Phillies' Andrew Painter showed guts in blowout loss to Athletics

Phillies' Andrew Painter showed guts in blowout loss to Athletics originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

The Philadelphia Phillies four-game winning streak came to a close Thursday night after the Athletics thwarted the sweep, winning by a score of 12-1. The Phillies' bats went cold after scoring 23 runs during their winning streak -- the offense went 6-for-31 at the dish with nine strikeouts.

To go with a poor offensive performance, the Phillies received an even worse performance from starting pitcher, right-hander Andrew Painter. Painter didn't have his stuff from pitch one, allowing eight earned runs on seven hits, walking three, and giving up three two-run home runs in 3.2 innings.

Thursday night's start was the worst performance of Painter's young career so far, but he showed some guts to eat innings, as it was his call to try to pitch a fourth inning.

Andrew Painter showed guts to try to help save the Philadelphia Phillies bullpen

According to Phillies beat writer Jeff Kerr for 97.3 ESPN, interim manager Don Mattingly gave Painter the option to end his night after throwing three innings, but Painter opted to come out and try to pitch the fourth inning.

"You have to learn how to deal with that stuff," . "Stuff wasn't going my way, but as a competitor you wanna go out there and just compete until you can't anymore."