The sound of momentum dying: Braves 6, Phillies 1

It seems hard to remember that when the weekend began, the Phillies were on a five-game winning streak and had just recorded a dominating win over the Braves. And when they had a two-run lead in the ninth inning on Saturday night, it felt like they might be on their way to going on a genuine roll and getting a definitive leg up over their National League East competitors.

Even after Pablo Sandoval and the rest of the catastrophe that was Saturday night’s game, the Phillies still had a great opportunity to re-seize momentum on Sunday with Aaron Nola on the mound. Unfortunately, Nola put the team in a first-inning hole from which they couldn’t recover, and the Phillies fell to the Braves 6-1.

The game started off pretty well with the suddenly-hot Andrew McCutchen hitting a leadoff home run.

You would have been well-served turning the game off at that point, because that was it as far as Phillies highlights went. Given that slim lead, Nola promptly gave up four runs in the bottom of the first, with the biggest blow delivered by Dansby Swanson.

The Phillies had an opportunity to get right back into the game. They had runners on second base with nobody out in both the second and third inning, but both times, failed to get a run across. After that, they accomplished a whole lot of nothing against Braves starter Huascar Ynoa and a trio of Braves relievers. The Braves tacked on another couple of runs, but with the Phillies offense non-existent, it didn’t really matter.

After 17 straight games, the Phillies will have a much-needed off-day on Monday. Teams usually don’t want to take a break when they’re on a hot streak, but after the past two days, that definitely doesn’t seem to be much of a concern for the Phillies.