The Phillies came into town figuring that Chipper Jones was going to get his hits -- he was leading the majors with a sky-high .418 batting average before the three-game series and .420 afterwards. Their goal was to keep him in the yard.
"I'm not going to sit here and tell you how we're going to pitch to him," Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said that first afternoon. They ended up walking him intentionally when necessary; like the few times the Braves had runners on base. Meanwhile, Philly deployed a severe shift against Mark Teixeira when he hit left-handed Saturday night. It worked well for the most part; he finally homered Sunday in his first at-bat.
The Phillies played aggressively, and executed better than the Braves did, particularly on Friday night when, as Jones put it after the game, "You can't try and give away a game as many times as we did tonight. Bad base-running, not executing squeezes, defense was not good at critical times. We can't do that with premier clubs."
Not a day goes by in the Braves' clubhouse that there is not some kind of drama involving a pitching injury, but the fact remains that the Braves have been losing more games due to lack of execution and lack of offense.
Jeff Francoeur, for one, is batting .240 with runners in scoring position, an average that gets worse with the bases loaded: .125.
Gregor Blanco, now playing every day in place of the injured Mark Kotsay, went 4-for-23 in the seven games against the Marlins and Phillies.
Jones finished the homestand with a robust batting average, but had to sit out Sunday with a small tear and bleeding in his right quad. Considering that he is almost a one-man show on offense for the Braves lately, that isn't good news.
"Some people in here," Jones said after Sunday's pathetic offensive display, "better start picking it up."
