Game 9 of 162: And That Ball Is Outta Here!

On a day where the Phillies honored the late Harry Kalas, balls flew out of the park left and right. There was one problem though, the Padres hit three to the Phillies one.

Holy home runs allowed Phillies. Through 9 games in this young season, the Phillies are posting a 7.06 ERA, by far, the worst in the National League. They have thrown only one quality start, which happened to be an 8-2 loss. Teams are batting with a .919 OPS against them and they've allowed a whopping 23 home runs. They are allowing 2.5 home runs per game.

This is not normally what happens to teams who lead the NL with a 2.58 K/BB ratio. The pitching staff should rebound at some point and everything will be okay, but these early mistakes are a little bit of a cause for concern.

The offense that struggled against Atlanta has rebounded and kept them in enough games to have a 4-5 record. The Phillies will pitching staff needs to improve immediately if the Phillies went to get out of April with a winning record and remain in contention with the extremely hot Marlins.

Everything was going well for the Phillies early on last night. They jumped out to a 5-0 lead after Chase Utley hit a three-run home run and Chris Coste hit a two-run double. The Phillies lead later went to 7-1 in the fourth, but that was all she wrote for the offense as San Diego's bullpen shut us down.

The same could not be said for the Phillies. Cole Hamels was cruising through the game until the fifth and sixth inning when left pitches up in the zone for home runs and the game was quickly 7-5. Condrey and Eyre pitched well for a scoreless 7th, but Ryan Madson had his worst appearance of the year and allowed 3 runs on 3 hits and a walk.

Good News: Raul Ibanez reached base 5 times in 5 ABs with 3 hits and 2 walks. His average is now up to .368 and he has been giving the Phillies a consistent hitter behind Ryan Howard, whether he hits fifth or sixth.