Bullpen Blues: Why are the Phillies the way that they are?

The Phillies lose yet another series at the hands of their league-worst bullpen.

It seems impossible, but the Philadelphia Phillies keep on finding ways to one-up their own embarrassing play. On Wednesday night they blew the game in the ninth inning because one of their relievers literally dropped the baseball on the mound, and on Thursday the bullpen gave up a collective 6 runs through just 3.2 innings of work.

After an extremely depressing seven game series loss to the Marlins last week, the team trotted into a new set of games against the Mets and even managed to escape with a Game 1 victory. It wasn’t without sacrifice however, as the Phillies lost Jake Arrieta for the remainder of the season due to injury.

Game 2 of the series was a complete and utter disaster, as the Phils’ bullpen absolutely threw away a quality start by Zack Wheeler. Pitching through an injury the entire night, Wheeler left the game after 7.1 innings with the lead still intact. Adam Morgan and Hector Neris both promptly allowed runs to score, forfeiting what should have been a series-clinching victory.

Even when the offense is cooking, the Phillies still can’t seem to hang on to leads. Bryce Harper, Alec Bohm, and Didi Gregorius went back-to-back-to-back to kick off Game 3 of the series and the Phillies offense finished with six runs. Harper added a near third deck homer later in the game but it still wasn’t enough.

It feels like the Phillies offense could score 20 runs each game and the team’s bullpen would still find a way to blow the game in the ninth inning.

To once again take you through all this endlessly depressing choas is Philly Sports Network’s own Philadelphia Phillies podcast: the Bullpen Blues. Hosted by David Esser and Kevin Dickson, and available for download on the newly launched “PSN Radio”, the duo talks about this week’s bullpen woes, Harper starting to heat back up, Mickey Moniak’s major league debut, and much much more.

Make sure to check out the episode below while also subscribing to PSN Radio for all of your Philadelphia sports podcasting needs.

You can reach the Bullpen Blues hosts, David and Kevin, on Twitter at @DavidEsser_and @kdickson53.