Phils' promising season sunk by offensive drought

What might have been the season of greatest promise in Phillies history lay broken on the field at Citizens Bank Park late Friday night as the Phils were shut out in the deciding Game 5 of the National League division series.

It was an excruciating end for the crowd of 46,530 that arrived hoping to watch the team advance at least to the league championship series for the fourth straight year. Instead, the fans were tortured by a 1-0 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals in which their most persistent fear - an intense offensive drought - came true.

The Phils got a great pitching performance from starter Roy Halladay, who surrendered a first-inning run but then kept St. Louis quiet the rest of the night, even pitching out of a bases-loaded jam in the eighth inning after he had already crested 120 pitches on the evening.

Halladay's outing was matched, and just bettered, by Chris Carpenter of the Cardinals, however. Carpenter gave up a mere three hits, never more than one in an inning, and only let one Phillies runner stray as far as third base. The Phils didn't put a runner in scoring position after the fourth inning.

There is little in baseball more depressing than watching the other team celebrate after the deciding game of a series, and nothing worse than having to watch it on your home field. That was the fate of the Phillies this season, though, as the Cardinals jumped into each others' arms while Ryan Howard, having injured his Achilles tendon on the final groundout, lay writhing on the ground.

It was an ugly end, befitting a season of such promise that went unfulfilled.

The loss not only extinguished the high expectations of a season in which the Phillies had the best regular-season record in baseball for the second straight year, it also shortens the window of opportunity for the current offensive core to win another championship.

Chase Utley, Carlos Ruiz, and Jimmy Rollins will each be 33 when spring training begins. Utley is bothered by chronic knee problems and Rollins will be a free agent. The team will have to decide whether to bring Rollins back, a move that could affect its ability to offer competitive contracts down the road to some of its younger pitchers.