The Phillies are not a good baseball team. They’re in the middle of a genuine rebuild, their hot start to the season was mostly helium, they have a moribund offense and no parts of their promising young pitching were on display Tuesday night with Jake Thompson on the hill. A Sox blowout shouldn’t have been too shocking of a result, but this is a team that just rolled over to Kendall Graveman this past weekend.
Accepting the fact that the Sox have actually been able to win games again after that effort, it’s still been a quick path back to dominating another major league team.
1. Thompson’s fourth pitch of the night was blasted by Adam Eaton off the top of the left-center of the wall for a leadoff triple, and he was quickly home on a Tim Anderson groundout to stake Carlos Rodon to an early 1-0 lead. Thompson tiptoed around two walks, but escaped the first and got to the third inning before the top of the order did another number on him.
Eaton bunted for a leadoff single, and raced home when Anderson lofted a triple of his own just over Peter Bourjos‘ head in right. After walking Melky Cabrera for the second time on the night already, Thompson was lucky his hanger to Jose Abreu only resulted in a bouncer up the middle to push the lead to 3-0.
2. Despite allowing a Todd Frazier sacrifice fly to end the third inning down 4-0, Thompson pitched a perfect fourth, only to face the top of the order again. After issuing his third walk to Cabrera of the night, Abreu found a fastball he liked enough to drill his third home run in as many night out to left. Switching to a change didn’t help, since Justin Morneau strode up and swatted his own solo blast out to right to go back-to-back with Abreu.
7-0 wound up being a bigger deficit than the Phillies could manage, especially since it went to 9-0 the next inning.
3. Rodon, showing shades of his 2015 season-ending flourish, ripped off his fourth-straight quality start. He powered up for 98 mph to blow away Tommy Joseph and Cameron Rupp to pitch over two singles in the first. While typically, if Rodon is the zone at all he’s racking up strikeouts, he found the joy of easy outs Tuesday. After sneaking a high slider past Carlos Ruiz to lead off the second, he allowed one more baserunner–a walk to Tyler Goeddel, his only free pass of the night–through the fifth, without recording another whiff.
As promising as Rodon has been through August, he’s maxed out at six innings each time. All the quick outs allowed him to make it through…6.2 innings. After the scoreless outing, he’s lowered his ERA from 4.67 to 4.02 in August.
4. The big offensive night for the Sox allowed a rare night off for Nate Jones and David Robertson. Chris Beck came in with two outs in the seventh and immediately allowed a massive home run to sprightly infielder Freddie Galvis, but took the Sox through the eighth without further damage before Jacob Turner struck out two in a scoreless ninth. He’s got a 2.16 ERA in 8.1 innings of relief.
5. Avisail Garcia banged a double and scored in his first game back from injury but also struck out twice. Anderson’s OBP is up to .301 after a two-hit night, and Abreu is up .285/.341/.455 on the year. That he now has the highest OPS of any offensive regular is either a happy return to his rightful throne, or a really sad total to be the highest OPS on the team. Or both.
Team Record: 60-64
Next game is Wednesday at 7:10pm CT vs. Philadelphia on CSN.
Lead Image Credit: Mike Dinovo // USA Today Sports Images