Girardi reflects on 1998 Yankees, a club with many parallels to current Phillies squad

Yikes. That was quite a thorough beatdown the Yankees put on your Fightin’ Phillies Monday night down at the old ballyard.

All-Star starter Zack Wheeler gave up seven runs. That’s the most he’s allowed in a game since, well, last month. The lineup, chockablock with All-Stars and superstars, was muzzled again. The 14-4 shellacking witnessed by another sellout crowd at Citizens Bank Park was their eighth loss in 12 games.

Is it too late to sell off before Tuesday’s 6 p.m. trade deadline? Clearly it’s time to pull the plug.

Note to the tone deaf: Yes, that's sarcasm. Baseball’s history is littered with the ghosts of teams that frittered away big leads and everybody remembers the epic collapses. But not every front runner that encounters a rough patch of road falls by the wayside, either.

In honor of New York’s classic road gray uniforms, let’s harken back to 1998. The Yankees were a powerhouse. They won 114 games, easily dispatched the Indians in the ALCS and swept the Padres in the World Series.

They did that despite going 10-14 from late August to mid-September. Despite losing five of eight in the middle of July. Despite losing 6 of 10 at one point in June.

There’s no sugarcoating that the Phillies aren’t playing well. Wheeler’s performance, plus the fact that he experienced lower back tightness before the All-Star break, has to be a concern. (For the record, he said his back feels good.) Ranger Suarez being on the injured list has to be a concern. An offense that’s clanking and wheezing and leaking oil like a 20-year old clunker with 300,000 miles on the odometer has to be a concern.

All of that, certainly, is bringing the fan base to a slow boil. There will be demands on sports talk radio and in the neighborhood taprooms for something – anything! – to be done.

Pssst. Wanna know a secret? There’s really nothing manager Rob Thomson can do except keep making out the lineup card and hope his players live up to their reputations and their contracts. You want him to deliver a blistering postgame screed or turn over the postgame spread? That’s so 1980 and, besides, would almost certainly boomerang with the current generation of players. You want wholesale lineup changes? Really? For who, for what?

Joe Girardi watched the Monday night carnage from the vantage point of the Yankees television booth. In 1998, he was the Yankees backup catcher. That team, he said, never panicked.

“We didn’t,” he said after the final out. “We didn’t play well in September but we had such a big lead that we rested some people and set ourselves up for the playoffs.

“But it’s hard when you have such a big lead for so long – as much as you try to have that same adrenaline – people get nicked up and your lineup’s not the same every day. You’ve just got to be professional.”

Girardi went on to manage the Marlins, Yankees and Phillies and recalled that Joe Torre didn’t overreact no matter what “He trusted in us,” Girardi said. “We knew. We had won before. We knew what it took. We had a bitter taste in our mouth after losing to Cleveland in 1997 and kind of carried that through the year.”

Similarly, as unsightly as their play has been at times recently, the Phillies still have the best record in baseball and an 8 ½ game lead over second-place Atlanta in the NL East. No to mention that their offseason mantra was all about being motivated to avenge the disappointment of being knocked out of the playoffs by Arizona in the NLCS last October, a goal which remains unrequited.

They have to play better, sure. They have clinched nothing. At the same time, drastic measures (like, say, pitching Bunning and Short on two days rest) are hardly the answer.

Asked what he can do under the circumstances, Thomson said: “Just support them and remind them who they are. We’re a really talented club that’s going through a tough time right now. I truly believe we’re going to come out of it. Because we’re too talented not to. We just have to keep battling and keep grinding and do the things we did earlier in the season.”

That’s not what anybody wants to hear. But it’s the only approach that makes sense at the moment.

“We put ourself in a good position (with a fast start to the season) and we’re up pretty good right now,” Wheeler said. “We’ll figure it out and start playing better all around. We’re a really good team, but you can’t be good every time out. You go through these stretches throughout the season. We don’t like it. Our fans don’t like it. Nobody likes it. But it’s part of the game.”

Testifying for the hitters, designated hitter Kyle Schwarber delivered a similar sermon.

“It sucks. No doubt about it,” he said. “I know everyone in here is doing everything we can to get back on the right track, right? A lot of it’s baseball. That’s a cliché but, also, too, it comes down to us. We’re going to keep working and keep doing what we need to do. Go out there and play our brand of baseball and turn this thing around.

“We’re going to go out there and play the game the right way and see what happens.”

Again, the Phillies haven’t won anything yet. But it’s worth taking a deep breath and remembering that they haven’t lost anything yet, either.

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