Once the Nationals left town after the Phillies’ opening series last week, the Phils were in for a more challenging brand of hardball with pitching-rich Florida on their way into town and then a road trip starting with the Atlanta Braves.

After a strong offensive showing on Friday night supporting Roy Halladay’s 3rd win of the season, the Phils offense went cold. Ice cold. They scored just 1 run in Saturday night’s game at chilly Citizens Bank Park and were shut out in the series finale, spoiling a great 2008-esque start by much-maligned lefty Cole Hamels.

In the first 2 games of their current road trip, the Phils offense has mustered just 5 runs, but they were just one competent pitch from Ryan Madson away from taking both games from Atlanta by way of shutouts.

The last few games have stood in stark contrast to the first week or so of the season, when the Phillies simply out-slugged any issues that their pitching staff may have been going through. Despite losing 3 of their last 5 games, the Phils pitching has given more cause for optimism than any cold hitting could possibly negate.

Consider:

5 strong innings from Jamie Moyer after a disastrous first inning on Saturday night.
An 8 inning return to form for hard luck loser Cole Hamels on Sunday.
An 8 inning masterpiece by punching bag Kyle Kendrick.
A complete game shutout of the Braves by Roy Halladay.

In a 162 game season, hitting is going to come and go. Especially with this crop of …

The Phils dropped the final game of their opening series to the Nats today. Kyle Kendrick struggled, and newly acquired Nelson Figueroa surrendered the game winning run on a Ryan Zimmerman double in the 7th inning.

Perhaps most frustrating in today’s game was the squandered opportunity presented by a lead off double in the 9th inning by Chase Utley, who was eventually stranded at 3rd when the final out – a Shane Victorino pop up – landed in Christian Guzman’s glove.

So the Phillies and their Five Guys eating, beer chugging, economy stimulating fans head out of DC, a 2-1 record to show for it.

What did we learn about the local 9 during this series?

1. Phillies fans know the way to the District of Columbia. And Nationals fans know how to bitch about being outnumbered at their own ballpark.

2. Raul Ibanez’s hitting woes are mildly concerned about after a lackluster spring training and an .091 batting average against a Nationals pitching staff that most of the Phillies batters manhandled. Last year, Boston’s David Ortiz had an abysmal start to his season, but his results improved as the campaign wore on. One of Ortiz’s issue was his bat speed, something that appears to be ailing Raul as well. Lucky for our aging leftfielder, he has a nice reservoir of goodwill built up with Phillies fans, and he’ll have plenty of support while he gets his swing right. It’s still too early to start burying Raul.

3. Placido Polanco …

The Phils blew the doors off the Nats yesterday in the 2010 opener. Roy Halladay threw 7 strong innings and looked like the guy we’ve been told about all of these months. The Phils offense was on fire, hanging an 11 spot on the Nats pitching staff.

The box score is only a sliver of the story. It was quite a day in the Nation’s Capitol:

Our football team trades our quarterback to the Redskins the night before, making for an interesting twist as we headed down to DC.
Half of Philadelphia jumped on 95 South as well, based on an unscientific eyeball check of the assembled throng.
Got politics? The President was in the house, giving everyone the rare opportunity of knowing the political leanings of the random guy sitting next to you at a baseball game.
The game got off to a weird start, with the Jimmy Rollins squandering his own lead off single by trying to take home on an error by shortstop Ian Desmond. Then Roy Halladay had a shaky first inning, giving up a run and compelling the guys behind me to utter, “This isn’t how this was supposed to be”. True. I don’t think anyone traveled from Philly thinking that the Phillies had a prayer of losing this game. Luckily, the first inning was just a cruel tease for Nats fans, as the Fightins obliterated them the rest of the way.

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Wait, there’s more. Did I mention the ridiculous number of idiots wearing Mets …