Charlie Manuel: “Yeah, It’s Hard For Us To Come Back” [AUDIO]

Needless to say, when Hector Luna's batting cleanup, the prevailing assumption about late-game heroics is to not hold your breath on them. Such is life for the Philies. (Which, yeah, is kind of funny, given that they're only 3.5 games out of the NL Wild Card, a slot held by, all at once, the Nationals, Mets and Marlins. Yeah. Sky is falling, indeed.)

And Charlie Manuel knows it.

Said Manuel, after the Phils 5-1 loss to Miami yesterday:

"When we get down four, five, six runs, yeah, it's hard for us to come back. We used to come back much easier because we could hit the ball out of the yard more (consistently), and we had more guys that could hit the ball out of the yard."

And now for some serendipitous stats, compliments of Phil Sheridan of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

"The Phillies are winless in 20 games when they trail after seven innings. They were 12-43 in such games last season, 7-52 in 2010, and 7-53 in 2009. They were 11-53 in the 2008 championship season."

Bonkers, right? Charlie's single-loudest complaint after a loss in which the last three frames were a formality -- the Phils trailed 5-0 going into the bottom of the seventh -- is that the team can't come back from behind like it used to, all those years back, when the team was prominently more powerful. Yet, per the numbers and corresponding postseason finishes, the Phillies were best when their comeback potential was considerably worse. (Harmonious acknowledgement of the white elephant: Yeah. Emphatic yawn to their 2011 regular season mark and 102 regular season win franchise record. That didn't win them anything) Go figure.