By RYAN LAWRENCE
rlawrence@delcotimes.com
@ryanlawrence21
PHILADELPHIA – In the previous four days, Cole Hamels threw his first shutout of the season and Roy Halladay was close to unhittable in his second consecutive start.
It was Cliff Lee’s turn Saturday.
When Ruben Amaro Jr. assembled his Aces are Wild rotation two winters ago, this was the plan. Dominate from the mound three times a week.
Even with the Phils sputtering toward their first losing season in 11 years, the blueprint is how Amaro plans to make his team a contender again. He said so after re-signing Hamels last month.
But as manager Charlie Manuel often likes to say, consistency is the key to being a winning team.
Lee couldn’t keep the starting pitching parade going Saturday, surrendering a shutout on a three-run home run to Matt Holliday in the sixth inning of the Phillies 4-1 defeat to the Cardinals. Lee has allowed eight home runs in his last four starts and remains winless at Citizens Bank Park in 2012.
Although the Phils had won each of his last three starts, Lee’s uneven season continued Saturday.
He was downright dominant at stretches, retiring 12 in a row from the second through the fifth innings. But when he did give up a hit, they came in bunches.
After Jon Jay and Allen Craig led off with back-to-back hits in the sixth, ending Lee’s run of setting down a dozen in a row, Holliday ripped a 1-2 fastball into the first row of seats beyond the right field fence to turn a 1-0 Phillies lead into a 3-1 deficit.
After allowing three consecutives hits to start an inning again in the eighth, Lee was lifted, ending his chance at collecting his first victory at Citizens Bank Park since Sept. 5, 2011.
The Phils entered Saturday having won four straight starts from the triumvirate of Halladay, Hamels and Lee. While injuries have played a part, it was just the second such streak the team had run off this year; prior to this month, the only other time the Phils won at least three consecutive starts from the trio was a three-game stretch in mid-May.
Last season, when the Phillies won a club-record 102 games, they had seven separate streaks of consecutive victories in Halladay, Hamels and Lee starts. In early June and in late July-early August, the Phils ran off eight-game stretches of winnings in games started by their All-Star trio.
They haven’t been able to replicate that consistency from the mound this season. They can only hope it will return next year.
Of course it’s difficult to win games when you score one run and collect a grand total of fours hits, too.
Jake Westbrook, Lee’s former rotation mate in Cleveland, gave up a run in the first inning but then pieced together six straight shutout frames. It was the second time Westbrook bested Lee in a head-to-head matchup: the Cardinals right-hander out-pitched the Phils lefty in a 3-1 win at Busch Stadium on May 16, 2011.
Lee looked in position to even the score Saturday, when he took a shutout into the sixth. Instead he surrendered a game-changing home run to Holliday.
Lee has allowed 19 home runs in 140 1/3 innings of 20 starts this season. Last season he gave up 18 home runs in 232 2/3 innings of 32 starts.