PHILADELPHIA --- Assuming that Jo-Jo Reyes stays in the major leagues and eventually ends his long winless skid, Citizens Bank Park might be the last place he could expect to do it.
The Braves left-hander has been awful at the Philadelphia ballpark, where he gave up eight runs (four earned) and three homers in five innings of a 10-6 loss against the Phillies in Friday night's series opener. Casey Kotchman's three-run homer in the ninth inning only made the final score seem a little more respectable, but the Braves were never closer than four runs after the second inning.
Brian McCann had a two-run double for the Braves in his first game off the 15-day disabled list, and Chipper Jones extended his hitting streak against the Phillies to 28 games. Omar Infante also had an eighth-inning homer.
But there wasn't much else to recommend from the performance of the Braves , who had six hits and two errors and snapped a modest two-game winning streak.
Reyes dropped to 0-9 with a 6.61 in 18 games (17 starts) since his last win nearly 11 months ago. He has given up seven homers in 11 innings during his past three games at Philadelphia.
All of the Phillies' runs in a four-run second inning were unearned after errors by shortstop Yunel Escobar and Reyes. The other runs against Reyes (0-2) came on Jayson Werth's two-run homer in the third inning and solo homers by Chris Coste in the fourth inning and Chase Utley in the fifth.
Reyes is 0-3 with a 6.99 ERA in six games (three starts) against the Phillies, and he has allowed nine homers in 18 1/3 innings in his past four games against them.
The Braves started an eight-game trip by sweeping two at Florida before arriving in Philadelphia. They had a chance to close to within a game of the Phillies, but instead fell to three games back in the National League East.
They remained in fourth place behind the Phillies, Mets and Marlins.
The Braves quickly trailed 6-0 before getting two runs in the fourth against Phillies left-hander Cole Hamels (1-2), who retired the first 12 batters before Chipper Jones' two-out infield hit in the fourth.
Jones has hit safely in his past 28 games against the Phillies, the longest such streak by any Braves player against a single opponent since at least 1954, according to the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).
According to SABR, there have only been five streaks of 30 more games by any major league player against a single opponent in the past 55 seasons.
After Jones' single, Garret Anderson doubled deep to the right-center gap before McCann's two-run double through the right side of the infield.
The only other Braves who reached base in Hamels' six innings were Escobar and Jones on consecutive one-out walks in the sixth inning. Groundouts by Anderson and McCann ended that inning.
