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ATLANTA – Kyle Schwarber stood at home plate, stared out at the third base umpire, and waved his index finger. “Not a swing,” he said, as any amateur lip-reader could attest. It was that kind of night Tuesday for the Phillies. But for a change, a late-season loss to the Atlanta Braves – 3-1, for the record, on Marcell Ozuna’s sixth-inning solo homer against Zack Wheeler – wasn’t the end of the world. Hardly. Well, at least not yet. The sky isn’t falling because
Phillies arrived here with a seven-game lead in the NL East and 38 games left. It’s the first time they’ve visited Atlanta in first place this late in a season since the final week in 2011, when they dashed the Braves’ wild-card hopes. (And helped usher in the Cardinals, who wound up as their eventual vanquishers. But, well, never mind that.) So, before you hyperventilate over the top of the order – Schwarber, Trea Turner, and Bryce Harper – going 0 for 12 with seven
strikeouts in an impossibly punchless performance, remember that the Phillies have the cushion to withstand a clunker. If anything, this series and the four-game set next week in Philadelphia represent the last stand for the six-time division champion Braves, who must overcome their deficit against the Phillies without injured stars Ronald Acuña Jr., Ozzie Albies and Austin Riley and ace Spencer Strider. Not that manager Rob Thomson chooses to look at it that way. “I approach it like they’re all healthy,” Thomson said before the game. ”
Because we went through a period of time where we had a few guys out, too, and other guys stepped up. We cannot lay down at all thinking that, well, they have a bunch of broken-down pieces and guys not in the lineup. That’s not a formula for success.” Neither is leaving the bases loaded in the second inning or runners on first and second with one out in the fourth against hard-throwing Braves righty Reynaldo López. Nor is walking four of six batters to allow an insurance run, as José Alvarado did in the eighth inning. Wheeler did his part, as usual, in his hometown. He was born in Smyrna, Ga., a few miles
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