PHILLIES NEWS

The Phils traveled to San Francisco tonight to begin a 4 weekend set with the Giants. With Cliff Lee not available to start until tomorrow Rodrigo Lopez got probably his last start for the Phils this season, barring any injuries or Pedro Martinez flopping badly. Unfortunately Lopez went out on a bad note allowing 7 runs on 8 hits in just 4 innings of work. The Giants not only jumped on him early but the Phils also killed themselves with an uncharacteristic 3 errors. So it wasn't all Lopez's fault, and in fact only 3 of the 7 runs he gave up were actually earned runs. You just can't win baseball games making mistakes like that, especially not against a talented team like the Giants. The Phils lineup wasn't much better than Lopez, again appearing sluggish while scoring just 2 runs on 5 hits, 1 run on a solo homer by Chase Utley and the other run on a double by Ryan Howard. That also won't win many games for you. It's not as if the Phils didn't have opportunities either. They could easily have scored more after Howard's double and should have scored Jimmy Rollins after he leadoff the top of the 3rd with a double, but they did not. It was just an overall poor performance and a deserved 7-2 loss to the Giants. I think part of the problem is that Shane Victorino, nursing a knee contusion was not in the lineup, and he's really the guy that brings the energy to park for them. At the same time they're clearly running out of gas right now after about 2 weeks without an off day and they desperately need the one that is coming Monday. Ultimately I think they're going to have to figure out some way to at least get a split out of this series and then they can relax knowing at least that they haven't lost any ground in the NL East. Hopefully Cliff Lee's first start tomorrow will be a very good one, because I don't think he's going to get the increased run support he was hoping for just yet. Anyway so the Phils drop to 58-42 now, but still 6 games up in the NL East.