LOS ANGELES - Mercifully for the Phillies, Sunday is Brett Myers Day.
That means they have a chance. Too often this season, they haven't. Too often, the starter hasn't lasted more than five innings, and the batters have looked up at the scoreboard after the first couple of innings and seen themselves in another deep hole.
"When you're always trying to come back, it makes it more difficult," second baseman Chase Utley said after the Phillies' 8-2 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers on Saturday at Dodger Stadium. "But when you're in those situations, you have to do whatever it takes to get on base, just to put some runs across the board."
Not even the best offense can come through night after night after night.
Lefthander Eude Brito, who replaced injured righthander Jon Lieber in the rotation, allowed nine hits and six runs in four innings to put the Phillies in a 6-0 hole. Phillies starters have a 5.27 earned run average this season. Remove Myers (4-2, 2.80 ERA) from the rotation and they have a 6.04 ERA.
In the first three games of this series, the starters have a 12.46 ERA.
Brito (0-1) allowed four consecutive hits to open the bottom of the first as the Dodgers took a 4-0 lead. He allowed two more runs in the fourth.
"Everything I was throwing they were hitting," Brito said.
"He got through the second and third innings, but he was a hit away from getting hurt in those innings," manager Charlie Manuel said. "He's inexperienced. It's the same thing we said about Gavin Floyd or any other young pitcher that pitches. It's going to take them a while to get comfortable and make pitches."
The Phillies have few options to bolster their rotation at this point, unless they acquire a pitcher in a trade. Perhaps the best in-house option is righthander Ryan Franklin. He had competed for a starting job in the spring before Manuel put him in the bullpen. The Phillies have some talented starters at double-A Reading, but the team doesn't have a history of jumping pitchers from double A to the majors.
"We just keep sending them out there and hope we get a good game out of them," Manuel said. "That's kind of how it is, and that's what we're going to do."
J.D. Drew knocked in a pair of runs and scored two for Los Angeles. Dodgers righthander Brad Penny (6-1) allowed just one hit through six shutout innings, but threw 112 pitches.
The Phillies walked a season-high nine times but struck out 14 times. They got their runs off Tim Hamulack in the eighth, when Chris Coste scored on a wild pitch and Bobby Abreu hit an RBI double.
"It's tough when you get behind like that and you're fighting uphill," Manuel said. "We've been doing that a lot. It's a wear and tear on you. You feel like you "have to get a hit. You get impatient. You chase bad pitches. It's a completely different game."
