John Middleton probably doesn’t need any additional reasons to pull his hair out right now. Watching his baseball team give away outs in the field and flailing at baseballs at an alarmingly high rate at home plate has surely soured the mood of the Phillies’ managing partner enough.
Still, it has to drive the man in charge of the money even madder when he watches his team get beat over and over again by ballclubs that are not paying nearly as much for their product.
We all know about the Phillies’ struggles against the Miami Marlins the last two seasons. Even after splitting four games with Miami at the start of this nine-game road trip, the Phillies were still 3-4 against the team with the fourth-lowest payroll in baseball this season after going 3-7 against it a year ago to help the Marlins make the playoffs.
Fortunately for the Phillies, they do not have to face Florida’s other major league team nearly as often as the Marlins because the Tampa Bay Rays have mastered the art of doing more with less.
If former Oakland general manager Billy Beane was the mastermind behind Moneyball, then Tampa Bay’s longtime president Matt Silverman should be in line for a movie, too. They could call it Lack of Money Ball: How to consistently win with one of the lowest payrolls in baseball.
The Rays, who made it to the World Series a year ago, something never achieved by Beane’s A’s teams, completed a two-game sweep of the Phillies with a 6-2 win Sunday afternoon at Tropicana Field.
That’s five straight wins for the Rays against the Phillies as well as their 15th win in their last 16 games this season. The Phillies, of course, needed to win just one game a year ago at Tropicana Field to qualify for the playoffs but could not do so on the final weekend even though the Rays had already locked up the best record in the American League.
The Rays, for the record, had the third-lowest payroll in baseball last year and have the fifth-lowest payroll this year. Their total payroll of $63.1 million is less than what the Phillies are paying the trio of Bryce Harper, J.T. Realmuto, and Zack Wheeler this season. The Phillies’ total payroll of $183.6 million is the fifth-highest in baseball.
If those numbers do not drive Middleton crazy, then what he saw again on the field Sunday should have. The Phillies, who have lost 10 of their last 14 to fall to three games under .500 for the first time this season, gave away two runs in the second inning and another in the seventh.
The inning started with a Zach Eflin walk to Austin Meadows, but only after third baseman over ran a pop-fly foul ball that he should have caught for the first out of the inning. With two outs in the inning, Mike Zunnino homered to make it 2-0.
The score went to 3-0 in the fifth when Eflin allowed a two-out home run to Brett Phillips and 4-0 when Ji-Man Choi doubled off the right-field wall against reliever Ranger Suarez. A missed cutoff man and a throwing error by right fielder Brad Miller helped contribute to a two-run inning for the Rays in the seventh after Joe Girardi’s decision to replace reliever Connor Brogdon with Archie Bradley backfired on the manager.
Offensively, the Phillies managed just two runs on 10 hits off six Tampa Bay pitchers. In sticking with the Rays’ most unconventional ways, manager Kevin Cash used his starter/opener Collin McHugh for just two outs in the first inning before getting 8 1/3 strong innings from his bullpen.
The good news for the Phillies is that they do not have to play the Rays again until Aug. 24 at Citizens Bank Park.
