Braves set to battle Phillies with Cal Quantrill on the mound

The Phillies may be on high alert after losing three straight in New York. It’s up to Quantrill to keep ‘em quiet.

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What is the story about?

After massacring the Miami Marlins over the past two games, the difficulty level is about to ratchet up considerably for the Atlanta Braves as they’ll be traveling to Philadelphia to take on the Phillies for the first game of a four-game series.

It’s really a shame that there are little-to-no Postseason implications for the Braves in this one — the Braves are closer to the Nationals than they are to the Phillies (and even the Mets at this point). Still, this does have Postseason implications for Philadelphia

since they’ll be desperate to put an end to a three-game skid that saw them get swept in New York. That’s actually the second time that the Phillies have lost three in a row this month, as they had a stretch where they dropped a series to the Reds and then lost the series opener of a four-game series in Washington.

I’m saying that to say that it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Phillies on high-alert for this one. As such, the Braves will be running into Aaron Nola tonight for the first time since 2024. Nola is an old, old foe of this team so there aren’t really too many surprises or secrets that will come up in this particular matchup. Nola has also historically been very successful against the Braves over the years, as he has a career ERA of 3.59 over 37 career starts against Atlanta, with that ERA going down to 3.09 against the Braves in Philadelphia over his career. Over the years, it’s usually been tough sledding for the Braves against Aaron Nola.

With that being said this could be a case of the Braves catching Nola at the right time and Nola running into the Braves at the wrong time. Atlanta’s offense has continued to perform at an above-average level since the break and they’ll be rolling into town after having demolished Miami’s pitching staff over the past two days. Additionally, Nola hasn’t been having a great year, himself, and he didn’t exactly return from injury earlier this month firing on all cylinders. The Nationals got him for six runs over just 2.1 innings in his return from an ankle issue and while he did bounce back a week later, that also came against the same Nationals team. Still, before the injury he was hit-or-miss for the Phillies during his starts and the “miss” part was more likely to occur. If recency bias wins out then the Braves could buck their trend of struggling against Nola tonight.

The offense will likely have to be on top of things during this one since Cal Quantrill is the starter for Atlanta tonight. Quantrill could clear 1.0 fWAR for the season if he ends this year with a flourish so he hasn’t been terrible. With that being said, the expectations aren’t exactly high for Quantrill to pull something off. He’s faced the Phillies twice this season and the last time he saw them (as a member of the Marlins), he only got through four innings with three runs allowed. Back in April, Quantrill visited Philadelphia and got rocked for seven runs over 3.1 innings. So that’s 10 runs allowed by Cal Quantrill over 7.1 innings against the Phillies so far this season — that’s not great!

With that being said, the Braves haven’t been easy for Philadelphia to deal with this season. The Braves themselves haven’t been playing bad baseball as of late either and usually they aren’t the type to just roll over and play dead while facing off against a better team. The Phillies will be favored for this series but I’d imagine that this will still be a hard-fought series with tonight setting the tone — hopefully with a win for the Braves to set the tone in the right direction.