Ian Anderson struggles as Braves suffer blowout loss to Phillies

The Braves had an opportunity to set the franchise monthly wins record outright and complete a three game sweep with a win over the Phillies on Thursday. Things did not go according to plan for Atlanta, however.

The first inning was a pretty boring one, with a barreled out from Dansby Swanson and a single from Nick Castellanos being the highlights. The second was much more interesting, as the Braves loaded the bases one some strong BABIP luck and scored on an Orlando Arcia ground ball that looked like an inning ending double play before Didi Gregorius appeared to forget how many outs there were.

The bottom of the second was a straight up disaster for Ian Anderson. He gave up five hits before recording his first out (although three of those had a BABIP less than .500, to be fair). He then recorded a strikeout for the first out before walking a batter and giving up a homer. Just like that and it was a 7-1 Phillies lead. The Braves offense couldn’t do anything against Aaron Nola in the third and Jesus Cruz came in to pitch the bottom of the frame. Cruz got two groundouts before giving up back to back walks and then back to back homers, making it an 11-1 game.

Barring a miracle, the rest of this recap will be fairly abbreviated.

Cruz pitched the fourth and gave up another homer on a solo shot from Darick Hall for his first career home run. In the top of the fifth Duvall got a lucky single and was brought home by a home run that Michael Harris launched to dead center. Dansby also suffered his second barreled out of the game.

Nothing much happened until the seventh, when Adam Duvall hit a homer of his own of the solo variety off of Aaron Nola, who was still in the game. Not much else interesting happened, aside from a few scattered baserunners and a Mike Ford position player pitching appearance in which he gave up a two run homer after walking a batter. Mark Appel pitched the ninth to finish the game, which is kinda cool at least.

I do want to give credit to Jesus Cruz (even though he wasn’t great), Darren O’Day, Jackson Stephens, and Mike Ford (lol) for covering the last 6.0 innings of this game and saving the rest of the bullpen. That could be big for the next few games.

Well that wasn’t super fun. Fortunately, the Braves play the Reds in Cincinnati next and the Reds are not very good, so hopefully they can start off July with some more wins. Join us for that tomorrow at 6:40 PM ET.