Slumping Braves arrive in South Philly to face hot Phillies

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Mike Soroka takes mound for opener of key weekend series

The first-place Atlanta Braves (60-43) arrive at Citizens Bank Park for a three-game weekend series with the Philadelphia Phillies (54-48) following a Thursday off-day in the schedule for both clubs.

The Braves are struggling a bit, having dropped six of their last eight games. Meanwhile, the Phillies have come out on top in seven of their last 10 games. They have won five of six games for just the third time all season.

Despite those recent results, Atlanta still maintains control in the NL East Division standings. They are 4.5 games ahead of the second place Washington Nationals, and 5.5 ahead (five in the loss column) of the third place Phillies.

The Phillies will enter this series just one game off the pace in the race for the final NL Wildcard playoff spot. In the Friday night opener, the Phillies will be looking for a fourth straight victory for what would be the fifth time this season. They have not yet won five in a row during all of 2019. They will also be trying to win six of seven for the first time all year.

These two division rivals have already met nine times this year with the Phillies capturing five of those games. When last they met at the start of the month, the Braves took two of three in Atlanta. The hosts scored 21 runs in a pair of blowouts by 9-2 and 12-6 scores in the final two games after an Aaron Nola shutout had given the Phillies a win in that series opener.

Averaging 5.22 runs per game, the Braves are the third-most productive offense in the National League. Their collective OPS of .790 is ranked sixth in all of Major League Baseball. But during this recent eight-game struggle, Atlanta’s offense has averaged only 3.375 runs per game.

The Braves are coming off a 2-0 shutout at the hands of the Kansas City Royals on Wednesday. It was just the third time that Atlanta has been white-washed all year. The last time, after putting up a goose egg against Nola and the Phillies, their hitters broke out with 21 runs over the following two games. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen again this time.

Phillies head to Atlanta for key early July series with first-place Braves

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The Freeze will be doing his race thing this weekend in Atlanta

The Philadelphia Phillies (44-40) slumped during the month of June, and watched as the defending NL East Division champion Atlanta Braves (50-35) stormed past them to take over the division lead.

With the calendar flipped to a new month, the Phillies hope to make a clean start. They will try to begin pecking away at the Braves five-game lead in the loss column during a three-game series this week at SunTrust Park in Atlanta.

The two teams have met for two series in the 2019 season’s first half. At Citizens Bank Park in late March, the Phillies swept the Braves, setting the stage for the first two months which saw the Phillies hold the division lead for all but seven days.

In mid-June, Atlanta took two of three games in front of their home fans at SunTrust Park, winning the opener in walkoff fashion and then blowing the doors off the Phillies with a 15-1 thrashing on Father’s Day.

MLB Power Rankings: Houston Astros take over the top spot on June 15

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Houston Astros take over top spot with the June 15 rankings

When my first MLB Power Rankings for the 2019 season were released two weeks ago on June 1, I took some guff from a couple of Phillies fans who thought that I was nuts for ranking the club in the #15 slot.

At the time, the Phillies were in first place in the National League East Division, leading the Atlanta Braves by two games. But the Braves came out three places above the Phillies, ranking in the #12 slot. My own personal feelings have nothing to do with it. Instead, it’s all about the results and the statistics. Those rarely prove wrong over the long haul.

As with last season when I began this evaluation process, there will be no subjectivity on my part. I take the key statistics and rank teams based on their ability to actually win ball games as well as their performance on offense, on the pitching mound, and in the field.

The MLB Power Rankings will be updated here at Phillies Nation roughly every two weeks for the remainder of the regular season using the below methodology.

RANKINGS METHODOLOGY

Introduced and then upgraded during the course of last season, my formula for compiling the rankings gets another tweak to begin this year. By the end of 2018, I was researching each of the 30 MLB teams current position in the four categories of winning percentage, runs scored, pitching OPS, and fielding percentage.

This year, runs-per-game will be replacing simple runs scored to get the offensive component. I then assign each of those component category team rankings a 1-30 value and add them up to determine an overall final ratings score. Where there was a tie, it was broken by W-L percentage, then by runs-per-game, followed by pitching OPS.

Getting to be gut-check time early for the 2019 Philadelphia Phillies

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Phillies in desperate need of a gut-check win at SunTrust Park 

To call the Philadelphia Phillies (38-31) loss on Friday night to the Atlanta Braves (41-29) simply frustrating would be an understatement. The host Braves rallied from a five-run deficit entering the bottom of the 7th and a two-run deficit entering the bottom of the 9th to a walkoff, 9-8 victory over the Phillies.

