hector Neris, sporting a 2.19 ERA on the young season up to that point, unfathomably allowed three straight home runs to the Los Angeles Dodgers to start the frame. Then, with Neris’ confidence clearly shaken, the Dodgers strung together three more hits in the inning to push across the winning run.
It was a collapse from which the 2017 team never recovered. It evened their record at 11-11, and they would finish getting swept by the Dodgers the following day. The road trip then took them on to Chicago, where they topped the Chicago Cubs in the first game of their series to again reach .500 on the season. But the Phillies would lose the next three games in the Windy City and 17 of their next 20 games overall, killing their season by Memorial Day.
Last year’s trip to LA began on Memorial Day itself and kicked off a three-city, 10-game trip. And while the Phillies did manage to go 2-4 at Dodger Stadium, they won only once over their remaining stops in San Francisco and Chicago. Particularly disheartening was the fact that the Phillies plated a single run in the entire series with the San Francisco Giants.
While not a season-killer like the previous year’s epic letdown, the 3-7 trip put a dent in some of the enthusiasm surrounding the team after their unexpectedly good start last year and served as an early warning sign for the fade that eventually happened.
Now, in 2019, with expectations for the Phillies much higher than they have been in almost a decade, the team ventures to the West Coast for the first time this season to take on the National League-best Dodgers and the suddenly formidable San Diego Padres.
The Dodgers, who are arguably the Phillies’ biggest rival, will present a stiff task both in the form of their exceptionally deep batting order and their formidable rotation, anchored as always by Clayton Kershaw.
The timing of reliever Adam Morgan‘s trip to the injury list is especially bad, as the Phillies will not have him at their disposal to face the likes of MVP favorite Cody Bellinger or other hard-hitting Dodger lefties like Joc Pederson and Max Muncy. Throw in a lack of a left-handed starting pitcher as well, and it might be Jose Alvarez or bust against left-handed hitters for the time being, and that is not good news for the Phils.
The road through the National League this year seems like it will again run through LA, as it has in each of the last two seasons. The Phillies have a big opportunity in front of them to show that they can give the defending champs a run for their money.
Not to be overlooked are the Padres, a team flirting with wild-card aspirations. This series also carries with it the “Bryce Harper vs. Manny Machado” storyline, an overblown but intriguing one nonetheless.
While his numbers seem pedestrian, it appears that Machado’s presence has had an overall positive impact for the Friars, and one can only assume that he will view a head-to-head meeting with Harper as a prime opportunity to showcase his abilities. At the very least, it will make for some interesting baseball.
The Phillies should also get a look at the Padres’ rookie sensation on the mound, Chris Paddack, at some point during the series.
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Add it all up, and the Phillies’ six-game trip to California is fraught with obstacles to overcome. And while the team’s solid play of late has assured that even a disastrous trip wouldn’t “wreck” their season, it is still vitally important that they play solid and smart baseball over the next week against some tough competition.