Ronald Acuna Jr. crushed a three-run homer in the eighth inning and Austin Riley delivered a go-ahead triple in the ninth as the visiting Atlanta Braves rallied past the Philadelphia Phillies 5-4 on Sunday.
The late fireworks overshadowed a pitchers’ duel between Philadelphia’s Aaron Nola and Atlanta’s Tyler Mahle. Nola gave up one run and four hits over seven innings, while Mahle allowed two unearned runs and four hits over six frames.
Kyle Schwarber hit his MLB-leading 42nd homer for the Phillies, who have lost two of the first three games in this four-game set. Atlanta (85-58) leads Philadelphia (80-63) by five games in the NL East with each team having 19 games left.
Atlanta trailed 4-1 in the eighth when Mike Yastrzemski singled with one out and advanced to third on Drake Baldwin’s double. The next hitter was Acuna, who saw seven straight fastballs from Alex McFarlane and sent the final one over the wall in left-center field, tying the game at 4-4.
After Dylan Lee (6-0) took care of Philadelphia in the eighth, the Braves immediately got to Jhoan Duran (2-5) in the ninth. Ozzie Albies led off with a double against the closer before Riley’s one-out triple to deep center gave the visitors the lead.
Philadelphia’s Bryson Stott was at third with one out in the ninth against Raisel Iglesias, but Atlanta’s closer got Bryan De La Cruz on a liner and Edmundo Sosa on a strikeout to end it for his 31st save.
Atlanta did not have a baserunner in the first three innings against Nola, who struck out Yastrzemski on a 14-pitch at-bat to conclude the third. The right-hander gave up a double to Acuna with one out in the fourth but recovered to retire the next two batters.
Nola benefited from a double play in a scoreless fifth, but he wasn’t as fortunate in the sixth. Yastrzemski walked with one out and advanced on a single by Baldwin before scoring on Acuna’s sacrifice fly to get Atlanta within 2-1.
Philadelphia extended its edge to 4-1 on seventh-inning homers by Derek Hill and Schwarber against Dylan Dodd. However, the extra cushion wasn’t enough for McFarlane, who entered with a 0.79 ERA in his first 11 career appearances.
