LOS ANGELES — If you had told the Phillies they would go 4-2 on their California trip against two likely playoff teams, there is a good chance they would have taken it. That does not mean the trip came without warning signs. Some of the same issues that burned them during their 9-19 start re -emerged against the Padres and Dodgers. The Phillies slashed just .169/.234/.339 over the six games. That is a .573 OPS. Their Opening Day lineup now has six hitters with a .644 OPS or lower. Thanks to their rotation and bullpen, they stayed in every game out west. Entering the series finale, the pitching staff had produced a 2.05 ERA, a 0.91 WHIP and held opponents to a .581 OPS. In Sunday’s 8-1 loss to the Dodgers, those numbers took a hit as Andrew Painter and the bullpen were tagged. Painter lasted just 3 1/3 innings, allowing seven hits and four earned runs with three strikeouts. The Phillies’ lack of consistent production is putting stress on their starters. After three strong outings, it looked like Painter was turning a corner. That still can be true. But Sunday was a tough task. Baseball’s best offense. Dodger Stadium. Not much margin. The trip was still a winning one. The offense, though, did not travel the way the Phillies need it to. “You come out west and get in a different time zone and everything, go 4-2 against two good clubs, I think you feel good after it’s all the way over,” Don Mattingly said. “Obviously, we’d like to win the series here with these guys. “But I think the runs have been a little bit of a theme. We pitched really well. We haven’t really gotten on track offensively.” First, what broke down in Painter’s start? HIT HARD Painter had made several adjustments in the three-start stretch before Sunday, posting a 2.60 ERA against Boston, Cincinnati and Cleveland. He had diversified his pitch mix, throwing fewer four-seamers, sinkers and curveballs while using more splitters and sliders. On Sunday, command was not the biggest issue. Painter threw strikes 65 percent of the time. His splitter was located well, for the most part, throughout the start. He threw it over the plate more than three-quarters of the time and landed it for a first-pitch strike all five times he used it. The Dodgers just hit him hard. The first inning hinted at what was ahead. Six of the 14 batted balls put in play against Painter were hard-hit. Painter felt the miss pattern showed up on the two homers. “Missing glove side,” Painter said. “The two homers, one of them trying to backdoor a slider for strike one. Pitch ends up in. The second one, the splitter, I’m trying to go down away with that. It ended up being down in, so the miss was pretty consistent.” After J.T. Realmuto was pulled from the game after being hit on the wrist — X-rays were negative — Rafael Marchán entered behind the plate. In the fourth, Painter unraveled. On the second pitch of the inning, he allowed Ryan Ward’s first Major League homer on a hanging slider. Two batters later, Dodgers second baseman Alex Freeland hit another solo shot. It came in a seven-pitch at-bat. Painter located a splitter low and in, but Freeland stayed on it and drove it out. The line still looks rough. Through 11 big league outings, Painter has a 5.74 ERA with 43 strikeouts in 53 1/3 innings and a 1.52 WHIP. Facing the Dodgers offered a lesson, if nothing else. “Just continue to be aggressive in the zone,” Painter said. “Not shying away from the competition. But the reality is, falling behind a lot of those guys, that’s kind of where they do their damage.” In the opening frame, though, the other rookie helped keep the game from getting away earlier. AGGRESSIVE CRAWFORD On Saturday, Mattingly talked about how the Phillies have pushed Justin Crawford to be more aggressive in center field. Earlier in the year, when Phillies pitchers were generating soft contact — which they still are — too many bloopers were dropping in shallow center. Crawford has not been known as a polished defender throughout his Minor League career. But he has speed. He has athleticism. And even when the first read is not perfect, he can close ground fast enough to make up for it. For the second time on the West Coast trip, Crawford crashed into a center-field wall and still came down with the catch. In the first inning Sunday, he did not get a clean jump. But he covered 70 feet, lunged near the wall and made a run-saving grab. He