PHILADELPHIA -- After two days of going pitch to pitch with the Phillies' vaunted staff, the Braves let one get out of control Sunday and were left with a 14-1 loss.
They saved the last game before the All-Star break for their most lopsided loss of the season. The Phillies got to Derek Lowe for four runs on 10 hits, then pounded out 10 runs against Cory Gearrin and Scott Proctor on a day in which manager Fredi Gonzalez wanted to rest his bullpen.
The Phillies' Raul Ibanez ended the series the same way he started it -- with a home run off Proctor. Unlike his walk-off shot to win it Friday night, his three-run homer in the eighth inning on Sunday was just window dressing for the Phillies, who won the series 2-1.
The 20 hits allowed by the Braves were the most they’d given up in a game in five years.
“Sometimes you’ve just got to say you got your [backsides] beat,” said Lowe, who fell to 5-7 with a 4.30 ERA. “That’s what happened. ... You’ve just got to give them all the credit. [But] it should be fun the last couple months. I don’t think either team is going to go away.”
The Braves at least had a shot to take over first place with a sweep this weekend at Citizens Bank Park, but they settled for dropping a game in the standings in the series loss.
“This series was important for us because we had a chance to catch the guys that were in front of us in our division,” Gonzalez said. “But we have two more series, one here in September and one back at home, before this is all said and done.”
The Braves are 54-38 at the All-Star break, 3-1/2 games behind the Phillies in the NL East and five games up on the Diamondbacks, Cardinals and Brewers in the wild card race. They have the fourth-best record in baseball behind the Phillies, Red Sox and Yankees.
But they headed for Atlanta in a dour mood.
“[In] 162 games you’re going to run into these games right here,” Gonzalez said. “The only thing that bothers me a little bit is that we can’t play tomorrow. We’ve got to sit around with the bad taste in our mouths for four days.”
The loss did no justice to the kind of series these two NL East contenders played most of the weekend. Until the Phillies scored two runs in the third inning off Lowe to go up 3-1, they’d hadn’t led by more than one run in the series.
Braves pitchers allowed only four runs in 20 1/3 innings in the first two games of the series: a 3-2 loss on Friday night and 4-1 win on Saturday. And neither Roy Halladay nor Cliff Lee came away with a win in the first two games of the series.
“We know we can play with them,” Braves catcher Brian McCann said. “They’re a great team, and so are we.”
Cole Hamels, the Phillies third ace, was dominant in his own right Sunday, allowing only one run on three hits in eight innings. It was the ninth consecutive start in which he’d allowed two or fewer runs. He’s 5-2 with a 1.41 ERA over that time, and 11-4 with a 2.32 ERA on the season.
About the only good offensive news for the Braves was that Dan Uggla doubled in the third inning and scored a run, and he takes a six-game hitting streak into the All-Star break.
“Cole Hamels was pretty tough,” McCann said. “And you’ve almost got to play perfect when a guy is as hot as he’s been. And they just beat us.”
Lowe gave up 10 hits but got the Braves through six innings and left trailing 4-1.
“I’ve been out there enough to know when you really feel like the game is going to start spiraling out of control, and I never felt like that,” Lowe said. “But again, they handed it to us, so all the credit goes to them.”
