Streak up to eight as Walker struggles against Cubs with future uncertain

CHICAGO — The Phillies had nine hits, their most in nine days. There was other good news on Wednesday, but if you don’t care about hockey, that’s about it.

The Phillies lost their eighth consecutive game, a stinker at Wrigley Field featuring: a rough outing that could be Taijuan Walker’s last “start” for the foreseeable future, underwhelming defense and another one-inning scoring output by the offense.

The Phillies are 8-16. They’re tied for last place in the entire National League with the Mets, who just snapped a 12-game losing streak. Their -50 run differential is MLB’s worst — by 15 runs.

The Phillies used Kyle Backhus as an opener. Ideally, Walker’s first-inning woes would be avoided by avoiding the first inning altogether. In theory, it worked; in practice, bad defense sank it.

A leadoff chopper skipped off Alec Bohm’s glove in the first and eventually led to a run. In the second, Justin Crawford couldn’t secure the third out on a hard-charging pop to shallow center, the ball glancing off his glove for an error, and Pete Crow-Armstrong capitalized with an RBI double to right-center (which Crawford didn’t get a good jump on).

“He called it too early and got Sosa out of there,” manager Rob Thomson said postgame of the Crawford error. “And really that’s Sosa’s ball. And I think that just comes with experience playing in this ballpark, with the wind. You gotta really make sure that you get there. He just called it a little bit early.”

Walker’s biggest stumbles came in his second and fourth innings of work. In the game’s third inning, Alex Bregman led off with a triple that was inches — or maybe just one inch — from sneaking over the basket in left field. He scored, as did Michael Busch later in the inning on his first homer of the year, a solo shot. Seiya Suzuki cranked a two-run homer to left in the fifth.

“He hung some splits, left them up, and they got hit hard,” Thomson said of Walker.

It gave Walker eight home runs allowed in his last four appearances — 18 total innings. He has a 9.13 ERA.

“At the end of day,” Walker said, “I just didn’t do my job again.”

So, with Zack Wheeler returning to the rotation on Saturday, what’s next for Walker?

“We want to get to the off day,” Thomson said. “We haven’t even discussed anything yet, really.”

Does Walker have an idea?

“No,” he said. “Just show up tomorrow. Keep doing my work.”