For the second time in a week, the Phillies wasted a strong outing by Cole Hamels against the New York Mets. On Friday night, Hamels went 8 innings giving up just one run.
The Phillies couldn’t get anything done against R.A. Dickey, and if not for Hamels getting a hit in the 6th inning, Dickey may have thrown a no hitter. In both losses to the Mets this week, the Phillies couldn’t get Cole Hamels any run support.
It’s an all too familiar situation for Hamels. Hamels has had a great season, but the Phillies offense has rarely given him decent run support. As a result, Hamels has not won a game in over a month. His record stands at 7-9, which doesn’t justify how well he has performed.
The Phillies can’t continue to let these strong pitching performances go to waste. The Phillies are going to be in a tight race with the Braves for the division title. Losing this game pushed them back to three games behind the Braves.
Yes, the Braves have lost Martin Prado and Chipper Jones to injury. Yes, the Phillies are only going to get stronger with Ryan Howard and Chase Utley returning at the end of August.
However, the Braves are not the New York Mets. They aren’t going to just collapse in the final month and a half of the season. If they were to slip back to 5 games or more back before the end of August, it would make things difficult for this team to overtake the Braves.
Its going to be a dogfight over the final month of the season, and the Phillies need every game in the standings they can get. In one week alone, they’ve let two very winnable games against a poor team get away.
In recent weeks the Phillies have done well to make up the amount of ground that they have, but they still have some work to do to make up for the damage they did to themselves during their slump.
Its just one game, but the Phillies can’t afford to let too many more 1-0 games get away.
They have been doign it all years when Hamel’s pitches..
He should have 12-14 Wins with the way he’s pitched since May..
Hopefully he doesn’t get discouraged and down on himself & teammates for they will need his solid pitching for the stretch run if they are to make the Post-Season..