High Hopes: A Phillies Podcast - Final Out: Phillies Offense Not Enough In Washington

Episode Date: August 19, 2023

Jack Fritz reacts to the Phillies blowing a 6-2 lead in Washington on Friday night. Presented by Miller Lite. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Never looks so good. Why? Why? Why? Jack Fritz hanging out with you here on this Friday night reacting to, just simply put, an inexcusable loss. I mean, that is a loss that should not have happened. They completely blew it.

It's very reminiscent of the game they already had down there earlier in the year where they come all the way back, take a lead, blow it, and then it's just like you're left saying to yourself, really? You're blowing a game to the Nationals? And they scored seven runs tonight. You know, I mean, they had a 6-1 lead. That's a game that has to be done. That's a game that has to be done.

That's a game that has to be over. And it wasn't. And it wasn't. Some bad defense. Frankly, I'm still in disbelief that Johan Rojas dropped that ball. Who knows how that inning goes if he doesn't. Alec Boehm makes an error that leads to an insurance run late in the game. Phil's

offense completely shuts down after scoring early. And just a horrible loss. I mean, just a horrible, horrible loss that you hope that when you look back at the end of the season, I think they're going to make the playoffs regardless, but

could that be the difference between the five seed and the four seed? Maybe. Could it be the six seed and the five seed or the whatever? Like that stinks. Like that is not a good loss. Not that any loss is a good loss, but it's just like a 6-1 lead against the Nationals is something that you should be able to hold.

And I said in the pregame, and it's fair to bring up again, the Nationals have the third-best record in the NL since the All-Star break. They're not some pushover. They're fighting. They're trying to build their next core. And the Phillies gave them life tonight. They didn't have to. They didn't step on a throat.

They didn't finish to. They didn't step on a throat. They didn't finish the job tonight. And they let a scrappy little ball club stay around. Let's get to the biggest takeaway of the game brought to you by Morgan & Morgan. And the biggest takeaway of the game for me is the starting staff's a concern. You know, Michael Lorenzen's been really good since they brought him over from Detroit. Obviously, the no-hitter in the eight innings against the Marlins. But, I mean, he was brutal tonight. And there's definitely a part of me that thinks, okay, he had nine days off.

You get a little bit rusty when you have that much time off. You know, his changeup was up all night. And, I mean, C.J. Abrams didn't miss it. Changeup was up. Stuff was up, was not able to keep the ball down, you know, that kind of stuff. I think it happened when you have nine days off. So hopefully that's all it is. But if it's not, again, it's been one of my chief concerns with this team. I think they're a good team. I think they're gonna make the playoffs. And I think they have the upside to be a really good team. But the one thing that is consistently holding me back is the starting staff.

Most of the year, been pretty good. They do this bit where they allow like three runs early in the game, and then that's relatively it. So their numbers at the end of the day look pretty good. But like they don't have a clear-cut number two. And there was this hope that, hey, maybe Michael Lorenzen could be that guy. Well, he went out and got shelled by the Nationals tonight. And, yes, the Johan Rojas play happened, and that stinks.

But at the same time, he didn't miss a bat that inning. Like, he didn't miss anything. Like, they were squaring him up all inning long. He left a hung changeup to C.J. Abrams, and the ball was just absolutely destroyed to right field. The Rangers banged up now.

They're going to go back to five men. Well, now they have to. If Rangers are going to miss any kind of extended period of time here, the starting staff is a legitimate concern. Now, they showed in June they can get on a roll and carry the ball club for a little bit,

but you're supposed to win a game that you're up 6-1 in. You should win that game. And Michael Lorenzen didn't have it tonight. Bullpen, Jeff Hoppen came in, did a job. Gregory Soto's now got a six ERA since the All-Star break. And it just stinks. And my other big takeaway from just this game is, again, this has been the story of the offense all year.

