Philadelphia and Atlanta just spent four games beating each other up in Citizens Bank Park. Now they head to Atlanta for one more shot at each other before the season runs out.
FRI SEP 11, 7:15 PM
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Chris Sale gets the ball for Atlanta on Friday, and he's coming off a start that already went well against this exact team. Sale beat Philadelphia on September 4, working 6.0 innings, allowing 2 earned runs on 6 hits with 7 strikeouts and a walk. Philadelphia hasn't named a starter for the finale yet, so there's no arm to bank on there — just Sale's side of the ledger, and it reads well.
Both bullpens have taken a beating this year, but Philadelphia's has been the bigger mess. Caleb Kilian, Tanner Banks and Brad Keller are all out, with Keller done for good after elbow reconstruction — and that's before counting Johan Rojas and Adolis Garcia, both lost to season-ending surgery. Atlanta's absorbed its own hit up the rotation, having already lost Spencer Strider and Spencer Schwellenbach for the year, but Ronald Acuña Jr. has been carrying the offense, posting a 1.094 OPS over his past 12 games.
Neither club gets to this one directly. Philadelphia closes out a three-game set at home against Houston first, and Atlanta hosts Tampa Bay for three before flipping to this series. Whatever bullpen arms and lineup cards show up Friday will have been shaped by those six other games.
The two teams' head-to-head play has been about as even as it gets — Philadelphia and Atlanta split the first 4 meetings of this stretch, with Sale's win the difference-maker in the opener. Atlanta still holds the tiebreaker on the season series, for whatever that ends up worth in October.
This is being billed as the two teams' last meeting of the regular season, and it's landing with real stakes attached: Atlanta was holding a 4-game cushion in the NL East with 18 games to go as of September 8. Philadelphia has to make up ground fast, and a series like this one in Atlanta is exactly where that math either tightens or gets away from them for good.
