Every bad break that could happen for the Braves seemed to happen in this game. Every bad call by an umpire, every bad play of infield defense, lackadasical baserunning, it seems like nothing broke the Braves way. Bobby Cox removed Yunel Escobar from the game after he failed to run hard on a grounder that he may have been able to reached base on due to a wide throw. Matt Diaz was called out on a play at the plate, where it looked like he may have been safe. Omar Infante was out at first on the tail end of a double-play when he was clearly safe. Nothing seemed to go our way.
The Braves saw the Phillies starter leave after three innings for precautionary injury reasons, but they couldn't get any runs off of his replacement.
The Phillies early offense was mainly a product of Ryan Howard, who slugged two homeruns off of Tim Hudson. Huddy started real good, retiring the first 10 batters in a row, and was staked to a 1-run lead, but Howard didn't make the lead last long with a 2-run shot in the fourth. He followed that up with a solo shot in the sixth.
With the bases loaded and only one out eighth inning, that's when Bobby Cox called on Manny Acosta, which is Cox essentially saying that the season is over. He allowed two runs to score, and those ended up being big runs since Brian McCann hit a 2-run homerun the next half-inning.
It's the Phillies bullpen that's known for late inning collapses, but tonight it was the Braves pen, as they gave up 6 key late-inning runs -- made even bigger because we scored 3 late-inning runs of our own against the Phils pen.