I was proud of them that they were they kept scoring in the fourth inning, but then they just completely shut down against this Nationals bullpen. And they kind of went on cruise control. And yeah, the short home run happened in the ninth, but by that point, you're already down by two runs. I mean, it got

them to one. That's great. But didn't see much fight after that fourth inning. And just kind of let the Nationals kind of just mow them on down. They had a chance in the seventh. Turner was not able to come through with a big hit. But the offense, again, this is

kind of what they've done all year, where it's like just can't add on and step on a throat. I mean, Wednesday against the Blue Jays, it was like, what am I watching here? And again, back to the same old stuff. So that's my biggest takeaway of the game, which is brought to you by Morgan & Morgan,

America's largest injury firm. My second biggest takeaway from the night, and then we'll get to your phone calls, 215-592-9494, reacting to a just bad, bad loss down in Washington, is we talked a lot about the schedule they had coming up in August and how this is when they're going to extend. And this is when they're going to get in comfortable position for the postseason and kick their feet up and, you know, kind of

they're not going to catch the brace, but they can just kind of ride out the last month and get in whatever um and and they have just about effectively blown that uh and and just have not taken advantage of a very very soft schedule uh 11 and 9 in the last 20 uh during that time span they blew two leads out in pittsburgh 4-1 and 4-2 they blew a 5-0 lead in miami that went back and forth late that they could have won. They blew that game three times, I believe. Last week against the Nationals, they blew a 4-2 lead late in that game.

The Kimbrell came in a tie game and allowed a home run to Joey Manessis. That's a blown loss. Serenity Dominguez with the hit-by-pitch on Tuesday, plus with Kyle Shorburn left field almost taking a ball off his face. They could have lost that game regardless, but still that's a gain that they blew.

And then the 6-1 lead tonight. Those are five games that if you just go lock down, you're talking about what could have been a 16-4 stretch or at worst a 15-5 stretch. And that changes so much with where this team is currently at two and a half up in the wild card of the last spot still two games clear of of the giants but still like you get the soft schedule for a reason and you have to take advantage of it and they just haven. They just have not done enough.

To go out there. And separate themselves. And this is all making me feel like. The last two weeks. Of next month. Or the end of the season. And into October. It's going to be stressful around here.

Because they're not doing it right now. And they're not taking advantage of it right now. because they're not doing it right now and they're not taking advantage of right now and they're not having leads and holding leads and there's just little cracks here that are starting to deform one's the starting staff and one's the bullpen the offense they have the three bad games against good pitching. For the most part, they've done their job. I know they didn't add on tonight, but at the same time, they gave the pitching staff a 6-1 lead. A 6-1 lead. They scored seven runs in the game.

Against the Nationals, that should be enough. Against other teams, maybe not. But this should be a 15-5, kick your feet up. This team's really good. Let's start dreaming on the World Series again. Instead, it's pretty good. Pretty good.

That's the story of the Philadelphia Phillies this year. It feels like it's a, you know, really just a mostly a season of missed opportunities. We can talk about that, Ron, scoring position, whatever, but this August thing, going 11-9 during that stretch

with those kind of blown games in there, it's disappointing. 2-1-5, 5-9-2, 94-94 is how you get in on the other side. They did catch some breaks tonight in the wild card. We'll talk about that. And a good development up in Lehigh. What is it?

We'll get to all of that coming up next here on the Final Loud. Hey, fantasy football owners. The road to winning your fantasy football championship starts now. I'm Matt Harmon from Reception Perception. Join me and James Coe as we take a deep dive into the position that's going to make or break your fantasy roster. Wide receivers. We analyze route running, target share, and all the metrics that matter,

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but it's a brutal loss. So it's, it's, it's okay. It's okay. And I like this and it just a brutal loss. So it's okay. It's okay on a night like this. And it just stinks. And that's my Mike's Amazing play of the game. Presenting my Mike's Amazing, the official mayo, mustard,

and vegetable oil of the Phillies. And why it's that is because, like, again, a lot of uncharacteristic play. I mean, the Rojas play early. And then, like, I know in years past, he'd be like well that's very characteristic of boom to make the error there but he makes that error allows a runner on for no reason and you know obviously gregory soda's not able to lock that down and and that

takes a 7-6 game where you're feeling pretty good i mean obviously you're losing so it's not like you know it's not like a lock that you're going to come back. We've seen this team come back against the nationals a good amount over the last couple of years. And to go from seven, six late in the game to eight, six, like Schwarber hits at home run late.

