The Braves jumped out to a 6 – 0 lead to help Kyle Wright to his 20th win and cut the Mets division lead to 1.5 games.
The Braves opened the scoring in the top of the 2nd, after a Travis d’Arnaud double and a Vaughn Grissom single. William Contreras added his 20th homer of the season in the 3rd, and the Braves put it away with 4 in the 4th. Michael Harris II had the big blow with a 2-run homer to left.
Wright held the Phillies hitless for 5 innings, but at 81 pitches, there was no real drama regarding any complete game happening. The Phillies made the no-hit bid moot anyway after 1 out. A double by Rhys Hoskins and a Bryce Harper homer cut the lead to 6 – 2 and ended Wright’s day after 5 1/3 and 97 pitches.
A reminder:
It’s incredibly hard.
Wash
Austin Riley, filling in at first to give Matt Olson a day off, made his 2nd error of the day leading off the 7th, and it led to an unearned run charged to Raisel Iglesias. The error also led to the eventual tying run coming to the plate with two out, but A.J. Minter was able to strike out Hoskins after a long foul ball just missed tying the game.
Money Mike and Wild Bill each ended with 3 hits and 2 RBIs. The Braves outhit the Phillies 14 – 3.
In Oakland, the Mets lost 10 – 4. Jacob deGrom pitched like some kind of human person, allowing 5 earned runs in 4 innings.
Do not go gentle into that good ninth. The Braves should burn their pen at close of day; Rage, rage against the punting of the fight. Though wise men at their end know to pull Wright, Because their bats had corked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good ninth. Olson, the pitch waved at, crying how bright His deeds danced in a California bay, Rage, rage against the punting of the fight. Wild Bill who caught, and drove the ball in flight And threw, too late, but heaved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good ninth. Grossman, near waived, who now hits pitchers-right Blind eyes could be lased like Rosario’s after May, Rage, rage against the punting of the fight. And you, dear Snitker, there on the sad height, Curse, bless me now with your ejection, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good ninth. Rage, rage against the punting of the fight.
The Braves will try to split the series on Sunday; Charlie Morton vs. Kyle Gibson scheduled at 1:05 Eastern.
Bravo!
What Remy said.
Beautiful.
Every time we’re ready to lose faith these guys do something special. Along with the A’s playing spoiler, the bats come alive for Kyle. If the A’s treat Max badly tomorrow, we may be back in a near tie.
‘The world is a better place once a good poem has been added to it’ — Dylan Thomas.
We could say the same about a Rusty S recap.
I see that the folks who think rest is more important than anything else are back. Which is amusing because you’d have thought last year would’ve disabused them of their theories. After all, at this time last year they had Freddie Freeman secretly tearing this team apart from the inside with his odious insistence that people actually play.
To the folks saying to give up and start resting folks, I say this. We are not winning the World Series without winning the division. Beating the home-field advantage Dodgers with our rotation all screwed up from having to play the Wild Card Series? Yeah, not likely. Win the division and we get a week’s rest. There’s your rest right there.
Good for Olsen. Come on now, Chuck!
There isn’t an early lead that Charlie can’t barf back. It’s uncanny.
Uh, get Chavez up
Our offense is due for a 12 run game. Gonna need it.
A lot of pessimism about Morton. Charlie is trending more like a #4 starter, which is fine, and expected, given his age. But he was pegged and paid for more of a #2 role. The option on Charlie is probably easily declined now. I really think retirement may be on his mind. But I’d bring him back at maybe a $10MM rate if he were interested. You can do a lot worse.
I hate this stadium…so. many cheap ass homers
An ERA hovering around 5.40 over the last six starts will make one pessimistic. Morton isn’t perfectly cromulent these days.
Morton is gonna have to pitch in the playoffs if we go the Wild Card route. Hell he’ll probably pitch even if we win the division. I don’t want to see it.
Hopefully Strider is ready for the first round.
Can we go to the bullpen now?
That Dansby is something else.
Letting Charlie face them a 3rd time is a choice.
That hurts. Rain coming and it’s an official game.
ERA now north of 5.50 in his last six starts. He’s not fooling anyone. And it’s not like his third time through was better than his first time … he’s just not very good at this point in time.
And with the storms moving in, Snitker should have treated this inning as though the game would be decided right then and there.
@17 it literally happens every time. It’s like we either don’t know or don’t care that some of our starters struggle the third time through
Terrible timing on the rain and the two runs scored. If Grossman had made a better throw, we’d be 5-5 at the end of 5.
Grossman has a noodle arm that you can’t hide no matter where you play him. Acuna being out for this series has probably cost us the division. He was just starting to heat up.
That was among the worst weather I’ve ever seen umpires try to play through. That was something.
And it was totally unwarranted, there’s literally no difference if we get that third out or not. Hopefully they’ll be more patient than normal given the importance of this game. Looks like a couple of hours of rain at least.
Yeah, the game was already official because the Phillies took the lead (under the same principle under which the game is over if the home team takes the lead in the ninth). And even if it hadn’t been, they don’t scuttle half-games and force full replays anymore. All unofficial games are suspended. So yeah, really dumb…especially if the grounds crew can’t get the field playable again after all that.
Of course, Chip didn’t know that the game was official before somebody corrected him. Sometimes, Chipwatch writes itself.
@25: I live in the Philly area and the rain is stopping. Pretty confident they’ll finish this one.
Game to resume at 5:20 ET
I was starting to worry a bit that they were gonna claim the field was unplayable and not finish the game. I might have gotten fired from my volunteer role as a writer on this site if that had happened…my recap would not have been pleasant to the umpires or the Phillies grounds crew. Likely for the best that they found a way to restart…ha!
Seems like we got a huge break on that replay.
Wouldn’t the play have been to let Grissom hit and pinch hit Acuña for Grossman?
Thank you very much.
What a gift. And what an awful AB by Grossman.
I think you’d rather the lefty-right matchup, and pinch-hitting Acuna lets you jump to that matchup or make them face Acuna (in the unlikely event they decided to do that). I liked the move.
34 — Doesn’t Grossman hit better right handed?
He’s been hitting just as well left-handed for us.
Any Jansen walk is a double.
Olson is completely broken
Can’t even get the free space on the board in the top of the 10th.
We suck at Manfred Ball. So frustrating.
Second try has been much better. Woo!
Is Minter unavailable? This feels like pressing our luck.
Baseball is fun.
HELL YEAH!!!
Never in doubt.
Hey, what do I know. All hail Jackson Stephens.
What a fantastic performance by the bullpen especially Stephens. Wow. Great win. Now we need to sweep the gNats.
Helluva win there.
Very big win. I’d say we won because the rain delay turned it into a night game, thus avoiding our day-game get-away curse!
Now we have to sweep the Nats. Get it done lads!
Ronald wasn’t ok to play before the rain, but apparently the extra few hours really helped him heal up. I dunno what’s going on there but he better play every game this coming week. We have to win all of them, and we’ll be throwing a bunch of random pitching in the Nats series so we need offense.
Phew.
A rain-delay show caller accused Ronald of being a prima donna.
By the way, the rain-delay show callers are by-and-large a bunch of… dumbasses. (Sorry.) I feel sorry for Kevin McAlpin having to entertain those rubes.
Big win. We still may not win the division, but a loss there would have hurt our chances in a huge way. Otoh, the Phillies may look to this game as causing them to miss the playoffs altogether.
Wildcard battle between the Phillies and Brewers will be interesting. Philadelphia playing their last 3 games at Houston compared to Milwaukee closing out with the D’backs at home is a big difference.
We stole this win better than Cool Hand Luke stole that dump truck.
Recapped