Major leagues:
Joe Girardi managed a Philadelphia Phillies team with the reigning NL MVP, five 2021 All-Stars, a $233 million payroll that nudged the franchise above the luxury tax and expectations of ending the longest playoff drought in the National League.
Here’s what the former World Series-winning manager of the New York Yankees got instead: a Phillies team with a sagging bullpen, defensive deficiencies and slumbering starts from a few high-priced veterans. Throw in some of Girardi’s questionable handling of the bullpen, epic late-game collapses, sloppy baserunning and injuries to Bryce Harper and Jean Segura and the Phillies again sit in June out of the division race – and Girardi out of a job.
Buried deep in the NL East standings, Girardi on Friday became the first major league manager to lose his job this season after failing to turn a team with a record payroll into a playoff contender.
Bench coach Rob Thomson was named interim manager.
Expected to contend for the division title, the Phillies are 22-29 and 12 games behind the first-place New York Mets. Philadelphia entered Friday 5 1/2 games out of the second NL wild-card spot.
“Oh, I think we can make the playoffs. I think we’re in a position where we can battle back to do that. I do believe that,” president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said.
Few Philly sports fans are steadfast in that belief.
With good reason. The Phillies have lost 12 of 17 games heading into the opener of Friday’s three-game series against the Los Angeles Angels.
“There’s blame on us, as well,” Harper said. “There’s not just blame on Joe. We haven’t played to the best of our ability. We haven’t done the things to be the team we should be.”
The Phillies counted on Harper – the NL MVP slowed most of the season with right arm issues that forced him to serve as the designated hitter – NL Cy Young Award runner-up Zack Wheeler, Aaron Nola, All-Star catcher J.T. Realmuto and free-agent sluggers Nick Castellanos and Kyle Schwarber to return the Phillies to the playoffs for the first time since 2011. Schwarber is hitting just .192, Segura is out three months with a broken finger, and third baseman Alec Bohm, first baseman Rhys Hoskins and corner outfielders Castellanos and Schwarber have been defensive liabilities.
Dombrowski will have to scour the trade market to make a run at a wild-card spot because the Phillies have little help available in the minor leagues.
He can start by bolstering the bullpen. The Phillies blew 51 save chances under Girardi and this season alone saw dumbfounding defeats. The lowlight was a May 5 loss at home to the New York Mets when they blew a six-run deficit in the ninth inning and lost 8-7. The Mets had lost the previous 330 times they trailed by six runs in the ninth.
“I think there’s a number of reasons we didn’t win. We gave too many extra outs that cost us four or five games, maybe even more,” Girardi told SiriusXM’s MLB Network Radio.
National League
St. Louis 14, Chicago Cubs 5: Paul Goldschmidt homered to extend his hitting streak to 25 games, Corey Dickerson went deep twice and the St. Louis Cardinals routed the Chicago Cubs, 14-5.
Nolan Gorman and Lars Nootbaar also went deep as the Cardinals rolled to their fourth win in five games.
Goldschmidt hit a three-run drive in the third for his 12th home run. The six-time All-Star closed in on his career-high 26-game hitting streak with Arizona in 2013 and extended a personal best by reaching base in his 39th consecutive game.
San Francisco 15, Miami 5:
Brandon Crawford hit his fifth career grand slam, Mike Yastrzemski homered and doubled, and the San Francisco Giants beat the Miami Marlins, 15-6.
Yastrzemski, Joc Pederson, Thairo Estrada and Jason Vosler homered off Miami reliever Elieser Hernández, who was originally scheduled to start but allowed eight runs in a long relief role.
The five home runs were a season high for the Giants.
Zack Littell (1-1) struck out four in two scoreless innings of relief.
American League
Cleveland 6, Baltimore 3: Shane Bieber held Baltimore without a hit until the sixth inning and Owen Miller drove in four runs in his first two plate appearances as the Cleveland Guardians rolled to a 6-3 victory over the Orioles.
Bieber (3-3) was more than halfway to Cleveland’s first no-hitter since 1981, but the majors’ longest active drought endured when Trey Mancini lined a two-out single to left field in the sixth. Bieber allowed a walk in each of the first two innings, but Mancini had Baltimore’s only hit until the right-hander gave up two more singles to start the eighth and was lifted.
Cleveland hasn’t had a no-hitter since Len Barker threw a perfect game against Toronto on May 15, 1981.
N.Y. Yankees 13, Detroit 0: Gerrit Cole pitched perfectly into the seventh inning a night after teammate Jameson Taillon lost his bid in the eighth, Aaron Judge homered and had four hits on his bobblehead night, and the New York Yankees thumped the Detroit Tigers, 13-0.
The Yankees are the first team with consecutive perfect-game bids of six innings or more since at least 1961, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
Jose Trevino, Anthony Rizzo and Matt Carpenter also homered for New York against rookie Elvin Rodriguez (0-1), charged with 10 runs in his third big league start. The major league-leading Yankees won for the eighth time in 10 games, cooling off a fourth-place Tigers team that had just taken four of five from AL Central-leading Minnesota.
Jonathan Schoop spoiled Cole’s perfect night with two outs in the seventh. Schoop’s grounder skipped up the middle, just past the mitt of diving second baseman DJ LeMahieu, who made a sliding stop against Harold Castro for the second out.
Twins shorthanded: The struggling Minnesota Twins have arrived in Toronto with regular right fielder Max Kepler and relief pitchers Emilio Pagán, Caleb Thielbar and Trevor Megill on the restricted list to comply with the Canadian government’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
The four players will miss the three-game series against the Blue Jays. Canada requires anyone traveling to the country to have received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, the second one at least 14 days before entry.
Kepler will lose $111,264 of his $6.75 million salary, while Pagán loses $37,912, Thielbar $21,429 and Megill $11, 662.