Don Mattingly and the Phillies have maintained a day-to-day approach, regardless of the team in the opposite dugout.
Even when it is the Atlanta Braves for a four-game series with October-like stakes.
“They’re all big, honestly,” Mattingly said before the series opener. “From our standpoint, it’s basically trying to win every day.”
Friday’s task was attempting to take down the ever-dominant Chris Sale.
The 37-year-old lefty entered with a 2.06 ERA and was coming off a complete-game shutout. He had already faced the Phillies twice this season, holding them to one run across 13 innings, and had not allowed more than three runs in a start since April 6.
In the Phillies’ 5-2 loss to Atlanta on Friday night at Citizens Bank Park, Sale made their missed opportunities hurt.
The Phillies went hitless in six at-bats with runners in scoring position against the lefty, whom Mattingly compared to Randy Johnson because of the difficult angle he creates.
Their only offensive production came from Alec Bohm.
“If the guy makes a mistake against you, you’ve got to hit it because he’s obviously one of the best to ever do it,” Bohm said. “If he leaves one over the plate, you’ve got to be aggressive enough where you’re ending the at-bat when it should be over.”
Bohm did exactly that. He lined an RBI double in the second inning and hit his 15th homer of the season two innings later. Both came on the first pitch.
Waiting around for the perfect pitch against Sale is often where hitters go to die, and Bohm took advantage when he saw something he could handle.
But Sale eventually used that same approach to his advantage.
With the Phillies trailing 3-2, Luis Arraez led off with a double and brought Bohm to the plate with a chance to advance the tying run. Sale got him to roll a grounder to the left side.
“I definitely regret my third at-bat,” Bohm said. “He kind of used my aggressiveness against me and made a perfect pitch. Obviously, in hindsight, I’d like to get that run over to third.”
The Phillies never moved Arraez. Sale escaped the inning with the lead and completed six frames on 102 pitches, allowing only Bohm’s two runs.
The Phillies countered with Cristopher Sánchez, who entered tied for the major-league lead with 16 wins.
Facing Sale did not change the way Sánchez viewed the matchup.
“They had a great pitcher on their side, but we also had a great pitcher here,” Sánchez said through interpreter Diego D’Aniello. “They have to think about that as much as we do when those guys are on the mound.”
He kept Philadelphia in the game.
Sánchez did not have his best command and walked three, but he gutted out six innings on 108 pitches. Atlanta scored three runs against him in the second and nothing after that.
A leadoff walk to Lane Thomas was followed by a first-pitch single from Mauricio Dubón. Sánchez struck out the red-hot Sean Murphy on a changeup fading away from the zone, then got ahead of Austin Riley with two strikes.
Sánchez dotted another changeup on the outside corner, but Riley threw his hands at it and shot an RBI single through the right side.
With runners on the corners, Ha-Seong Kim brought home another run with a groundout. Ronald Acuña Jr. then laced his second hit of the night to extend Atlanta’s lead to 3-0.
The Braves did the little things right for one inning, and that ended up being the difference. Sometimes, that is all it takes when two aces are toeing the slab.
The score remained 3-2 heading into the eighth, when the Phillies called on Orion Kerkering, who has not looked like himself for much of the season.
After a one-out walk, Kerkering hung a sweeper to Dubón, who crushed it into the left-field seats for a two-run homer. It was a deflating moment for a Phillies team that showed little life against Atlanta’s bullpen after Sale exited.
Kerkering has an 8.44 ERA over his last 19 appearances, but Mattingly’s confidence in the right-hander has not disappeared.
“The thing is, his stuff’s good,” Mattingly said. “The biggest trouble for me has been a little bit of the walks and just not making the pitch when he needs it.”
He did neither in the eighth.
The Phillies have scored just two runs over their last 18 innings. They will need to get the bats rolling Saturday in the second game of the series against another left-hander, Martín Pérez.
