ATLANTA \u2014 The Phillies have found different ways to lose lately. Too many outs on the bases. Too many late leads slipping away. Too many chances to finish games that they haven’t finished.<\/p>\n
Friday had all of it.<\/p>\n
The Phillies led three different times from the ninth inning on, got go-ahead hits from Justin Crawford and Luis Arraez in extras and still walked off the field with a 6-5 loss to the Braves in 11 innings. <\/p>\n
The bullpen let them down again. So did the little things.<\/p>\n
And after another night where they had chances to put a game away and couldn’t, the Phillies are now five games back in the National League East.<\/p>\n
What did we see from our end?<\/p>\n
THE FUNDAMENTALS, AGAIN<\/p>\n
The Phillies have spent the last week giving away outs and bases at exactly the wrong time. Friday brought another one.<\/p>\n
Bryce Harper doubled to open the ninth with the Phillies holding a one-run lead. Alec Bohm followed with a ground ball to the left side. Harper broke toward third, then stopped and wound up caught in no man’s land between second and third.<\/p>\n
“Obviously, not an ideal situation,” Harper said. “Need to be better.”<\/p>\n
Instead of a runner in scoring position with one out and a chance to add insurance, the Phillies handed Atlanta an out.<\/p>\n
It’s become too familiar lately. Baserunning mistakes have piled up over the last week, part of a stretch in which the Phillies’ fundamentals have slipped at a bad time.<\/p>\n
Don Mattingly called it “a little frustrating.”<\/p>\n
Asked about the same type of mistake showing up with different players, he took it a step further.<\/p>\n
“A little bit contagious,” Mattingly said. “I don’t understand it, really. But again, we’ll just keep talking about it and working through it.”<\/p>\n
There isn’t much margin for it right now. Not with the Braves chasing them in the standings and not with a bullpen that has had its own problems protecting leads.<\/p>\n
THREE CHANCES, NONE FINISHED<\/p>\n
Jonathan Bowlan entered the ninth with a 3-2 lead.<\/p>\n
He couldn’t hold it.<\/p>\n
Bowlan gave up two singles \u2014 one which scored a run on a Derek Hill error \u2014 on breaking balls, allowing Atlanta to tie the game and extending a rough stretch in which he has now surrendered a run in five of his last six outings.<\/p>\n
Mattingly thought the ball was coming out well. Bowlan felt much the same about the contact that beat him.<\/p>\n
“It’s tough,” Bowlan said. “Ground balls, they found holes. It’s just part of it, and all you can do is take it a pitch at a time.”<\/p>\n
The Phillies had another answer in the 10th.<\/p>\n
Justin Crawford came off the bench and attacked the first pitch he saw, ripping a go-ahead single to score the automatic runner and put the Phillies back in front, 4-3.<\/p>\n
Crawford entered the night batting .348 with runners in scoring position this season. Another big spot, another response from the rookie.<\/p>\n
The lead lasted until the bottom half.<\/p>\n
Chase Shugart allowed the automatic runner to score, sending the game to the 11th.<\/p>\n
The bullpen options weren’t completely normal. Jhoan Duran was down before the game and Orion Kerkering has been dealing with what Mattingly described as something similar to turf toe. Kerkering had spent time in a boot away from the field, although Mattingly said he was available Friday.<\/p>\n
Mattingly still preferred Shugart.<\/p>\n
“I just like the way he’s been throwing the ball,” he said. “The last probably 45 days, his outings have been good.”<\/p>\n
The Phillies gave him another lead.<\/p>\n
Harper singled in the 11th and Bryson Stott walked. Crawford grounded out before Luis Arraez did what he has done so often since joining the Phillies, using the opposite field for an RBI single that made it 5-4.<\/p>\n
One more lead. One more chance to finish it.<\/p>\n
Shugart recorded an out in the bottom half before Mattingly came to get him for Brooks Raley. Raley retired his first hitter, putting the Phillies one out away. Then Ha-Seong Kim, who entered the night batting .126, pulled a changeup through the left side with two strikes to tie the game.<\/p>\n
Drake Baldwin followed with a walk-off double.<\/p>\n
Three leads from the ninth inning on had disappeared.<\/p>\n
“All of our guys have been struggling a little bit out there,” Mattingly said. “But we’ll get through it.”<\/p>\n
Lately, that group hasn’t been getting through enough of them.<\/p>\n
The Phillies’ bullpen had already been struggling to keep the ball in the yard. Friday looked different \u2014 no late homer did them in \u2014 but the problem remained. They couldn’t get the outs needed to close a game.<\/p>\n
The Phillies scored in both extra innings. Neither run stood up.<\/p>\n
Harper pointed back to the teams’ previous series in Philadelphia, when the Phillies also let the opener get away late.<\/p>\n
