That.....that wasn’t good: Yankees 6, Phillies 0

I’m going to lead with this tweet:

That sums up the night pretty well. Luis Severino was completely dominant. Nevermind the few hits off of him, though seeing Scott Kingery get two of those hits was encouraging. There came a point where he was simply throwing the ball anywhere he wanted in the strike zone because he knew Phillies hitters weren’t going to touch him. It was an impressive display from the young Yankees right hander, one we can be thankful the Phillies don’t have to see very often.

Now, about that other side of the ball....

Jake Arrieta struggled again tonight, but let’s zero in on something here. This is where I will defend Arrieta to a degree. In the bottom of the third, Severino started the inning with a fly out to right. Now, mind you, the Yankees were already ahead thanks to a lead off home run by Aaron Hicks, but the game was far from over. The next two hitters singled, bringing up Didi Gregorius. Arrieta desperately needed a double play to get out of the inning and got that ground ball. The normally defensive stalwart Cesar Hernandez proceeded to throw the ball wide of Kingery, pulling him off the bag and ending any thought of a double play. Three unearned runs scored after that, giving Severino a cushion he ended up not even needing, and the game just seemed over after that. There almost was no point in watching it because of the way Severino was dealing.

This is the type of stuff Arrieta has had to endure this season with the shoddy defense.

Granted, we’d all like Arrieta to pitch better. I’m sure he even has higher expectations for his performance thus far as well. However, consistently getting this kind of defense behind him almost on a nightly basis has to be deflating even to a veteran like Arrieta. It’s been a common theme this year. Their 56 errors coming into the game was third in the National League. There isn’t much evidence that it is getting better either, regardless of what Kapler says. It’s just weird that of all the pitchers on this staff, it seems that all of the bad defense comes with Arrieta is on the mound. Is he without blame? Again, no. June has not been kind to the bearded one,

and if this team wants to contend for a playoff spot of any kind, he must be better.

It was just a bad night all the way around. Tomorrow, they’ll try to avoid a series sweep by sending Zach Eflin to the hill.