BALTIMORE — Maikel Franco admitted that his emotions got the best of him in the top of the seventh inning Monday night. The Phillies’ rookie third baseman went off on home plate umpire Eric Cooper after a called third strike and was ejected for the first time as a major-leaguer.
Franco was one of the lucky ones.
He didn’t have to stick around and watch the completion of another dreadful loss for this mostly lifeless Phillies team.
The Phillies were shut out by a score of 4-0 by a Baltimore Orioles club that is hot, but not as hot as the Phillies are cold (see Instant Replay).
Baltimore has won nine of its last 11 to improve to a game over .500 in the American League East.
The Phillies, meanwhile, have lost seven straight games and 20 of their last 25 to fall deep into baseball’s basement. They are 22-43 on the season and an abysmal 7-27 on the road.
With a loss Tuesday night, the Phillies will complete a winless eight-game road trip. They have never had a winless road trip of that many games in franchise history.
Things are beyond bleak with this club.
How bleak?
Three of their last four losses have come by shutout. They lost a pair of extra-innings games by the score of 1-0 over the weekend in Pittsburgh before lefty Wei-Yin Chen handcuffed them for eight innings — four hits, one walk, nine strikeouts — on Monday night.
“He looked good against us,” manager Ryne Sandberg said. “We’re having trouble swinging the bats and getting things going. We’ve had a tough road trip on that note.”
The Phillies rank last in the majors, scoring an average of 3.03 runs per game.
“We need to swing the bats,” Sandberg said. “We’ve had a problem scoring runs. Our pitching has actually stepped up, primarily on this road trip. Our bullpen has been pretty good. We’ve gotten some quality starts, but we have to swing the bats to score runs. With the warm weather and being the summer, we need to put some runs up on the board.
“I know the guys are playing hard and hustling and trying hard. And maybe trying hard to an extreme — who knows? — to the side of pressing their at-bats.”
The Phillies had just two hits through seven innings. Both were by Cesar Hernandez. He had a bunt single and a double.
Aaron Harang did not pitch badly, but he prolonged the sixth inning with a two-out walk and that set up a decisive three-run home run by Matt Wieters on a flat slider that Harang wishes he had back.
Harang also allowed a two-out run in the fifth, but he should have been out of that inning. New leftfielder Cody Asche misplayed a ball at the wall into a double, setting up the Orioles’ first run.
Harang is 4-8 in 14 starts, but his ERA, which took a beating in his previous two starts, is a respectable 3.24. He could end up being traded to a team that needs starting pitching — Baltimore? Houston? — some time soon. But for now, he will grind out the Phillies’ tough times with his teammates.
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“I think everybody is grinding through it,” he said. “We’ve all had our bad days. Sometimes you just have to snap and let the frustration out. Sometimes that’s good because if you leave it pent up too long, you can start pressing even more. It’s good to let it out. It shows that you really care.”
The “snap” that Harang referred to came from Franco in the seventh inning. He didn’t like Cooper’s strike zone in the first inning either. He was rung up looking then, as well.
Franco’s ejection was just the second of his pro career. He got heaved in Double A two years ago.
“My emotions got the best of me,” he said. “That’s baseball.”
Sandberg would rather have Franco stick around for the entire game, but he did not mind seeing the emotion from his third baseman.
“It’s good to see emotion out there. Absolutely,” he said. “He was one of our hotter hitters as we speak and he’s trying to do some damage and get some runs on the board. They were some tough pitches called against him.”