There was a really fun win sandwiched in between two uniquely painful losses.
The Atlanta Braves went into this series against the Phillies in a bit of a strange position. They had just gotten back home after a split over four-games against a currently-struggling Mets team and that was after dropping a series to the Marlins. The 13-game run through the NL East was coming to a close and the Braves had an opportunity to end that stretch on a high. They’d basically done nothing more than tread water during that stretch so far so it wasn’t like the Braves had made up a ton of ground on either New York or Philadelphia to begin with.
Still, it would’ve been encouraging to see the Braves continue to defend their home turf. After all, their most recent home series saw them sweep the Mets — slump notwithstanding, that’s still an impressive result for a team that is in desperate need of a long run of impressive results. Maybe this could be something for us fans to lean on knowing that the Braves can at least take care of business at home even if their road trips were going to be fraught with struggle.
The result of this series was discouraging. We got one lovely win, one frustrating loss and one comically bad loss that you honestly could’ve turned off after three innings and a two-hour wait to even watch the game to begin with. This wasn’t a great series but hey, I think we’re all used to it at this point, right? Let’s chat about it.
Friday, June 27
Phillies 13, Braves 0
There was a two-hour rain delay to start the game and Bryce Elder went out after that rain delay and walked in a run in the first inning. Philadelphia proceeded to score 10 runs over the next two innings and Bryce Elder was credited with nine earned runs. Luke Williams gave up a home run to Trea Turner. None of these sentences are located in any holy texts or scriptures.
Saturday, June 28
Braves 6, Phillies 1
Another one of those rare games and glimpses of hope and potential from this team that makes you yearn wistfully for the good ol’ days of even just two years ago. Atlanta established control of the game early on with two runs across the first two innings — Austin Riley poked a ground ball towards second base that was perfectly placed in order to bring in the first run and then Nick Allen lined one out to left to make it a 2-0 game for the Braves. Things remained tense heading into the middle portion of the contest as Spencer Schwellenbach did his level-best to make sure that that slender lead held up with 12 strikeouts to his name.
Schwellenbach left the game following 90 pitches over seven innings while only giving up just the run one and I’d imagine that he was able to leave the game with a calm mind after seeing what the Braves did in the bottom half of the seventh. Three straight singles brought Sean Murphy to the plate with the bases loaded against Jordan Romano. Romano left a hanger for Murphy to deal with and boy, did he ever deal with it.
The grand slam made it a 6-1 game and that’s how things ended as Raisel Iglesias and Rafael Montero pitched scoreless inings to finish things off. This was fun! We need more fun!
Sunday, June 29
Phillies 2, Braves 1
This wasn’t more fun! Any hope of the offense sticking around for at least one more day was shut down completely by Ranger Suárez. Suárez gave up a second-inning home run to Sean Murphy and that was basically as good as things got for the Braves in this one.
Spencer Strider put up a good effort in this one but the Phillies were able to manufacture a couple of runs in the fifth inning. Trea Turner’s sacrifice fly ended up being the difference in this one, as Atlanta’s lineup struggled mightily for the second time in three days. There was a tiny bit of hope in the ninth inning when Ozzie Albies made it to third in the ninth inning after a single and a wild pitch with two outs but nothing came of the scoring threat and all the Braves could do was watch as Philadelphia slipped out of town with the series win.
The run through the divisional gauntlet of the NL East is now over for the Braves and at the end of this 13-game stretch, they went 7-6. If the Braves were seven games over .500 instead of under like they currently are, that’d be an okay stretch and one of the valleys in a season that’s usually full of peaks and valleys. Instead, this was very disappointing and it really helps to take into context the nature of that stretch in order to realize why this was such a disappointing stretch of results. The Phillies came into the series with the Braves having scored a grand total of one (1) run over three (3) games against the Astros. They had scored one run in Atlanta before the Bryce Elder had recorded three outs in the first game of this series. The Phillies have not been playing well at all lately and you could argue that (outside of Friday’s beatdown) they didn’t play particularly well over the course of this entire series. They still got the better of the Braves and that’s all that matters.
It’s even more concerning when you take into consideration the form that the Mets have been in lately. New York just got done getting swept (!) by the Pirates (!!) over three games where the Mets had a lead for a grand total of one inning (!!!) and got outscored 30-4 (!!!!!) and are now 3-13 over their past 16 games (!!!!!). With that being said, this is probably the first time ever that the Mets are grateful for the existence of the Atlanta Braves because if it wasn’t for Atlanta dealing with their own inconsistencies, the Mets would be 1-15 during that stretch because two of those three wins came against the Braves. Then Atlanta dropped a series in Miami and that’s usually cause for alarm in any given season, much less this one.
So yeah, this 7-6 run through the division is not a stretch that the Braves should feel good about at all. This would’ve been a great chance for Atlanta to really get serious about turning their season around — and at a fantastically opportune time since the two best teams in the division right now are both playing well below what they can reasonably expect from the quality of their respective squads. Instead, the Braves are still in the same exact rut that they’ve been in all season and it’s tough to envision seeing it change any time soon. At the risk of sounding like Sal Licata, I’d say that at this point we don’t know who’s going to win the NL East but we know it won’t be the Braves. Simply making the playoffs would be great with how rough the first half of the season has been for Atlanta so far but hey, all they can do is keep moving forward and keep plugging away at it at this point.