Rough Taijuan Walker Start and Offensive Cool Down Snaps Phillies Win Streak At 4

The Phillies entered Easter Sunday’s matchup against the Colorado Rockies with momentum and the chance to do something they haven’t in 25 years, as well as to complete the sweep. Instead, Taijuan Walker struggled to bounce back from his first start of the season, and the offense continued their cold streak and reverted back to the opening series of the season style. The Phillies lost today’s game 4-1, but take the series after winning Friday and Saturday’s games.

The Phils were looking to complete a historic sweep as winning today would have brought the Phillies their first sweep in their opening road series of a season since 2001, when they swept the Florida Marlins. This loss also snapped a 9-game winning streak the Phillies had against the Colorado Rockies.

Walker Continues To Struggle In The Rotation

It was imperative heading into this series against Colorado that the 3 starters bounce back after all struggling in their first starts of the season. Aaron Nola bounced back, Jesus Luzardo bounced back; however, Walker struggled, causing growing concern over his place in the rotation.

After getting two quick outs to start the inning, Walker gave up a 2-strike homer to former Phillies first-round selection Mickey Moniak, then a single to Hunter Goodman, which was followed by a 2-run blast to TJ Rumfield. Walker would give up another home run, once again to Moniak, the 3rd multi-homer game of the former Phillies top prospect’s career, in the 5th. His day ended with throwing 5 innings, allowing 4 runs on 7 hits, 2 walks, and striking out only 4 Rockies.

After two starts in the rotation this season, Walker is 0-1 with a 9.31 ERA in only 9.2 innings pitched.

High Altitude Chokes Out The Offense

After strong offensive performances in the series finale of the Washington Nationals series at home and the blowout win in the opening game of this Rockies series, the high-octane offense couldn’t endure the high altitude. In the second game of the series, the offense could only muster 2 runs, but it didn’t matter as Luzardo was lights out and the bullpen kept the Rockies’ offense to the 1 run they scored off Luzardo.

Today, however, the offense needed more life due to a poor start from Walker, but couldn’t muster more than 1 run, a solo home run by Adolis Garcia in the 2nd inning. 35-year-old Tomoyuki Sugano was lights out for the Rockies today, going 6 innings, only allowing the 1 run in the 2nd, while striking out 5 Phillies. Sugano brought his ERA down to 1.69 and notched his first win of the young season.

The offense entered the series with a large number of questions, and this was a formidable opportunity for the Phillies to even things out. Instead, they head to San Francisco with few of those questions answered, and if anything, a reinforcement of how well this lineup can perform and how detrimental it is to this team if the lineup isn’t performing.

Bullpen Gets A Breath Of Fresh Air

The Phillies’ bullpen came into the extremely hitter-friendly ballpark that is Coors Field and absolutely dominated. The bullpen pitched at least 2.1 innings in each game and shut down the Rockies’ offense in each game. The bullpen also had solid strikeout stuff, as through 8 innings of work throughout the series, they struck out 12 Rockies.

The bullpen performance ended up being historic as it helped the Phils allow the fewest amount of runs in a 3-game series in Colorado since the Rockies franchise began playing in 1993, at only 6 runs allowed, beating the old franchise record of 9 runs allowed back in 2011. A needed successful stretch by a piece of the team that will be very important to the team’s success come October.

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