Like that should have been a tie game. We're partying again. Everything's fine. And it wasn't because they just, they made too many mistakes tonight. And they were not able to just do their job, hold a lead, keep this thing on lock, and get out of there with the opening of the series with a win.

And now it's like they have the game tomorrow. Hopefully they go out there and win. And then they have to go all the way up to Williamsport to play in a game at the Williamsport Little League Classic thing, which is going to be fun. I think it's a great atmosphere. But that's a lot of moving parts where if you could just get the one out of the way tonight,

and then you have two games to take a series. Now it's like everyone's going to feel terrible if you lose two or three in Washington or up in Williamsport. And sure, you're not going to be out of the playoff spot. Then you're going to come back home on Monday with a big three-game series against the Giants. Being able to take that first one

and at least get a little bit of that anxiety out of the way just would have gone a long way. And now it's just whatever. It's just a frustrating night. It's a frustrating night. Now, it's not debilitating. And why it's not debilitating is because the Cubs and Giants both lose. Giants lost 4-0.

Cubs lost earlier to the Royals. And then Miami is out playing Los Angeles, who has won 11 straight and I believe 15 of their last 16. Now they have Sandy Alcantara on the mound. Traditionally, that's like, oh, tough night for the Dodgers. We'll see how that goes tonight. They're up 2-1 in the third. But overall, I mean, worst-case scenarios,

they're still two and a half games up on the last wild-card spot and a full two games up on San Francisco. So annoying. Again, you talk about missed opportunities, and I laid it out in that first segment. You know, the two blown leads in Pittsburgh, the 5-0 lead in Miami, 4-2 lead last week against Washington, Sir Anthony on Tuesday, and then a 6-1 lead tonight.

Like, these are all things where if you just do your job and lock down those wins, even win three of those, whatever, if you win three of them, you're sitting pretty tonight. And you just hope that as we're going down the stretch run here, you don't look back and say, wow, they didn't take advantage of that time. They didn't take advantage of that time. And, again, hope it doesn't come back down to that. 215-592-9494 is how you get in.

This is the final out sponsored by Regency Furniture. Affordable, never looks so good. Good development up in Lehigh Valley. Jose Alvarado was sitting 96-98 and had a scoreless outing up there. I think he walked one.

I know that's like, oh, he still walked the guy. There's something up, and I think a lot of it has to do with the Robo-Umpire system up in AAA, where I think they just have really tight strike zones. I mean, there was a game last week, two weeks ago maybe, that there was 23 walks.

And then you had, like, Griff McGarry had a famously bad start earlier this week with, like, six walks and a hit by a pitch. But I just wonder if this whole Robo ump thing is calling a really, really tight strike zone. But regardless, Jose Alvarado, I think they were targeting him to be back against Toronto. Then they push it back to this weekend. Still not there yet. Hopefully tonight takes off the rest of the weekend. Doesn't go with the team to Williamsport, even though it's closer to there than Washington.