The victory was an eighth straight for the surging Braves. It was also their 11th win in their last 13 games, and raised their record to 23-9 since the club fell two games below the .500 mark back on May 9.

On that day, the Braves were four games behind the first-place Phillies in the standings. But now, after turning their season around and after sending the visiting Phillies to their own fourth loss in five games, the Braves have pushed to the top of the NL East Division and hold a 2.5 game lead.

The Phillies now hold just a two game lead on both the Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamonbacks, and a 2.5 game lead on the Saint Louis Cardinals, for the final National League Wildcard playoff spot.

Perhaps more important than worrying about the postseason, however, is winning right now. The Phillies are reeling, and all of the Pollyanna positive-thought talk from manager Gabe Kapler or anyone else in the organization isn’t going to change that fact.

This 2019 Phillies ball club has reached gut-check point. The club has gone just 5-9 over the last two weeks since a rousing 11-4 win over Saint Louis at Citizens Bank Park on May 29 pushed them to 11 games over the .500 mark and a 3.5 game division lead.

Can the Phillies regain whatever mojo allowed them to repeatedly overcome their inconsistencies to produce victories over the season’s first two months? Or are the multi-talented defending NL East champion Braves simply too much for them? Are the Braves just a better team? Could this Saturday night game at SunTrust Park in Atlanta possibly be a must-win game already, as we reach the exact mid-point in June?

Phillies visit Braves for a June 2019 first-place showdown series

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Phillies visit SunTrust Park for big series with Braves

The Philadelphia Phillies (38-30) sat alone at the top of the National League East Division standings for seven straight weeks, covering every day from April 25 through last weekend.

Losses in eight of their last 13 games, including three of their four games so far this week, opened the door for the Atlanta Braves (40-29) to make a move.

The Braves took full advantage, winning 10 of their last 12 to surge past the Phillies and into first place in the division. Atlanta is now riding a seven-game winning streak.

The two rivals will meet for the second time this year over the weekend, and the NL East Division lead will be directly on the line. The site will be SunTrust Park in Atlanta this time, after the Phillies swept the Braves out of Citizens Bank Park in the season’s very first series back in late March.

The Braves have performed far better statistically in the 2019 season. Their 5.17 runs-per-game ranks fifth in the National League, while the Phillies 4.87 is the league’s seventh-ranked mark. At the plate, the Braves out-rank the Phillies in OPS (4-9), home runs (5-11), and stolen bases (8-15) in the NL.

On the mound among the 15 NL teams, the Braves out-rank the Phillies in batting average against (7-13) and OPS against (9-13), though Phillies hurlers have a slightly better ERA.

The Phillies just got reliever Edubray Ramos back from the Injured List, and hope to have reliever Pat Neshek and outfielder Roman Quinn back for this series.

This is an early gut-check for the Phillies. Struggling for the last couple of weeks, they now look up in the standings at their weekend hosts. They will have to listen to Braves fans doing the obnoxious ‘Tomahawk Chop’ any time the home team does anything positive. How the Phillies respond to this challenge over the next three days will reveal much about their own collective character.

Phillies reach Memorial Day in first place in the National League East standings

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The top spot in the NL East standings remains occupied by the Phillies

The Philadelphia Phillies (31-22) have been able to hold on to first place in the National League East Division standings while fighting their way through what is arguably the most challenging portion of their entire 2019 regular season schedule.

As we reach Memorial Day, the only off-day in this stretch of 23 games in 24 days against tough competition outside of the division, that daunting gauntlet has been more than halfway run.

The team has won seven of 10 games since dropping three of the first four during this stretch. The Phillies are now 8-6 over the first two weeks of the nearly month-long test.

The club returns home briefly on Tuesday to begin a three-game series with the Saint Louis Cardinals at Citizens Bank Park. Then the Phillies will head back out on the road, flying west for six games against the top two teams in the NL West, the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres.

The Phillies offensive attack has been inconsistent to this point, and is ranked mostly in the middle of the pack in the National League. They are currently 6th in the league in runs per game and on-base percentage, 8th in hits and OPS, 12th in home runs and steals.

So maybe it has been the pitching that has kept the Phillies in first place? Not hardly. The staff has been just as inconsistent. Phillies pitchers as a group are ranked 14th of the 15 NL teams in batting average against and OPS. They are 7th in ERA, 11th in strikeouts, 8th in walks.

