I have observed Alien vs Predator: Requiem last night. Might be one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. But it wasn’t nearly as terrible as this one:

So much for the road trip ending, the day off, and playing in front of the home crowd again. They managed four total hits against Valente Bellozo, who made his major league debut this summer and is so new he doesn’t have a profile picture yet. They made him look like Sandy Koufax reincarnated. Kyle Schwarber? 0-4. Trea Turner? 0-4. Bryson Stott? Another 0-4 and there’s a case for sending him to the minors or playing alongside Edmundo Sosa. The Phils couldn’t hit, couldn’t get a walk, and were down 2-0 early with Taijuan Walker on the mound, and that was all she wrote.

The last few weeks have been a rather ineffective exercise in “is this just a bad lull or are they really in trouble?“You thought maybe after the Dodgers series win they’d snapped out of the slump, but you blink and now it’s a four-game losing streak heading into the home games. Miami and Washington should be on a rest break, Atlanta and KC are coming up.

What’s particularly worrying is that they have 43 games left and need 21 wins to get to 90. That means they need a .500 record to finish here to match their performance from last year, and a .500 record seems like a pipe dream right now. 14 of those games are against the Braves and Mets, the Phils are going to Milwaukee in September, and who the hell knows how that six-game road trip to Toronto and Miami will turn out. The mood is not good! Either we boo these guys to make a point, or we give them the best standing ovation in the world. It’s more than just a crisis now. It’s been going on since they lost 2 of 3 home games to Oakland on July 12. Does a “crisis” last longer than a month? A question for the baseball philosophers.