If the sputtering Braves manage to back their way into the postseason, the question could be whether they keep skidding pitcher Derek Lowe a part of their starting rotation once they get there.
Lowe got knocked around again Tuesday by the Philadelphia Phillies, and the Braves lost their fourth consecutive game and seventh in nine on a night when the last bit of their wild-card lead, a lead that once seemed insurmountable, was erased.
The Braves were blasted 7-1 by the Phillies at Turner Field in the next-to-last game of the regular season, while St. Louis beat Houston 13-6 to pull even with the Braves in the National League wild-card standings.
Atlanta led St. Louis by 10-1/2 games on Aug. 25 and by 8-1/2 games on Sept. 5. The Braves are in danger of becoming the first National League team ever to blow a lead of as many as 8-1/2 games that late in the season and not make the playoffs.
Tim Hudson (16-10) will face the Phillies' Joe Blanton (1-2) in the season finale Wednesday night.
"We still have a chance," said Lowe (9-17), who gave up five runs and six hits in four innings and lost his fifth consecutive start. "I’ve let everybody down in here. But come tomorrow, this isn’t about my terrible year, this is about getting this organization to the playoffs.”
Roy Oswalt (9-10) blanked the Braves on three hits and one walk over six innings. The Phillies recorded their 101st win of the season and sixth in a row against the Braves, who are 6-11 against the NL East champions.
"It's like we're living out a bad dream," third baseman Chipper Jones said of the Braves, who have lost 12 of 17 games. "You really never expect this to happen to you but there are a lot of things that are contributing to it. Whether it's injuries, whether it's just the bats falling silent at the most inopportune time of the season. It happens.
“It’s not what we want, obviously," Gonzalez said. "I’m not going to mince any words. And I’m sure it’s not what he wanted, either. But it is what it is, now we’ve got one game to play in the month of September. Then October comes around and it’s a new month.
"There’s not a guy in that locker room that I wouldn’t want on my team to play that game. We’ve played 161 games with those guys, and I wouldn’t trade any of them."
That was the message Gonzalez delivered to his team during a closed-door meeting immediately after the game, before reporters were let into the clubhouse.
"There's no place I'd rather be than on the mound [for the finale]," Hudson said late Tuesday. "I'll be having more fun than anybody in the stadium."
The Braves (89-72) finish the season against baseball's best team, while the Cardinals finish against Houston (56-105), baseball's worst team. If the Braves and Cardinals finish with the same record, they would play a one-game tiebreaker Thursday in St. Louis to determine the wild-card winner.
The tiebreaker would be in St. Louis because the Cardinals had a 5-1 record against the Braves this season.
As if things weren’t bad enough for the Braves, they also played most of Tuesday's game without shortstop Alex Gonzalez, who has been one of their only productive hitters in September and had the team’s best statistics against Oswalt.
Gonzalez left in the second inning after reinjuring the right calf strain that caused him to miss four consecutive starts before he returned Monday. Fredi Gonzalez said the injury would likely keep the shortstop out of the lineup Wednesday.
The Phillies scored four in the first four innings and pushed their lead to 6-0 on Hunter Pence’s two-run homer in the fifth off rookie reliever Arodys Vizcaino. Jimmy Rollins added a solo homer off rookie Julio Teheran in the seventh.
Lowe was pulled after giving up a Rollins single to start the fifth inning.
The Braves averted a shutout when Martin Prado homered to start the ninth inning.
With the Braves trailing 6-0 in the sixth, many in a crowd of 38,663 at Turner Field chanted “Let’s go, Hous-ton,” when the out-of-town scoreboard showed the Astros had taken an early 5-0 lead over St. Louis.
However, the Cardinals came back with five runs in the fourth inning to tie the score, then pulled away. The Cardinals have won 22 of 31 games since Aug. 25.
It was another dreadful performance for Lowe, who has an 8.75 ERA during his five-game losing streak, with 38 hits and 23 earned runs allowed in 23 2/3 innings.
The Braves will have to decide if the 38-year-old’s big-game pedigree from years past outweighs the fact that he has been outpitched by rookies Brandon Beachy, Mike Minor and Randall Delgado. Lowe is finishing the third season of a four-year, $60 million contract and is owed $15 million in 2012.
“This is something that I have to hash out in the offseason," said Lowe, who is 0-3 with an 8.40 ERA in his past three starts against the Phillies, and 2-7 in nine starts against them over the past two seasons. "By no means am I sitting here saying this year is lost, or a wash. I’ve put myself in bad mechanical places for a long time. But I’ve never given up or quit.
"I’ve got to keep fighting and figure it out. I see what I’m doing, but there’s a difference in figuring it out and actually doing it when the game starts. If you’re 9-17 with a 5 ERA, c’mon. I’m man enough to sit here and say I’ve had a terrible year. But again, we have a chance. We have our best pitcher going tomorrow."
Lowe ran into trouble early, giving up a homer to the second batter of the game, Chase Utley. That made Utley 16-for-37 with three homers in his career against.
Two of the Phillies’ four runs in the first four innings came on sacrifice flies and another on a ground-ball single through the infield — just the sort of thing the Braves have done poorly all season, and almost not at all in recent weeks.
The Braves rank last in the NL and 29th in the majors in sacrifice flies with 29. They’ve scored only 11 runs in their past six games, and seven of those came in their only win during that span, against Washington.
“When you don’t pitch, you kind of look the way we did tonight," Fredi Gonzalez said. "Yet we’ve got one game to win tomorrow, then a new month, and the guys we need to win tomorrow are out there. I believe in all those guys, and we’ll get it done.”
They’ve been outscored 18-4 during their four-game losing streak.
If the Braves hold on and back into the postseason, they would presumably have Hudson and either Beachy or Minor assured of two spots in their rotation for a potential best-of-five division series against Milwaukee or Arizona.
If they use a three-man rotation for that short series, the once-unthinkable prospect of leaving Lowe out of an already injury-depleted rotation might become a distinct possibility.
Gonzalez has mentioned the possibility of pitching Jair Jurrjens in the first round, despite the fact that he has been on the disabled list all month with a knee injury and will not make a regular-season start before the postseason.
