Another week of frustrating offensive output, another week of what felt like lost time for the team. It’s still very early in the season, so no one should be even near a panic button….but it would be nice if this team started playing better baseball, particularly at home.
Three up
Bryce Harper – When the stars play well, the Phillies play well. It has been their mantra for years now. Look at any timespan during the tenures of Harper and Kyle Schwarber and I’ll bet that you find if one or both are swinging
the bat well, the team is playing well as a result. Putting up a .526/.640/.895 line over a week’s worth of time is what I would call playing well for Harper. He just needs to keep it rolling.
Justin Crawford – So, the kid can hit. This has been true for his whole minor league career, no matter the level he has been playing at. I’ll still be quite interested to see how he is able to adjust once the league figures out the book on him. So far, they seem to be thinking that throwing his velocity either up in the zone or down and in the zone are the ways to make sure he is not on the bases, but the Ichiro-esque way he seems to be able to flick tough pitches into left field has gotten him out of some tough at bats.
Also, the team should let him run more.
Brad Keller – Keller’s addition this offseason was one that somewhat came out of the blue. I’m not sure there were any rumors around prior to his actually agreeing to a deal that the team was in on signing him, yet there he was – inking a two-year deal to handle the eighth inning for the Phillies. So far, he has been stellar for them, locking up that eighth inning to be able to hand the ball off to Jhoan Duran.
Three down
Alec Bohm – There is simply no reason why Alec Bohm should be any higher in the batting order than sixth at any point in this season. There is no sense in continuing the charade that he is a cleanup hitter.
He is not.
The team has other options to do that job, even if that other option right now follows Bohm in the “three down” portion of this week’s look back. But Bohm is simply nothing more than a six hitter in this, or any, lineup. If the team were serious about it, they would start looking to get Edmundo Sosa a start or two more during the week over Bohm while he struggles. They have given him plenty of chances, but it’s probably time to start looking at alternatives rather than chances.
Adolis Garcia – The game giveth and the game taketh away. Garcia was quite good in the week prior, earning a higher spot in the batting order as a result….and promptly got one hit in 25 plate appearances after that. This is how it will be with Garcia. He’ll run hot and cold and right now, he’s in the cold part of his game. It can be brutal to watch when he is at the plate (his Sunday at bat in the eighth inning an example), so thank goodness he is an excellent fielder to help mitigate some of the awfulness.
Jose Alvarado – There is a sense that at some point, a team official is going to go up to Alvarado and tell him that his elbow hurts and that he needs to sit down for a little while. There is no other way to say it other than he has been terrible this season.
