The Braves had the kind of night where the margin for error disappeared almost immediately.
After taking the first game of the series Friday in the battle of the aces, Atlanta came back Sunday facing Martin Perez against Zack Wheeler, and the start went sideways fast. The Braves opened with two singles and a walk from their first three hitters, but got nothing out of it. Then Perez unraveled in the bottom of the inning, issuing four walks and a single as Atlanta fell into a 3-0 hole before the second inning even arrived.
Ronald trimmed that deficit in the third with a huge solo homer on a sweeper from Wheeler, a blast that also gave him his 500th career RBI. But Perez kept handing the Phillies chances. Kyle Schwarber added a solo homer in the fourth to push the lead back to three, and after two more singles, Ray Kerr came in and stranded both runners to keep Atlanta within reach at 4-1.
Perez’s line ended at 3.2 innings with four largely deserved runs allowed in a rough outing for the veteran. Kerr took over from there and gave the Braves a real chance, throwing 3.1 scoreless innings with one strikeout, no walks and five whiffs on 35 pitches. Brent Suter followed with a scoreless eighth, working around a single and a walk to give Atlanta one last shot in the ninth.
The offense couldn’t cash it in. Facing Jhoan Duran, the Braves went down in order, and the Phillies finished off a 4-2 win to even the series.
Atlanta did get two mammoth homers and some bad sequencing luck worked against them, but the bigger story was Perez’s command collapsing early and leaving the Braves with a lead they never got close to erasing.
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