Walker, Phils Fall Just Short as Cardinals Salvage Weekend Series at Bank
Eric Hartline/USA TODAY Sports
Major League Baseball’s standings will tell you that the Phillies only lost once today, but as it turns out, two losses were suffered on Sunday Night Baseball.
The first loss was a heart-breaker, as the Phillies dropped game three of the weekend series against the Cardinals in a ten-inning battle of the bullpens.
A struggling Taijuan Walker got the ball for the Phillies, allowing four runs on five hits across five innings of work. He struck out five Cardinals but walked three and allowed two home runs. With seven starts and an ERA of 5.73, concerns about Walker are beginning to surface. And with an electric arm like Spencer Turnbull’s awaiting in the bullpen, Walker’s scuffles are being criticized even more. Among big-league pitchers, his whiff percentage, barrel percentage, and average exit velocity are all among the bottom five percentile.
His pitches are getting rocked, and all of this is well-documented.
In the very first inning tonight, Cardinal second baseman Nolan Gorman smashed a go-ahead home run, and in the third, Alec Burleson sent a hanging sweeper off of an ESPN sign in the right field seats. As Burleson rounded the bases, “we want Turnbull” chants could be heard around Citizens Bank Park. Faint or not, the Phillies’ fanbase is not happy with Taijuan Walker. Fans have stormed social media begging for his removal from the rotation, a move that’s not as simple as most think. The Phillies are pigeonholed into a contract with Walker. He is owed $54 million over the next three seasons. Turnbull, on the other hand, is only owed $2 million.
The problem is clear, but the solution is murky, at best.
Tonight, however, the real problem lay with the offense. The Phillies only tallied four runs, two of which came thanks to the Cardinals’ three defensive errors. With runners in scoring position, the Phillies were just 3-for-17. Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper struck out a combined six times. Nick Castellanos had a two-hit performance, but he struck out with Harper on third base to end the game in the bottom of the tenth inning.
That loss was temporary; not in the sense that it can be erased, but because tomorrow is a new day with a fresh scoreboard. But the real loss tonight was on the basepaths, when Brandon Marsh was removed from the game after aggravating his hamstring rounding second base in the bottom of the eighth inning. Marsh immediately grabbed his leg and signaled to the dugout for a trainer. Christian Pache pinch-ran for Marsh and took over in left field, and further evaluation revealed that Marsh has a hamstring strain and is considered day-to-day for the time being.
If Marsh is out for an extended period of time, the Phillies could choose to get creative. On Saturday afternoon, manager Rob Thomson confirmed that he planned to find a way to keep Edmundo Sosa in the lineup when Trea Turner is reinstated from the IL. Postgame today, Thomson also mentioned wanting to give Whit Merrifield more at-bats in hopes of breaking his season-long slump.
Needless to say, the Phillies have options, but it will ultimately come down to defensive alignment. Edmundo Sosa has just 5.1 innings of outfield experience throughout the course of his six-year, big-league career, but he has been much more productive than Merrifield and Pache at the plate. Trea Turner also has some experience playing in the outfield, but it is unlikely that the Phillies will want to change his position right after recovering from a hamstring injury.
For now, I would expect Christian Pache and Whit Merrifield to get significant playing time during the Brewers series until Marsh’s status is confirmed.
Evidently, this final game of the weekend series left us with a bunch of unanswered questions, ranging from the starting pitching to the outfield, but it’s easy to get lost in the uncertainty. The Phillies have the best record in the National League and a 6.5-game lead over the defending NL-East champion Atlanta Braves.
When you sit back and re-read the last sentence a couple of times, you’ll remember one very important thing: Life is good if you’re a Phillies fan right now!
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