By Phil Sheridan
Go west, young man, Horace Greely famously said. His less famous follow-up: And don't come back!
The Philadelphia Phillies did come back from their disastrous road trip through Colorado and San Francisco, but it's hard to say what version of the team landed at Philadelphia International Airport Wednesday night.
The 2022 National League champions were always going to get off to a rough start to 2023. They began the season without their best player, Bryce Harper, and his trusty sidekick Rhys Hoskins. Effective starter Ranger Suarez was delayed by a sore elbow and wunderkind pitcher Andrew Painter was injured in his one and only spring training appearance.
At best, the remaining Phillies would be able to stay afloat until Harper and the rest got back. Midway through May, with Harper and Suarez both at their posts, the Phillies are as infuriatingly unreliable as ever. Worse, they are playing some terrible baseball.
They lost their fourth consecutive game, 7-4, in San Francisco Wednesday. It was a fresh pile of awful starting pitching and ineffectual offense, with a late collapse mixed in for good measure.
It was the fitting end to a series in which the heart of the Phillies' lineup -- that is, the eight-figure-salary batters from Trea Turner at No. 2 to Kyle Schwarber at No. 5 -- struck out 19 times. The Phillies had 2 hits in 25 at-bats with runners in scoring position. That's a team batting average of .080. That is the opposite of clutch hitting.
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"There's obvious frustration," Schwarber told reporters. "We all want to play better, but there's also still so much more to go. We feel like we haven't really even hit the stride yet to where we're feeling like as a team that we're just going collectively. We're going to get to that point. We have to figure out a way to get there."
Is that possible? In a 162-game regular season, almost anything is possible. The Phillies are 20-23 after their road strip. Last season, at this point, they were 20-23. So possible? Yes.
"Is it frustrating? Sure," Schwarber said. "Was it frustrating last year? Sure. But it wasn't like we were all losers last year. Our job is to find a way to get there. I can guarantee you that everyone is doing that. Everyone is doing their part to be the best version of them and help the team in any way possible."
Those 20-23 Phillies did right themselves. But remember, Joe Girardi was the manager of that team. It took Girardi's firing and Rob Thomson's elevation to manager for the 2022 Phillies to become NL pennant winners.
The most distressing aspect of this trip was the Phillies' inability to take advantage of lesser opponents. The Rockies are 19-25 and in last place in the NL West. San Francisco was 17-23 at the beginning of this series with the Phillies and stands at 20-23 at the end of it. After a weekend series against the Cubs, the Phillies host Arizona (25-19) and NL East-leading Atlanta (26-16) next week.
"I love the fight in these guys," Thomson said after the fourth loss in a row.
Maybe he does. Or maybe he hopes if he just keeps saying it, it will become the Phillies' reality.