Bryce Harper Sends Message to His Phillies Teammates After Humiliating Sweep
The Philadelphia Phillies ended their worst month of the season in horrendous fashion on Wednesday, getting swept by the New York Yankees with a 6-5 loss at Citizens Bank Park.
The loss capped a dreadful July for the Phillies, who lost five straight series and 11 of their last 15 games to close out the month.
The sweep -- their first of the season -- was extremely frustrating, ending with back-to-back one-run losses where Philadelphia simply couldn't come up with the big hit when they needed to.
Now, the slumping Phillies must hit the road for a daunting 10-game road trip against the Seattle Mariners, Los Angeles Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks, which starts on Friday following Thursday's off-day.
Bryce Harper, who went 0-for-14 against the Yankees, and is mired in a 1-for-25 slump, acknowledged Philadelphia's recent struggles.
"I can say that we really haven't been playing good baseball on both sides of the ball," Harper said. "Guys on base, things like that. Pretty sloppy as well, I think we all know that as a team."
The two-time MVP also had a message for his teammates heading into this critical stretch of the season to start August.
"Gotta turn the page turning into August," Harper said. "We got three really good teams we're about to play again, so we just gotta cowboy up and play the right way."
Harper reminded everyone that the Phillies "are a damn good team" with "really good players," so they just need to find a way to get back on track and start playing good baseball again.
It's been a rough couple of weeks for Philadelphia, but the next few weeks will show what this team is really made of. This is the first time the Phillies have faced real adversity all year, so how they respond could dictate the rest of their season.