Phillies Lose 3 of First 4, Season Possibly Over

Blow it up. All of it.

Trade Hamels. Take back the extension from Rollins. Trade Dom Brown for prospects. Pack it up. Good season, let’s go eat.

The first four games of the 2012 campaign haven’t exactly gone according to plan for the Phils. Three losses, two of which were winnable games blown by the bullpen after stellar starts from Clifton and the Vanimal, and all of eight runs scored. Through four games, they’ve done nothing but confirm what everybody knew: aces gon’ ace, offense gon’ sit there and watch.

BUT. It’s four games. The Phillies have never played well at PNC. Even with as bad as the Pirates have been for the past, oh, two decades, the Phils have a lower winning percentage in Pittsburgh than any other city over that span. Hamels gave up 6 earned runs in 2.2 innings in his first start last year, and then gave up two or less in 15 of his next 19. Baseball is cyclical, and our guys just happened to start on the wrong side of one.

The Phillies knew what they were doing when they assembled one of the greatest pitching rotations of all time last year. They knew the offensive core was getting older and more and more injury-prone, but they thought they could win with a starting three of Doc, Cliff and Cole. That has not changed. Phillies starting pitchers have given up five earned runs in 25 1/3 innings. This is a team built to win by giving up less runs than their opponents, not by outscoring them.

So check it. Doc Halladay is the best starting pitcher on the cot-damn planet, plus those Lee, Hamels and Papelbon guys are pretty solid as well. The runs will come, especially when Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Domonic Brown (we’ll talk about that last one in another post) come back.

The first four games have been frustrating, yes, but before you go all OMG SEASON OVER E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES like an insufferable moron remember this: there’s a lot of baseball left to be played, and Ruben Amaro will committ seppuku before he lets his creation miss the playoffs.

And oh yeah. The Phillies started 2-4 in 2008. That team is the red-headed stepchild to this one in terms of talent, and I’d say that year ended up pretty decently. Deep breaths. In Doc We Trust.