ATLANTA _ One night after young Mike Foltynewicz silenced Phillies bats with fastballs, graybead R.A. Dickey kept them quiet with knuckleballs.
Dickey limited the Phillies to three hits and one run in seven innings of a 3-1 win at SunTrust Park, getting his first win in five weeks and seven starts as the Braves salvaged a split of a four-game series.
Brandon Phillips and Matt Kemp each had two hits for the Braves including a double apiece in the first inning, when they staked Dickey to a 2-0 lead.
Dickey knew how to protect it this time, facing one batter over the minimum through six innings, recorded at least one strikeout in each of those innings and retired 15 straight between Tommy Joseph's leadoff single in the second inning and Odubel Herrera's leadoff double in the seventh.
By the point the Braves had pushed the lead to 3-0 lead, adding a sixth-inning run when Matt Adams singled and Tyler Flowers doubled to bring him around.
Flowers caught Dickey for the first time since spring training, after veteran Kurt Suzuki caught the 42-year-old former Cy Young Award winner's first 11 starts.
Dickey finished with eight strikeouts and no walks, a reversal from his six-start winless streak before Thursday, during which he posted just 13 strikeouts with 21 walks in 35 2/3 innings. He had a 6.06 ERA and .312 opponents' average in those starts and at least three walks in each of the last five starts before Thursday.
The Phillies had only one runner reach base before the seventh inning, when they got a run after Herrera's double. He scored two outs later on Maikel Franco's single to cut the lead to 3-1.
After Joseph's leadoff single in the first inning, he advanced to second on a passed ball and went to third on a fly-out. But Dickey stranded him there by striking out Michael Saunders and getting Cameron Rupp on an infield pop-up.
Dickey threw 68 strikes in 101 pitches and pitched more than six innings for the first time since lasting seven innings in a 3-1 loss at Miami on May 14. The win was his first since May 2 at New York, when he allowed four hits and three runs in six innings in a 9-7 decision against the Mets.
In his last start Saturday at Cincinnati, the Braves scored five runs in the fifth inning and had a 5-1 lead. But the Reds chased Dickey from the game during a four-run sixth inning and beat the Braves in 12 innings.
They gave him a multi-run lead a lot earlier Thursday, and this time Dickey protected it and pitched just like the Braves envisioned when they signed him, going deep in the game and easing the bullpen's workload.
Phillips has four multi-hit games in his past five and has a .347 average and nine multi-hit games in his past 20. He got the first hit Thursday against Phillies rookie starter Blake Lively, who made his second start and walked Ender Inciarte to start the first inning.
Phillips followed with a double, Nick Markakis drove in a run with a ground-out, and Kemp doubled to make it a 2-0 lead.
Lively was coming off an impressive major league debut, a win against the Giants on Saturday in which he allowed just four hits and one run with three walks in seven innings. He pitched seven innings again Thursday, giving up nine hit, three runs and two walks with three strikeouts.
