Insult and Injury: Padres 8, Phillies 2

It might be an understatement to say the Phillies’ road trip to Southern California is not going very well. On Monday night, they lost to the Padres by a score of 8-2, dropping them to 0-4 on this two-city tour of the West Coast. Even worse, Andrew McCutchen suffered a knee injury that might be rather serious.

The injury occurred in the first inning, when Jean Segura hit a popup with McCutchen on first base. Padres’ second baseman Ian Kinsler let the ball drop, threw it to first to get Segura, and then caught McCutchen in a run down. While he was trying to elude the fielders, his knee went out.

Some people are criticizing Segura for not running hard on the play, but he fell down in the batter’s box, and like 99.99% of major league players, he didn’t run all out to first base on an infield pop up.

Things didn’t get any better after that. Aaron Nola got the start for the Phillies, and he allowed only one run through the first five innings, before things fell apart quickly in the sixth. Nola allowed five of the first six batters to reach base, giving up three runs in the process.

JD Hammer was brought in to attempt to limit the damage. With two outs and the bases loaded, he had to face Manny Machado, and the damage was decidedly not limited.

I’ll have to award round one of the Machado vs. Bryce Harper (0-4) competition to Machado.

The Phillies’ offense was unable to answer. Padres starter Eric Lauer and three relievers held them to just six hits on the night. Aside from J.T. Realmuto’s two RBIs, it was another quiet night for the Phillies’ bats.

This disastrous road trip continues on Tuesday night. Hopefully they can find a way to salvage a couple of wins over the next two days. Perhaps more importantly, hopefully test results will show only minor damage to McCutchen’s knee.