Moving on: Athletics 6, Phillies 3

Sigh.

The Phillies lost 6-3 to the Athletics game, another in a long string of games this season that were definitely winnable — if the Phillies were a better team.

Even with this bright, shiny new lineup out there, it doesn’t mean we’re on our way to happy town. These guys are young and they need to grow and get more experience. Today’s game just shows that in spades.

In fact, the entire weekend showed that, as the Phillies’ big hitters (Rhys Hoskins and Nick Williams) went almost the entire weekend without a hit. Williams got his first hit of the series today. And today, Hoskins went 0-for-5 with three strikeouts. There are slumps on the horizon for these guys, and it’s a shame there’s so little time left to play because they both need to learn how to handle slumps in the majors.

I’m confident they’ll figure it out, though. It’ll just take time. Unfortunately, that time hasn’t arrived, and today’s game happened.

The big hero today was J.P. Crawford, once again showing off his incredible patience. He didn’t get a hit, but he walked twice and scored what was originally the go-ahead run off of a Maikel Franco single.

It was originally the go-ahead run. It didn’t stay that way. Because as sure as the sunset, I spent words complimenting the bullpen this morning in my recap of last night’s game, which meant that today someone in that bullpen was going to make me look like an idiot.

That someone was Edubray Ramos, who I almost wrote an entire paragraph about in yesterday’s recap. So I could look like an even bigger idiot than I do right now.

The sixth inning is where it all came apart. Today’s starter Henderson Alvarez pitched to two batters in the fifth, and they both reached. He was replaced by Hoby Milner, who faced one batter, got one out, and then was taken out for Ramos for some reason. Maybe the Phillies staff got jealous of all the pitching changes Oakland was making, because they made a pitching change anytime someone farted the wrong way. Every seven seconds there was a pitching change. They’re on a plane right now and Bob Melvin is probably pointing toward the bathroom trying to change out the guy he’s talking to with someone else. Good lord there were a lot of pitching changes.

Anyway, Milner faced one batter and left, and Ramos came in to replace him. Ramos got a strikeout right off the bat, but then walked the second hitter he faced. The bases were loaded for local West Chester kid Joey Wendle. I saw him come up. I remembered that he was from the Philly suburbs. I looked at my TV, which was on mute (I refused to listen to either Larry Andersen’s bitching or Mike Schmidt’s criminal boringness today), and said “I know what happens next.”

I did know. Because Wendle hit his second career home run off of Edubray Ramos, a grand slam that put the Athletics up 6-3. There were three more innings after that, but it didn’t matter. The Phillies hadn’t been able to get anything going off of the Athletics all weekend, and it wasn’t going to change in the final innings. At least now the series is over and the Athletics can LEAVE, JUST LIKE THEY DID IN 1954 BECAUSE NO ONE IN PHILADELPHIA LIKED THEM ANYMORE. AND NO ONE LIKES YOU NOW, ATHLETICS. YOU HEAR THAT? NO ONE HERE LIKES YOU oh wait they probably don’t care.

So the Phillies lost 6-3, and while I could tell you how those two other Phillies runs were scored, they lost so I’m ready to move on.

Move on to what? Why, a series against the Los Angeles Dodgers! ::weeps:: I’M SURE IT’LL BE GREAT!