PHILADELPHIA – The opposing team loaded the bases in consecutive innings without scoring Sunday, which wasn’t too surprising if you’ve seen Julio Teheran face the Phillies before, particularly in Philadelphia.
And the streaking Braves’ recently robust scoring output was on pause for most of the day Sunday — again not surprising, if you consider how little run support Teheran has received this season. No worries, though.
The Braves got home runs from Matt Kemp and Freddie Freeman and that was enough on a day when Teheran got big outs and the bullpen was strong in a 2-0 win at Citizens Bank Park, Atlanta’s sixth consecutive win and 10th in 14 games.
“Matt got us up in the second inning pretty early, and obviously Julio didn’t look back,” said Freeman, who has a career-best 29 homers and leads the National League with 72 extra-base hits. “We haven’t scored many runs for Julio at all this year and we obviously didn’t do it again today, but two was enough for him.”
The Phillies failed to score after loading the bases in the fifth and sixth innings, and the Braves failed to score after loading them in the sixth and seventh against Phillies starter Jake Thompson (1-5). But homers from Kemp in the second inning and Freeman in the eighth did the trick for the Braves and their ace.
Teheran (5-9) allowed five hits and two walks with seven strikeouts in six scoreless innings, improving to 6-2 with a 1.39 ERA in 10 starts against the Phillies since the beginning of 2014, including 4-0 with a 1.00 ERA in five at Philadelphia.
“We got the one run, and after that I wasn’t going to let the other team score on me,” said Teheran, who’s had the worst run support among major league starters this season, at barely three runs per nine innings pitched. “The last two innings I really had to battle. (Getting out of those jams) was big. I know that the game was close, so I was really focused on making pitches and getting an attitude, get to fighting. I like to feel like that whenever I need to fight and battle.”
The Braves are 45-55 since Brian Snitker took over as interim manager, after starting 9-28 under manager Fredi Gonzalez. They have a 17-15 record since adding Kemp to their lineup in a trade with the Padres, and in that span they’ve averaged more than 5.1 runs per game.
“We’re not the same team, quite honestly,” Snitker said. “I feel good with everybody that goes up there. I feel like they’re going to do something good and big. And when they don’t, it’s like, ok, go out there and try to keep us in the game and we’ll do it next inning.”
Freeman said, “The past month, the past couple of months, we’ve been playing really good baseball. We got off to a really rough start; you knew it was going to turn around at some point. Brian’s been so laid back, he’s in the game fighting for us and you just want to do it for him. And obviously with Matt coming into this lineup it’s been a world of difference.”
The Braves have back-to-back sweeps against the Padres and Phillies and now face the nemesis Nationals in a series that starts Monday afternoon in Washington.
Before Sunday, the Braves had scored the second-most runs in the National League in the period since Kemp arrived. They outscored the Phillies 8-4 in the last two games of the series despite going 0-for-21 with runners in scoring position.
Freeman is one homer from his first 30-homer season — his high was 23 before 2016 — and also got his 200th career double Sunday. Kemp needs two homers for his second 30-homer season and first since 2011, when he led the league in homers (39) and RBIs (126) and was second in the NL MVP balloting.
Teheran didn’t allow a hit until the fourth inning and worked out of bases-loaded jams in each of his last two innings. He got Phillies home run and RBI leader Maikel Franco to ground out with bases loaded to end the fifth inning and escaped the sixth when Peter Bourjos lined out to well-positioned Nick Markakis in right field.
The Braves loaded the bases in the sixth on a single from Ender Inciarte (extending his hitting streak to 15 games) and consecutive one-out walks from Freeman and Kemp before Nick Markakis grounded into a double play.
They loaded them again in the seventh after a Jace Peterson single and Dansby Swanson walk with one out. One out later, Inciarte was walked intentionally to bring up hot-hitting Garcia, who grounded out to end the inning.
They’ve scored two or fewer runs while Teheran was in the the game in 17 of 25 starts, including one or none while he was in 10. His run support against Philadelphia hasn’t been much better for his career, at 3.3 runs per nine innings before Sunday. But he’s allowed two earned runs or fewer in nine of his past 10 starts against the Phillies, including one or no earned runs in seven of those games.