stayed in the game after hitting the fence, which was notable considering he was sprinting 24.8 feet per second into impact. That play helped Painter escape the 23-pitch first. It did not hold for long. DODGERS STARTERS DOMINATE Strong starting pitching can win games even when an offense struggles to string together baserunners. The Phillies saw that in San Diego. Then they saw the Dodgers do it to them in Los Angeles. It was reminiscent of the Phillies’ regular-season series loss at Dodger Stadium last September. In that series, Los Angeles starters — including the bulk pitcher after an opener — combined for 17 1/3 innings, allowed just three hits and did not allow an earned run. That group included Emmet Sheehan, Shohei Ohtani and Blake Snell. Here is what the Dodgers got from their starters this weekend: Friday — Justin Wrobleski: 7 IP, 1 H, 1 ER, 9 K Saturday — Roki Sasaki: 5 1/3 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 7 K Sunday — Yoshinobu Yamamoto: 5 1/3 IP, 4 H, 0 ER, 10 K Combined with that September series, Dodgers starters have a 0.76 ERA and 0.54 WHIP in those six games. They have struck out 50 in 35 1/3 innings. The Phillies have hit .094 against them. They have had no answers. Mattingly thought the Phillies had a chance to get into the Dodgers’ bullpen earlier Sunday. They did not deliver the hit that changed the game against Yamamoto. “The story for me was they got two-out hits with guys in scoring position,” Mattingly said. “We weren’t able to do it. We pushed his pitch count. We could have gotten four innings of bullpen. We get a couple of hits in there; we just weren’t able to capitalize and get ourselves back in the game.” The issue was not only in Los Angeles, either. On the road trip as a whole, the Phillies struggled badly against fastballs, hitting .161 against them, the worst mark in the National League over that stretch. The frustration showed. Trea Turner lined out in the seventh and tossed his equipment after another hard-hit ball found a glove. His frustration spoke to the broader offensive stretch. “It’s kind of definitely us as a whole right now too,” Turner said. “It seems to be kind of all or nothing, and sometimes you’ve got to figure that out a little bit.” Turner did not think the Phillies were completely lost at the plate. The contact, to him, has not always matched the production. “I feel like some guys are taking good swings, hitting the ball hard and just not finding holes,” Turner said. “At the end of the day, it comes down to whether or not you score the runs, and we haven’t done that.” WHAT LIES AHEAD The Phillies still had a successful month. Don’t get it twisted. They went 18-10 in May. They played 16 road games and went 12-4 away from home. They were only 6-6 at home. Bryce Harper was not brushing off the offensive issues. He was also not letting them erase the larger picture. “Obviously, I’m shocked by that,” Harper said of the Phillies’ place in several offensive categories. “When you go into a season with the team you have, you don’t think you’re going to have that. “Just got to keep plugging along. Obviously, get better, which starts tomorrow. Have a good June. We won the month of May, so that’s huge for us.” Now they head back to South Philadelphia, where they need the bats to get going. To open June, the Phillies will face the Padres, whom they just swept in San Diego. San Diego’s offense has been cold, too, and its starting pitching has not been anything special. Aaron Nola, Cristopher Sánchez and Zack Wheeler are lined up for the series. Sánchez will look to extend his 44 2/3-inning scoreless streak as he continues to chase Orel Hershiser’s Major League record of 59 straight scoreless innings from 1988. After that, the red-hot White Sox come to town. Chicago is 32-27, but just lost 20-homer slugger Munetaka Murakami to a hamstring injury. It is a six-game homestand before the Phillies head north of the border to Toronto. The California trip was a winning one. The pitching was strong enough to make it that way. But the Phillies are not going to keep asking their staff to win games with so little margin. The lineup has to give them more. “We feel like that’s going to break out at some point,” Mattingly said. “But just saying it and hoping for it, I think we’ve got to keep looking into what’s going on with each guy and keep getting better.” ...read more read less