Hanging Chads: Braves 9, Phillies 0

The last time a Chad pitched for the Phillies was May 30th, 2013, on which a Chad by the name of Durbin allowed 3 runs on 4 hits over one inning of work to bring his season ERA to 9.00 (though to be fair to that particular Chad is FIP was substantially lower, at a still vomit-inducing 5.99). He's not pitched a professional inning since. Tonight's Chad last appeared in a major league game on April 15th, 2013, 750 days ago.

What eerie similarities. Both over 700 days, with just the 0 and 5 transposed. Such a coincidence can only be the work of dark forces. And those dark forces would be at work again tonight as they tied the results of past Chad performances to Chad's results tonight. Or, less contrived and more succinctly, tonight the new Chad sucked, just like the old Chads sucked.

Andrelton Simmons singled to right field on the 8th pitch of Chad Billingsley's Phillies career. On the 10th pitch, this happened:

Two first inning runs? For a team that leads the National League in not scoring runs that may be a bit of a problem. It reminds me of this, which made me laugh some years ago.

Heh, remember when the Mets were bad and the Phillies were good? Good times, those.

But that's silliness, for we're talking about a team in the midst of a two-game winning streak, during which they've scored 11 runs on 24 hits. An offensive juggernaut! For two games, at least, so all was not  yet lost. "Yet" being the operative word.

If the Phillies had any chance to stay in the game they'd have to limit the damage before their offense could scrape together some runs off Braves pitcher Shelby Miller, who looked very good all night. Through four the Phils sent the minimum to the plate, with their sole hit being a C'r H'd'z single that was erased by a subsequent Carlos Ruiz double play ground out. The game really got out of hand in the bottom of the 4th, as Billingsley allowed back to back singles to Freddy Freeman and AJ Pierzynski. That brought Jonny Gomes to the plate, resulting in this:

Michael Young-esque.

The PASCA (Past A Standing Cody Asche) was then followed by another hanging Chad pitch, this time to Kelly Johnson. I would embed the video here, but MLB.com likes to capriciously decide which videos are embeddable and which are not, so I'll just link the video here. I could WebM-ify it, but I just did that, so let's try something different. Here's an MS Paint representation of the Johnson AB.

Legend: The little cactus looking things are fans. Out of pure generosity on my part I embellished their actual presence in the OF stands. The chubby guy on the mound is our Chad of the hour, Chad Billingsley, or, alternatively, Bad Chillingsley. The rest you can figure out on your own. Or not, it really doesn't matter. The game was out of hand, and the best defensive play of the night was made by a Phillies fan in a Halladay jersey. THAT play, for some reason, is embeddable. Thanks, MLB, for your logical and in no way frustratingly arbitrary choice on which clips to provide embedding code for:

The rest of the game was a relatively ugly display by the Phillies bullpen that doesn't deserve a whole lot of words devoted to it. Elvis Araujo was okay in his debut, as was De Fratus. Dustin McGowan, on the other hand, was very bad and we shall speak of him no more.

Other Notes:

- While the game sucked, Phillies twitter remains fun:

In the last two games Revere has played all three outfield positions. He's so positionally flexible, one might say he's Ben-dable

— Eric Chesterton (@CF_Larue) May 6, 2015

@RoobCSN Roob, tonight was the 8th game of the year the opposition had more runs than the Phillies had hits. THE EIGHTH. They've played 28.

— PhilaPhans (@PhilaPhans) May 6, 2015

At 90 feet per walk, the Phillies have given up nearly two miles in walks (115) already this season, the most in baseball.

— Bill Baer (@Baer_Bill) May 6, 2015

And my favorite Phils tweet of the evening, Morgan Reagle's response to the thoroughly anodyne Phillies twitter update:

"@Phillies: Through seven innings in Atlanta, #Phillies are down 9-0." pic.twitter.com/jajYXEolM5

— Morgan Reagle (@MorganReagle) May 6, 2015

- Chase Utley, he of the .389 OPS, did not play this evening, and will apparently get a few days off as Sandberg indicated that he will not play tomorrow, and will get a third day off with the Phillies off day on Thursday.

- In the silver linings department, this game was so out of hand that Sandberg didn't have a chance to abuse any of his young relief arms!

- Game thread comment of the night, in reference to Cody Asche's less than stellar defensive prowess goes to Phillibusted:

- I watched the game on CSNPhilly, where they played a commercial featuring the first couple lines of this song approximately twice every break. I figure I should share it with my fellow fans who might not have had a chance to hear it thirty times in the last 3 hours:

- And in silver linings that apply only to me, Shelby Miller, who happens to be on my Ottoneu fantasy team, was great, pitching a complete game 3-hitter, walking only 1 while striking out 8 Phillies.

Chadgraph of the loss (etymological redundancy, I know):

Source: FanGraphs

Phillies face the Barves again tomorrow (7:10 pm EST) with Jerome Williams looking to get them back in the win column.