Phillies begin Don Mattingly Era with ‘better baseball' and a win

Late Tuesday afternoon, Don Mattingly took a seat in the dugout and held his first pre-game chat with reporters as Phillies manager.

“Our season basically starts with this game,” he said.

So, look at it this way:

The Phillies are 1-0.

Actually, they’re 10-19, but at least they took a step in the right direction in their first game under Mattingly. The bats came alive for 11 hits and Jesus Luzardo pitched a beauty in a 7-0 victory over the San Francisco Giants at Citizens Bank Park.

It was just the Phillies’ second win since April 13.

Mattingly took over as manager earlier in the day, replacing Rob Thomson, who was fired after the team’s slow start.

“We need to play better baseball,” Mattingly said before the game. He cited pitching, offense and defense.

The Phillies, indeed, did that.

“It feels great for us to win, not necessarily for me,” Mattingly said. “It’s about our club and this was a good win for our team. Hopefully, this is the start of us playing better baseball. I like the game tonight. We were clean, we didn’t kick the ball around, we were aggressive on the bases, we had good at-bats, (Luzardo) was aggressive in the zone. A lot of good things happened tonight.”

Thomson was on the minds of many in the postgame clubhouse.

“It’s tough to see Topper go,” Luzardo said. “He was great to me and great to the rest of the guys. It sucks we didn’t do our jobs so he had to take the fall for it. I have a lot of love for Topper. It was definitely a tough day. We just had to go out and take care of business.”

Trea Turner, who led the Phillies’ offense with four hits, added, “Rob’s not the one fielding ground balls and making pitches. He’s not the one losing those games – it’s us. We’ve got to play better. No one here wanted this, but sometimes change can be good and hopefully we roll with it and play better baseball. This was a good start to build on.”

And Kyle Schwarber added, “Rob means a lot to us. What he did here the last four years, he’s got a lot of people’s respect. Obviously, we know this is not a reflection on him. We didn’t play great. We feel responsible. He should be remembered for a lot of great things he did, taking us to the World Series and the playoffs, being a great person and manager. I feel awful. But there’s a season still going on. We have to compartmentalize this and keep pushing on.”

Last year under Thomson, the Phillies had a great starting pitching staff. It ranked second in the majors with a 3.53 ERA and led the majors with 84 quality starts, a dozen more than any other team.

This year, the Phils entered Tuesday night with the worst ERA (5.80) among starting staffs in the majors.

Luzardo, who had struggled in four of his previous five starts this season, carried a 6.91 ERA into the game. He took a step toward reversing that with seven shutout innings. He allowed just two hits, struck out eight and walked none.

Amazingly, his performance marked the first time a Phillies starter completed seven innings this season.

Luzardo did not know that until after the game when rotation mate Zack Wheeler told him.

“We’re looking forward to a lot more,” Luzardo said. “We had a chuckle about it and said, ‘We have to pick it up.’ “

The Phils’ offense had been dreadful this season with a team batting average of .219 (29^th in the majors) and an output of 3.64 runs per game (28^th). Sustaining offense was a huge problem. It wasn’t in the sixth inning Tuesday night as the Phils sent nine men to the plate and got run-scoring doubles from Bryce Harper, Adolis Garcia and Alec Bohm.

“That’s what we want,” Mattingly said. “We want to keep pressure on the opposing pitcher up and down the lineup. We have that kind of lineup.”

For the night, the Phils were 5 for 11 with runners in scoring position.

Their pitchers (Orion Kerkering and Tim Mayza completed the shutout) struck out 12 and walked none.

And the defense did not make an error or any of the other types of miscues that have plagued the club.

Better baseball, indeed.