PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A couple of alarming trends continued for the Phillies over the weekend in Atlanta, where they fell out of first place.
The series and road trip got off to a great start with Friday’s 12-2 route of the Braves. They were one strike away — twice — from guaranteeing their first road series victory of at least three games since September 2019.
However, the Phils had three blown saves — most notably, Héctor Neris’ — in Saturday’s 8-7, 12-inning loss. And, Aaron Nola pitched nothing like an ace in Sunday’s 6-1 rubber match defeat.
As a result, the Phils fell to 5-11 on the road this season and 8-10 against National League East foes.
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Let’s go deeper into those numbers.
Combining the shortened 60-game 2020 season, as well as the first 35 games of 2021, the Phillies have not won a road series of at least three games in the Joe Girardi era. The last time the club won a road series of that length or more was in September 2019.
“We definitely need to turn it around,” Girard said Sunday night. “Overall when you look at the week, we had a pretty good week. But it’s frustrating because of what happened (Saturday) night. And you got to put it in a compartment and throw it away and move on to Washington and go try to win a series there, and winning Game 1 is always important.”
Then, there are struggles against the division, which, going into this season, was considered one of the better in baseball. It was expected by some that these teams would beat up on one another, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing that the Phils are two games under .500 against the East so far this season.
And with dropping two out of three in Atlanta over the weekend, they have lost four consecutive series when facing NL East teams, including nine out of 12 games. This was after starting the season 5-1 against the Braves and New York Mets.
The Phils have six more games left in this nine-game trip, starting Tuesday at the Washington Nationals, a team they have yet to play this season. Heading into Monday night, Washington is 13-17 and in last place, but only 3 ½ games back of the first place 16-13 Mets.
The 18-17 Phils trail New York by one game but four in the loss column.