PHILADELPHIA _ Rookie Lucas Sims got himself into one too many tight spots Monday night, and the Phillies continued their almost incomprehensible season-long domination of the Braves.
The Phillies broke open a tie game with two runs in the sixth inning of a 6-1 series-opening win at Citizens Bank Park, where they've won all eight games between the teams this season. Not that the Braves have fared much better against them in Atlanta.
Their 2-12 record against the Phillies is currently the Braves' lowest winning percentage against them in franchise history, worse than the 2-10 mark the Braves posted against them in 1977.
Consider: The Braves have played seven games against the Dodgers, who have baseball's best record, and 14 games against the Phillies, who have baseball's worst record. They have three wins against the Dodgers and two against the Phillies.
The Braves have played four games at Dodger Stadium and eight games at Citizens Bank Park. They have two wins at Los Angeles and none at Philly.
After losing their first five games against the Phillies, the Braves won two in a series split at SunTrust and have dropped the past seven games between the teams.
Aaron Nola (10-9) limited the Braves to five hits, one run and no walks in seven innings, improving to 5-1 with a 1.96 ERA in seven career starts against the Braves.
Sims (2-3) had a career-high seven strikeouts in 6-1/3 innings but also gave up a career-high eight hits and four runs in his sixth major league start and first at Philadelphia. He was pulled after facing three batters in the seventh, giving up a Cameron Rupp leadoff homer and a one-out walk to Cesar Hernandez, the last batter he faced and the only walk he issued.
Nola faced the minimum 12 batters in the first four innings, with Brandon Phillips' double-play grounder erasing Ender Inciarte after a leadoff single in the first inning and Phillips getting thrown out trying to steal second for the third out in the fourth.
Despite that, Phillips was one of the few bright spots for the Braves, with two hits including an RBI single to leave him one shy of 2,000 career hits. He would be the 12th active player to reach that standard and the second Brave to do it this season, joining Nick Markakis.
Phillips' two-out, game-tying single in the sixth scored Dansby Swanson, whose leadoff double was the Braves' only extra-base hit.
Sims retired the first six batters he faced before Pedro Florimon's leadoff triple to the right-center gap in the third inning. One out later, he scored on Nola's bounced single up the middle as the Braves were again hurt by a hit from an opposing pitcher, something that's happened with alarming frequently in 2017.
Cesar Hernandez followed with a double and the Phillies had two runners in scoring position with one out and chance to do real damage. But that's when Sims did what he's done so impressive at the outset of his career: Wiggle out of trouble.
He struck out Freddy Galvis and got Nick Williams on an inning-ending ground-out to keep the deficit at one run when it could have multiplied quickly. At that point, hitters were an auspicious 0-for-12 in against Sims with runners in scoring position and two outs.
Two innings later, he worked out of another jam after Florimon hit a leadoff single and went to second on Sims' errant pickoff throw with none out. This time Sims struck out Cameron Rupp and Nola before Cesar Hernandez's inning-ending ground-out, which gave Sims a .200 opponents' average (7-for-35) with runners in scoring position including 0-for-13 with two outs.
But as calm and composed as Sims has been in tight spots, no pitcher can expect to continue walking that tightrope without getting hurt. And in the sixth, after the Braves had tied the score on a Swanson double and Phillips two-out single in the top of the inning, Sims got into a jam he couldn't work his way out of before the Phillies had taken a 3-1 lead.
Nick Williams got things going for the Phillies with a one-out double, and Rhys Hoskins followed with a run-scoring double that pushed the first-year phenom's hitting streak to 10 games and his RBI total to 25 in his first 19 major league games. One out later, Maikel Franco's single pushed the lead to 3-1 and was the first hit allowed by Sims with two outs and a runner in scoring position.
Rupp led off the seventh with a long home run that expanded the lead to 4-1, a comfortable margin for the Phillies considering the Braves scored three runs or fewer in 10 of 13 games against the Phillies this season before Monday including six of seven at Citizens Bank Park.
The Phillies added two runs in the ninth against Jim Johnson in the latest woeful performance from the fallen former closer, who gave up two hits and two walks while recording one out.
It hardly qualified as a moral victory, but the Braves did end Hoskins' streak of homering in eight consecutive days in which the Phillies had a game. The only game the rookie didn't homer in that stretch was in a doubleheader, when he homered in only one of the two.
The Braves have two more games in this series, their last chances to try to avoid going 0-for-Philly. They also play the Phillies in one more series in Atlanta.
The Phillies have a majors-worst 49-81 record, with 24 percent of their wins coming against one team, the Braves. They are 37-79 against everyone else.
