Bullpen and offensive woes cost Phillies in 6-1 loss to Braves

Scott Lauber, The Philadelphia Inquirer on Jun 28, 2025

Published in Baseball

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

ATLANTA — Jordan Romano listened and nodded his head during a mound meeting that lasted about a minute.

Then, on his next pitch, he threw away the game.

If the Phillies had a plan to escape a bases-loaded jam in the seventh inning Saturday night, Romano scuttled it by serving up a first-pitch slider to Atlanta’s Sean Murphy for a back-breaking grand slam.

Braves 6, Phillies 1.

Romano bent at the waist and put his hands on his knees, a familiar pose for the struggling reliever, as Murphy rounded the bases before a sold-out crowd. Signed to pitch in the late inning of close games, Romano has a 7.28 ERA that’s inflated by five homers.

Not great.

But it’s also not the lone reason the Phillies lost for the fourth time in five games on a road trip that concludes here Sunday.

After scoring 13 runs in the opener Friday night, the Phillies picked up all of four hits (three singles). Between Kyle Schwarber’s double in the first inning and Brandon Marsh’s single in the sixth, they didn’t have a hit.

Oh, and they struck out 14 — count ‘em, 14! — times, 12 against Braves starter Spencer Schwellenbach. It marked a career-high for Schwellenbach but the second time in three games that the Phillies punched out 14 times.

But despite the lack of contact, the Phillies trailed only 2-1 in the seventh inning. They cut the margin to one run in the sixth, when Alec Bohm singled in Marsh.

Romano gave up back-to-back-to-back singles on the ground to Marcell Ozuna, Austin Riley and Ozzie Albies, which brought pitching coach Caleb Cotham out for the mound meeting that preceded the decisive pitch.

It was a grind for Phillies starter Jesús Luzardo. The Braves made him throw 31 pitches in the second inning and put 10 runners on base against him in five innings.

But they scored only twice.

Luzardo yielded a run in the first inning on back-to-back singles by Ronald Acuña Jr. and Matt Olson before Austin Riley tapped a well-placed roller (exit velocity: 43.8 mph) to an undefended spot on the right side of the infield.

The Braves added on in the second inning. After a one-out walk and a ground-rule double, No. 9-hitting Nick Allen punched a single to left field. Eli White scored easily, but Stuart Fairchild got thrown out at the plate after being waved home by third base coach Fredi Gonzalez.