A Tease to the Last: Phillies 3, Braves 0

The Phillies won. They snapped their losing streak. They teased us again.

Full disclosure: I did not watch this game because I was in the air and did not want to subject my fellow passengers to another Phillies’ loss.

HC

That’s an icefield (basically a merged cluster of glaciers) in the Chugach National Forest, in Southcentral Alaska. I took this picture about an hour after Cesar Hernandez singled in Jose Bautista and Scott Kingery to score the only runs the Phils would need. They did get another, when Odubel Herrera drove in Nick Williams a few minutes later.

So yeah, that’s what happened. And Nola? Nola was Nola. Seven innings, no runs, eight strikeouts, two hits. Hector Neris and Seranthony Dominguez pitched a clean eighth and ninth respectively.

Also Roman Quinn stole a base.

With the win, the Philliles improve to 79-82. A .500 record is out of reach, but only just. Frankly, if a soothsayer had told any of us in March that we were guaranteed 79 wins, very few would have believed him. Partly because that was the upper end expectation for this team, and partly because Soothsayin’ Dave is always full of shit anyway, isn’t that right Dave? The last couple months have sucked some seriously royal ass, but the season as a whole has been pretty damn decent.

One more crack at it tomorrow, with Ranger Suarez expected to start against Atlanta’s Kevin Gausman.