TAMPA, Fla. -- After the 12-0 loss to the Yankees at The Stein on Monday afternoon, Phils' skipper Charlie Manuel was most displeased. No, he wasn't upset about the loss - that stuff happens in Grapefruit League games. Instead it was the way in which the Phillies lost.
It wasn't pretty.
"We made mistakes," Charlie said after the 12-run, 20-hit and two-error showing against the Yanks had mercifully ended. "We made a helluva lot of bleepin’ mistakes."
It wasn't pretty. On defense the team threw the ball around, misplayed a few and generally looked sloppy as their Grapefruit League record dipped to 6-10. Offensively, the Phillies got six hits, stranded eight and went 0-for-3 with runners in scoring position. Worse, it lasted more than three hours turning it into the baseball equivalent to waterboarding
Nope, not one for the vault.
"I think any game like that pisses you off and the best thing you can do is bleepin’ get out there and get on that bleepin’ bus and forget about that sonofabitch. That was a horebleep bleepin’ game and if I played in a bleepin’ game like that, I’d definitely bleepin’ take some good inventory of myself. That was a horsebleep bleepin’ game. They don’t get much worse than that. It was terrible.
"I’d say we hit bleepin’ rock bottom there for a while."
Charlie might be trying to simply motivate the kids he has in the lineup with Jimmy Rollins and Shane Victorino off playing in the World Baseball Classic and Chase Utley and Pedro Feliz still mending from off-season surgery. Still, on the day the team made its first cuts of the spring, Charlie might have expected some crisper play.
Nevertheless, Charlie says the quality play will improve greatly in another week or so.
"The last 10-to-12 days we’ll really work on the fundamental parts of the game," Charlie said. "But Rollins and Victorino aren’t here and Utley and Feliz are hurt – we want to get people back and ready so we can really key on that. But today it was just bad playin’ and, you know, what the hell? That’s why I said if I was in that game I might take inventory of myself."