PHILADELPHIA — For 3 hours and 16 minutes, the Braves and Phillies played a strange game. Eventually, Atlanta found itself on the losing end, 6-4, on Monday at Citizens Bank Park.
The Braves are 58-40. Here are five observations:
1. After Bryson Stott connected with A.J. Minter’s pitch, Minter did a little hop off the mound and turned around, watching the ball. When he saw it sail over the wall, he crouched over with his hands on his knees and his head down for a few moments.
“I knew he hit it good,” Minter said. “That’s what I was upset about.”
Stott’s three-run home run, which came with two outs in the bottom of the eighth, gave the Phillies a two-run lead. The Braves hadn’t trailed before that.
The Braves lost a game full of strange moments. Both teams scored runs they probably should not have, and both benefited from lucky plays. But Stott’s 378-foot homer was no fluke.
“I feel like we did everything we could today,” Minter said. “We win these type of games nine times out of 10. That’s why you play this game, because everything does not go your way. We’ve been playing such good baseball all year. This one game is not going to do anything to us – it’s not going to faze us, it’s not going to faze me. Just keep going.”
“It does (sting), a little bit,” manager Brian Snitker said. “That was a weird game. Just some weird-hit balls, how the runs were scored. A lot of strange things happened in that game.”
2. The first in a long list of oddities: the ball that got past Matt Olson.
In the bottom of the second inning, Stott hit a chopper toward the first baseman. Olson crept up and began lowering his glove, anticipating the ball. But the ball, fueled by a weird spin, skidded past Olson. An inning-ending groundout became a two-run double that pulled the Phillies within a run of the Braves.
Olson had a confused look on his face and shook his head. That’s all he could do.
“It was just right place, right time, right spin,” Max Fried said. “I was right there, and I saw it. He was right in front of it, and all of the sudden, it just took like a hard right. Just unfortunate. It’s baseball. You can’t expect or script those things.”
3. In the top of the second inning, the Braves took advantage of poor defense from the Phillies.
Former Brave Johan Camargo’s throwing error allowed two runs to score. (In fairness to Camargo, Phillies first baseman Rhys Hoskins probably should’ve caught this ball). Then Atlanta scored again on a wild pitch.
“Just had a weird feel to it all night, the way things were transpiring,” Snitker said.
The Braves scored two runs on an error, one on a wild pitch and another on Marcell Ozuna’s dribbler up the third-base line. They went 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position and left six men on base.
“That was just a strange, strange game,” Snitker said.
4. Stott’s homer is only the second home run Minter has allowed to a left-handed hitter in his career. It came on a cutter that caught too much plate.
“I don’t know where I missed,” Minter said, “but obviously I probably missed over the plate.”
Minter’s inning didn’t come without its own bad luck: He induced a chopper that would’ve ended the inning had it gone a bit closer to second baseman Orlando Arcia. Instead, it was an infield single that extended the inning.
“If I had to go back and do it all over again, I’d do the same thing,” Minter said. “I feel like I do pretty good against lefties. If you go back and look at that game, we controlled what we can control today.”
5. The Braves have lost consecutive games for the first time since June 17-18 at Wrigley Field.
Entering Monday, the Braves and Astros were the majors’ only clubs to not have consecutive losses since June 19.
“For us to do that for that long, it’s impressive,” Fried said. “We’re still obviously a very confident bunch in here. We played a hard, good game tonight. Kind of just a couple pitches that changed the course of the game.”
The Braves are the only team without a three-game losing streak at any point this season. This marks the deepest a club has gone into a season without a three-game skid since the 2009 Dodgers didn’t lose three straight until games No. 98-100.
Stat to know
500 – The loss denied Snitker of the 500th win of his career.
Quotable
“The baseball gods don’t make it happen in an easy way. They’re going to make you gut through all that. They’re going to kick you in the gut every chance they get, and that’s what we do. We’ll put this one behind us and come out and win a game (Tuesday).” – Snitker
Up next
Right-hander Spencer Strider will face Phillies right-hander Aaron Nola in the second game of the series, which is at 7:05 p.m. Tuesday.
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