For the second time in the series, Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman made an error that let in the winning run. Which is unusual.
For the second time in the series, Ryan Howard hit a multi-run homer against the Braves. Which is not unusual.
Howard’s three-run homer off Trevor Cahill in the first inning erased a 2-0 lead the Braves had given their struggling starting pitcher, and the Phillies never trailed again on the way to a 5-4 win that clinched the series, two games to one, and handed the Braves their fifth loss in the last six games of a 3-6 trip.
The Braves tied it in the third and made things interesting when Alberto Callaspo’s pinch-hit homer in the ninth inning cut the lead to one run, but Kelly Johnson’s long fly off Phillies closer Jonathan Papelbon with two runners on was caught one step in front of the left-field wall for the final out.
“Missed opportunities — we had some runners on base and just didn’t get them all in,” Freeman said after the Braves went 3-for-11 with runners in scoring position Sunday. He added, “There’s been a lot of errors this road trip. We have to play better baseball starting tomorrow.”
The Braves’ 10-game homestand begins Monday night with the opener of a three-game series against the Nationals.
Manager Fredi Gonzalez hopes warmer weather will help his players get their offense cranked back up and snap out of a defensive malaise. After leading the majors with only one error in their first 12 games, the Braves have nine errors in their past six games.
“I don’t know if it was from the cold and guys standing around out there, but we’re better than that,” Gonzalez said.
That might be an easier fix than Cahill (0-3), who made statistical progress Sunday but still looked like nothing more than a (barely) serviceable starter while trimming his ERA to 8.03 in three games.
He allowed five hits, four runs and three walks with one strikeout in six innings, and threw just 49 strikes in 87 pitches. But he did pitch almost as long Sunday as he’d lasted in his previous two starts combined (6 1/3 innings).
Acquired in a trade from the Diamondbacks in the final days of spring training, Cahill has allowed 15 hits, 11 earned runs and seven walks with five strikeouts in 12 1/3 innings. The Howard homer was the first he’s allowed, and it came on a hanging change-up over the middle of the plate with the count full, after Cahill got ahead 0-2.
“I feel like I didn’t command the ball as well as I could have,” said Cahill, who is 0-7 with an 8.62 ERA in his past nine starts back to August. “I’ve had success against Howard with the change-up, and I just left it up.”
On a day when a pair of erstwhile “Baby Braves” from the 2005 rookie class, Kelly Johnson and Jeff Francoeur, batted cleanup for the Braves and Phillies respectively, it seemed appropriate that shell-of-his-former-self slugger Howard crushed his second homer in as many days.
Howard hit .180 with one homer and four RBIs in 14 games before dropping two homers and five RBIs on the Braves in the past two games. He has career-highs of 49 homers and 139 RBI in 159 games against the Braves.
Since Aug. 7, 2012, Howard has 12 homers in 33 games against the Braves, and 35 homers in 263 games against everyone else. He had 0-for-9 with six strikeouts against Cahill before Sunday, but this time he was in a Braves uniform.
“I thought Cahill did OK,” Gonzalez said. “He got the change-up up in the strike zone to Ryan Howard, after getting ahead 0-2. Ryan didn’t chase those change-ups in the dirt, and he missed up over the plate just a little too much, and with him he’s so strong, he’s going to hit it out of the ballpark.”
Freeman had two errors in Friday’s 1-0 loss, including one on a game-ending grounder that went off the end of his glove when he reached down to field it as Freddy Galvis raced home from third.
That would’ve been a difficult out if Freeman had fielded the ball cleanly. He insisted he would’ve had a play at the plate Friday and made no excuses for his play Sunday, when he ranged right to field Odubel Herrera’s two-out grounder and tossed the ball behind pitcher Ian Thomas as the left-handed reliever was in stride and approaching the base.
Again it was Galvis who scored, this time from second base.
“He’s a pretty sure-handed guy,” Gonzalez said of Freeman. “The one today, it was a chopper and it’s tough with a left-handed guy covering the bag…. We just didn’t make a play. We probably make it 100 out of 100 times, but we didn’t make it today.”
The run pushed the lead to 5-3, and so Callaspo’s pinch homer in the ninth only brought the Braves to within a run.
“Looking at the replay, it’s an easy toss,” Freeman said of his error, “or I could just let (second baseman) Jace (Peterson) get it. Just a bonehead move again.”
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