And maybe he's back Monday. But either way, can't get back here soon enough. They clearly need an extra arm. And maybe him coming back. Like, him coming back and just being in the spots that Soto's been in, if we're getting the old Alvarado back, would just do wonders. I mean, I believe Alvarado in that spot keeps that game 7-6, and then it's a tie game. Soto's weird because it feels like he has a stretch of eight games

where it's scoreless, and then he has a three-burger. And then he gets on a pretty good stretch, and then a three-burger. But the fact of the matter is, in 13 innings, he's only struck out eight since the All-Star break, so that's not great, especially with the stuff that he has. That's almost inexcusable. Either way, getting Alvarado back, it's going to be great. It's something this team really needs. They need an extra arm out there and just hopefully he can come back and look

closer to the guy that we saw at the beginning of this year and not the guy that we were seeing before he went on the IL and was giving us a little bit of cause for a pause. 215-592-9494 is how you get in. If you want to react to this one and we'll get to all that on the other side, your phone calls, but also we look ahead to tomorrow and the rest of the weekend here on The Final Out. Jack Fritz, hanging out with you.

Welcome on back. It is The Final Out, sponsored by Regency Furniture. Affordable never looks so good. Our player of the game, which is brought to you by South Jersey Gas, committed to providing safe, reliable, affordable natural gas. Make the switch at southjerseyggas.com slash lovemyhome. I'm going to go see J. Abrams. I obviously had the, you know, that game.

It's like, it just happened so fast. It was like, all of a sudden, they hit the little single into left. It's 6-2. And I'm sitting here, and hit the little single into left. It's 6-2. And I'm sitting here. And I'm like, all right. Okay, it's 6-2. It's fine. Just get on out of it.

Just get back in the dugout and stop the bleeding here. And it's 6-4. And it's like you let them right back in the game right when you scored six runs. Vintage. and then before you know i think there was still a replay showing all of a sudden the ball's like flying out to right field you see the replay it's like the most hung change up of the year from from michael lorenzen and it's like are we serious we're down seven I mean, the freaking Rav fourth inning is one of the worst things to happen to Phillies baseball in its history.

It's just atrocious. I would love to know the team ERA in the Rav fourth inning because it's a damn near lock every single time that they're in it that they're allowing runs. It's insane. And it was just in the blink of a freaking eye tonight, that fourth inning and blowing that lead and then just not scoring for the rest of it.

Now, there were some positives. Obviously, Kyle Schwaber hitting two home runs was a good sign. But at the same time, he rakes in that ballpark. I think I heard a stat tonight. He has 26 home runs and 63 career games there, which is absurd. But, you know, whatever. Still, it was good. Jake Cave had three hits. His bat's heating up a little bit here. I'll tell you what. And Buzz, I want to know if you agree with me. I mean, one of the best heads of hair we've seen on a Philly in a long time. Jake Cave?

Yeah, he's got a strong head of hair. And it stays in place, too. Marsh is all over the place. Lorenzen, it's more of a skater, like Cali dude kind of look. I mean, Jake Cave, his hair is striking. It's hard to keep your hair in one place during a baseball game, too. I know. How do you put the hat on and it just stays? Harper used to do that early Bryce in his career with Washington.

Used to keep it like perfectly coiffed, which he must have been using like a gallon of hairspray a night just to keep it like that. Yeah. But it's true. Jake Cave, like we don't talk about his hair enough, do we? And that's why I feel like I need to bring it up. On a night full of negatives, Jake Cave's head is very positive

and the head of hair that he has. You know, and I thought pregame like Pache comes back, if he's healthy, Marsh comes back, what do they do there? I mean, the way that JK's hitting right now, he's pretty good in left field, obviously I think Marsh plays that when he gets back. I would like to have someone off the bench that I think can hit one out. So yeah, he was pretty good tonight. Jeff Hoffman bounced back and was fine as well.

Schwarber obviously had two home runs. Bryce looks pretty locked in. Trey had the strikeout late, which was concerning. He also hit a ball to the wall that maybe gets out on another night. Nick Cassianos with the four strikeouts was chasing again. He has been very weird this year. Obviously, we know that the All-Star

game was really good in the first half. But if you look at his splits by month, they're kind of all over the place. We know how bad he was in July. So, OPS by month he went

878 coming out 695 in may uh 567 around 954 in in june 497 in july and then back up to a 964 in august so he's been up down down, up, down, up, down. He smoked the ball the other night against the Blue Jays. I hope we're just chalking it up to a bad night. But, yeah, it was a frustrating one for sure. And, again, this is the final out sponsored by Regency Furniture. Affordable never looks so good. Tomorrow, 4.05 start.

