Phillies flat as club soda left out overnight against Braves
By Rick Soisson
The Starters Depart Early
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The exhaustive pitchers’ breakdown above, of course, seemingly guaranteed both pitchers would be gone before the sixth inning began. Arrieta had lasted five frames, Soroka 4.2.
The difference seemed to be in Soroka’s heavy sinker, which produced seven Phillies left on base, three in scoring position with two outs, by the time he left. The Phillies had scored one run. Arrieta, on the other hand, left only two Braves on base. He had given up five runs despite generally good pitch movement. (An exception to that was the cookie he threw Brian McCann that landed in the second deck in right field in the fifth.)
After the sixth inning, including the disastrous appearance of Phillies reliever Cole Irvin and two more LOB by Philadelphia, Atlanta led, 9-1.
The rest of the contest was a fairly listless affair punctuated only by Jean Segura’s long homer to left-center in the seventh that made the final score 9-2.
Next. The trend toward using position players in relief. dark
All in all, the evening suggested two things: Jake Arrieta will be a hit-and-miss starter for the rest of 2019, and the Phillies badly need a spark of some sort to actually compete for even the second NL Wild Card.