By RYAN LAWRENCE
rlawrence@delcotimes.com
MINNEAPOLIS – Perhaps it was a tribute to former Minnesota Twins slugger, current Phillies designater hitter and future Hall of Famer Jim Thome.
Maybe it was a personal moment of swag from fashionista shortstop Jimmy Rollins that caught on with everyone else. Or it could have simply been a free-falling team trying something to change their losing ways.
Whatever it was for, the Phillies took Target Field Tuesday night with a uniformed look: they complemented their road grays with an extra touch of red. All of the positions players wore high socks.
The pitchers, however, were not with the program.

Kyle Kendrick put his team in a big deficit early and Joe Savery couldn’t stop the bleeding when his offense roared back into the game as the Twins outlasted the Phils 11-7. Kendrick and Savery, like the rest of the Phils pitchers, did not flaunt the high-sock look Tuesday.
The loss was the third straight for the Phillies and their ninth in the last 10 games. The Phils have also reached a new low-water mark in a season that doesn’t appear to have a rock bottom.
Coupled with another win from the first-place Washington Nationals, the Phils’ loss sunk them to 9 1/2 games back of the National League East lead. They haven’t been that far back since the end of the 2006 season.
It’s also the first time the Phils (29-34) have been five games under .500 after June 1 of any season since Aug. 1, 2006.
In the run that’s seen the Phils win five straight division titles, the summer of ’06 is often viewed as a turning point – former general manager Pat Gillick unloaded players before the trade deadline, including All-Star Bobby Abreu, to light a fire under a slumping, stale team. Perhaps the current Phils team needs a similar shakeup, something more than a minor alteration to the uniform.
Coming off back-to-back walk-off losses in Baltimore over the weekend, the Phils found themselves down 5-0 before the sun went down in Minneapolis on Tuesday night. Kendrick served up a leadoff home run to Denard Span in the first and then gave up four more runs on five hits in the second, when the Twins batted around.
Kendrick, who had a 1.88 ERA in a six-start spanning April 29 to June 1, has taken a turn for the worse in his last two starts. After giving up six runs on eight hits in four innings Tuesday, Kendrick 0-2 with a 10.24 ERA in his last two starts.
But Kendrick hasn’t been alone in his struggles. The Phillies starting rotation – Kendrick, Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels, Joe Blanton and Vance Worley – have a 5.77 ERA in 11 games this month.
Not surprisingly, the Phillies are 2-9 in June.
On a night when they looked primed for a comeback – the Phils scored four times in the fourth to turn a 5-0 deficit into 5-4 – Charlie Manuel didn’t get any relief when he turned to his bullpen Tuesday.
With the Phils trailing 6-4, Savery gave up a two-out, two-run double to Minnesota nine-hole hitter Jamey Carroll in the fifth, his first inning in relief of Kendrick. The Phils appeared to get unlucky on the play though, too – a televised replay showed that Trevor Plouffe, the second base runner to score on Carroll’s double, missed the bag while rounding third base en route to the plate.
The extra run would loom large in the sixth, when Minnesota starter Nick Blackburn handled the ball over to his bullpen. Three of the first four batters reached against Brian Duensing and after Hunter Pence worked a four-pitch walk against Alex Burnett, red-hit designated hitter Jim Thome ripped a two-out, two-run double to cut the deficit to 8-7.
But again, the Phils turned around and gave the runs right back.
Savery served up a solo home run to Josh Willingham in the sixth. In the seventh, the Twins added two more off rookies B.J. Rosenberg and Jake Diekman.
The Phillies entered play Saturday having won 25 of 33 games this season when they score more than three runs in a game. They’ve scored more than three in each of their last three games, however, and have lost all three.