Just not the night: Braves 11, Phillies 2

This one was one to forget.

Aaron Nola was on the mound for the Phillies, taking the hill with a lead when J.T. Realmuto scored on an infield single by Phil Gosselin. Nola started off alright, but there were some issues early when he seemed to be shaking his head often at the home plate umpire for not getting some borderline pitches. He also wasn’t spotting anything with accuracy, which for him is a sign of a bad night.

Nola continued to pitch through some of those control issues through the first two innings, but in the third, things caught up to him. Travis d’Arnaud and Marcell Ozuna hit back-to-back homers in the inning, d’Arnaud’s a two-run version, and the Braves had a 3-1 lead. Johan Comargo added another in the inning when he doubled home Austin Riley and made it 4-1. Nola was removed after that and the bullpen had to pick up the slack the rest of the night.

We all know where that led.

Reggie McClain tried his best, but in the fifth, the floodgates were opened. Alec Bohm played some shoddy defense in the inning and his errors led to most of the runs being unearned at the tim—

Friends, I don’t really want to recount each play. It was bad, folks. Let’s just leave it at that.

Cole Irvin was the sacrificial lamb in the bullpen as he was asked to pick up 45 pitches on the night and save some arms for the rest of the series.

The offense was stymied after that first inning by Max Fried (5 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 2 BB, 5 K) and the rest of the Braves’ bullpen. It was just a bad performance all the way around.

On the plus side, there was some stellar defense elsewhere in the field!

And Jojo Romero made his debut by striking out the side.

Oh well, on to the next one.