“I thought we had a chance to win that game all around,” Harper said of Friday.<\/p>\n
They did.<\/p>\n
More than once.<\/p>\n
VINTAGE NOLA REMAINS<\/p>\n
Aaron Nola did his part.<\/p>\n
He gave the Phillies 6 1\/3 innings of two-run baseball against a Braves lineup seeing him again just eight days after one of his biggest and most impressive starts of the season.<\/p>\n
That was part of the intrigue entering Friday.<\/p>\n
Atlanta had just seen Nola. The Phillies had just seen Chris Sale. With the two teams playing six times across a 10-day span, neither side was getting much time to forget what it had seen.<\/p>\n
“It’s hard,” Nola said of facing the same lineup again so quickly. “You’ve just got to try to make the best pitches you can.”<\/p>\n
For the most part, he did.<\/p>\n
Matt Olson’s first-inning homer hugged the left-field foul pole. Austin Riley’s shot in the seventh came on a low-and-in sinker beneath the zone that he reached down and drove out.<\/p>\n
Neither was the product of Nola leaving a pitch over the heart of the plate.<\/p>\n
He pitched to contact, leaned less on his four-seamer than he had in his previous start against Atlanta and went more frequently to his changeup, a pitch that has become increasingly effective for him lately.<\/p>\n
His ability to get the Braves to expand carried over.<\/p>\n
For the second straight start, Nola generated a chase rate of at least 45 percent. Both came against Atlanta.<\/p>\n
They’re the only two starts this season in which he’s reached that mark and the first time in his career he’s done it in consecutive outings.<\/p>\n
“Nola was good and got us deep into the game,” Mattingly said.<\/p>\n
Jos\u00e9 Alvarado took over for him with a runner aboard in the seventh and stranded him, striking out Ronald Acu\u00f1a Jr. to end the inning. Acu\u00f1a had seven hits and two homers in the teams’ previous meeting.<\/p>\n
Alex McFarlane followed by navigating the eighth and getting the Phillies where they wanted to be: six outs away with a lead.<\/p>\n
That was as far as they got.<\/p>\n
BREAK THE DAM<\/p>\n
The familiarity worked the other way against Sale.<\/p>\n
Atlanta pushed the 37-year-old back an extra day to face Philadelphia, just as it had before his previous start against the Phillies.<\/p>\n
There was good reason.<\/p>\n
Sale had made three starts against them this season entering Friday. Nineteen innings, three earned runs.<\/p>\n
The Phillies matched that run total in one inning.<\/p>\n
It started after two quick outs in the second. Edmundo Sosa lined a two-strike single to left. Bryan De La Cruz followed with a seven-pitch walk. J.T. Realmuto was drilled by the next pitch.<\/p>\n
Three plate appearances had turned an empty inning into a bases-loaded chance.<\/p>\n
The Phillies had gone 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position the last time they faced Sale. Against pitching of his caliber, those opportunities don’t come often.<\/p>\n
Derek Hill cashed this one in.<\/p>\n
Sale started him with three straight fastballs and jumped ahead 1-2. He went to another heater, and Hill was ready for it, searing the pitch into the left-center field gap and clearing the bases.<\/p>\n
A 1-0 deficit became a 3-1 lead.<\/p>\n
“We’re not gonna go out and knock this guy around,” Mattingly said. “It’s one of those things where you’re trying to scratch all the time with him, get runners, and if we can get a big hit, you get a big hit.”<\/p>\n
Hill gave them one.<\/p>\n
The Phillies didn’t score again against Sale, but those three runs matched everything they had produced against him over their first three meetings combined.<\/p>\n
Hill, Sosa and De La Cruz have been an important pieces, particularly when the Phillies have needed a hit.<\/p>\n
Since June 11, the trio is batting .329\/.368\/.576 with runners in scoring position, good for a .945 OPS, with 11 extra-base hits and 50 RBI over 97 plate appearances.<\/p>\n
Against one of the best left-handers in baseball, three right-handed bats the Phillies now trust built their biggest inning of the night.<\/p>\n
There were plenty of things Friday that looked like reasons the Phillies should have won. They finally broke through against Sale. Nola delivered another strong start. Crawford and Arraez each put them ahead in extras.<\/p>\n
But games this time of year are increasingly decided by what teams give away and whether a bullpen can finish what the rest of the roster starts.<\/p>\n
The Phillies did too much of the former Friday.<\/p>\n
They couldn’t do the latter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ATLANTA \u2014 The Phillies have found different ways to lose lately. Too many outs on the bases. Too…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70,11350,17086],"class_list":["post-284348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-phillies-analysis","tag-phillies-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}