Defense maybe? Nope. The Phillies rank just 10th in the league in fielding percentage. Their 31 errors are sixth-most in the National League.

Fact of the matter is that the Phillies have outperformed their team statistics to this point. That overall inconsistency is the primary reason that the club has won as many as four straight games just once all season – their first four games of the year. On the flip side, their talent is strong enough that they haven’t lost more than three in a row, which has happened just twice.

There is plenty of room for growth with this 2019 Phillies team. The most obvious is Bryce Harper. Despite ranking 15th in the NL in RBIs, Harper has underperformed his talent and career averages in nearly every other offensive category. Third base, where Maikel Franco has cooled considerably, and center field are other areas where improvement could come.

MLB awards: my 2018 IBWAA ballot

IBWAA 2018 MLB awards ballot time

Back in 2009 the IBWAA (Internet Baseball Writers Association of America) was originally, and perhaps fittingly, founded on Independence Day “to organize and promote the growing online baseball media, and to serve as a digital alternative to the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA)” per the organization home site.

At the end of each regular season, each member in good standing receives an awards ballot and is tasked with voting for a top 10 for Most Valuable Player of the National and American Leagues.

We are also tasked with voting in each league for a top five in the Cy Young Award, as well as a top three in each of three further categories: top manager, top reliever, and Rookie of the Year.

This will be the fourth year that I’ve had a vote in the IBWAA annual awards balloting. As with each of the last three years, I’m now publicly releasing my ballot. As always, I’m sure that you would choose differently. I would love to hear your choices for each of the awards. Please feel free to leave a comment below this piece with your own selections.

The IBWAA is scheduled to begin announcing the winners of its awards in mid-November. Our editorial director here at Phillies Nation, Tim Kelly, released his own ballot just yesterday which included some of the reasoning behind his selections.

I’m not going to defend my choices, just simply presenting my ballot for your edification. However, I will let you in on this: I don’t vote for pitchers for Most Valuable Player. I’ve heard, appreciate, and respect all arguments to the contrary. I respectfully disagree with them all.

For me, a player who takes the field every single day to hit and field his position is always going to be more valuable than one who plays every five days. Also, there is a stand-alone award for the best pitcher that is not available to position players.

Also, my MVP votes are always going to be prejudiced towards players whose teams actually win something. Win your division, or at the very least capture a Wildcard playoff berth.

I don’t care if you hit 70 home runs for a last place team. They could have finished in last without your contribution. This is Most “Valuable”, not Most “Outstanding” Player. MLB gives out the Hank Aaron Award to the top hitter in each league. The MVP needs something more to win it on my ballot, and one thing they need is to have helped their team win.

So now it’s time to reveal my own ballot. I’ll first show my top choice to actually win the award, and then the entire ballot for each category.

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First-year skipper Snitker guided the Braves to their first NL East crown in five years. (Photo: Bbqsauce13)

NL Manager of the Year: Brian Snitker, Atlanta Braves

1. Snitker
2. Bud Black
3. Craig Counsell

AL Manager of the Year: Bob Melvin, Oakland Athletics

1. Melvin
2. Kevin Cash
3. Joey Cora

NL Top Relief Pitcher: Josh Hader, Milwaukee Brewers

1. Hader
2. Wade Davis
3. Kenley Jansen

Mike Foltynewicz becomes reliable starter for Braves

Foltynewicz has been the Braves best starter in 2017

In January of 2015, the Atlanta Braves dealt emerging power-hitting catcher Evan Gattis to the Houston Astros along with relief prospect James Hoyt.

In return, Atlanta received a package led by a former Astros first round draft pick. Pitcher Mike Foltynewicz had been Houston’s selection at 19th overall in the 2010 MLB Amateur Draft.

Foltynewicz would make his Braves debut on May 1, and would remain a member of the Atlanta starting rotation for most of the summer. However, in mid-August he began to feel sick, and was suffering from chest pain.

It took weeks, but he was finally diagnosed with costochondritis, an inflammation in the cartilage connecting the ribs to the sternum. The condition developed into pneumonia.

He was then further diagnosed with blood clots in the ribs after his arm suddenly swelled overnight. Diagnosed with thoracic outlet syndrome, he was required to undergo a rib removal.

Beginning the 2016 campaign back with AAA Gwinnett, he once again got the call to the big leagues as May began. But in early June, physical issues arose once again. Foltynewicz suffered from a bone spur on his elbow. He would miss nearly the entire month due to that injury.