Game Thread 7/3: Phillies @ Braves

Now that the Nationals have left town, the Braves welcome the struggling Philadelphia Phillies for a three game set. In the opener, Julio Teheran (who has been orders of magnitude better at home than on the road) will go head to head with LHP Adam Morgan in his second career start. As is the case against most LHP this year, manager Fredi Gonzalez is utilizing lefty specialists Jonny Gomes and Chris Johnson. Ryan Lavarnway is also getting the start at catcher with Teheran on the hill.

While the Phillies have struggled to do much of anything on offense this year, they also typically struggle against Julio Teheran. Ryan Howard does have 2 career home runs against Teheran in 15 career at-bats and Ben Revere is batting .308 against him as well. No Braves player, understandably, has a single at-bat against Adam Morgan.

Julio (and probably the rest of the Braves) is probably glad to be pitching at Turner Field as his home ERA is 2.35 compared to 7.40 on the road. While one would hope he could figure out how to pitch on the road, the first step is to make sure he can at least continue to pitch at home.

The Phillies are probably just ready to move on from this first half of the season. They are currently in last place in the NL East and have the worst run differential in baseball. They just lost their manager, Ryne Sandberg, due to the sheer amount of losing and new president of baseball operations, Andy MacPhail, is rumored to be in the process of evaluating even more changes (Ruben Amaro aka "the worst GM in baseball" being a prime target of those rumors).