Unfortunately, I have to watch the... I'm on the air from 12 to 5 tomorrow on CBS Sports Radio, so I have to try to attempt to talk to the national audience. The Phils are playing in very meaningful games in August, which is what I had to do last year when I was doing the same shift,

except it was in September when they lost the first game of that doubleheader, and it seemed like the whole thing was crumbling. It was all falling apart. The season was over in between that day-night doubleheader. Yes, and then Schwarber led off the second game of the home run. And we were all back, the whole thing. It was fine. And then the next day, Zach Wheeler

shoved, and all they had to do was go down to Houston and win one game. But that was a dreadful, dreadful time for me personally. Well, you only had to miss one hour, right? I know. It's only one hour, but it's like, how am I supposed to talk about, what am I going to do, Aaron Rodgers for that last hour?

What are you doing in the 4 to 5 p.m. hour? What do you have planned? I'm going to be counting down the seconds until I'm off the air. You should tape a few interviews. I will not do that. Maybe I'll bring Jody on and talk some horse racing or something. There you go. You, him, and Dick Girardi.

Horse racing roundtable. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Any chance I can get to talk some horse racing? Jolly wants to talk horse racing, too. Yeah, well, listen. We'll get Jolly in there for sure. He's been all fired up on Twitter. My number one Twitter follow, WIP.

He had a big top five yesterday. Yeah, he's had a bit. Now, he has regressed since the top five I would like to make that clear he has totally regressed because he got in his head yeah yeah he's Rico Bronia now um he's got the yips he's he's tweeting too much he's too angry um he wants to hold Johan Rojas very very accountable for dropping a ball on center field so um what does he want to do fire him into the sun because he made an error tonight? He said if you're not angry at that, you're missing the point. It's like, okay, I'm mad.

Accountability. 2-1-5-5-9-2-94-94. He's got a big show coming up on Sunday night if you want to call into him. I can't wait. Hear players held accountable for once. Listen, no one holds people more accountable than Jolly. Tomorrow, Chris Sanchez on the mound in what was supposed to be his last start, but with Ranger Suarez now banged up, it might not be.

He might stay in this rotation for a little bit, and fine. I mean, Chris Sanchez has been really good. I thought the Royal start was a bit of a blip in the radar. I think he's been mostly really good, He was good his last time out, so against a Nationals lineup, I would expect him to be pretty competent. He's going up against Jake Irvin, who has a 4-8-1

ERA in his last eight starts, but he hasn't been shelled. He hasn't allowed more than four in any of those, so he's keeping his team in ballgames, kind of doing what a traditional, I guess, 4-5 starter would do. But he's like every other Nats starter, throws hard and whatnot. So it's not exactly a pushover tomorrow for the Phils, but a 4-8-1 ERA is not great. So it's something hopefully the bats can take advantage of. And then Sunday, traveling up to

Williamsport, Zach Wheeler on the mound versus Trevor Williams, which has to be a win. I mean, we've seen what this team has done against Trevor Williams the last couple times out. Schwarber got him for two last week. So it should be more of the same, especially up in Williamsport where the ball sort of just flies out of that ballpark. So either way, looking forward to that.

And again, tonight, total missed opportunity in something where if they lose the series, it's like, great, you just completely blew an opportunity. So fun one. Either way, it was fun to react to. And I'll be back Monday with leading off with actually myself and Ike, and then obviously reacting to the game on postgame. But either way, that's going to do it for me. Dan Wilson produced this fine final out tonight. Rob Cherry's got you next. He'll take you through the rest of the night here on Sports Radio 94 WIP.