ATLANTA - Charlie Manuel said the words without any hint of irony, without any implication other than that which was stated.
There isn't a whole lot of pretense when it comes to the Phillies manager. He sees things as they are in the physical sense, particularly the game of baseball, where performance and production are painted in the black and white hues of a box score.
Last night, that box score showed Braves No. 2 hitter Martin Prado going 4-for-5 with four RBI, the last of which came on a walk-off single in the bottom of the 10th, lifting the Braves to a 5-4 win. That same box score showed leadoff hitter Gregor Blanco going 3-for-5 with two runs scored.
"The top of their lineup did us in," Manuel said, matter-of-factly. And so it did.
But as Manuel spoke, it was difficult not to flash back to the days when opposing managers were the ones making such remarks. It was difficult not to look at the box score and see the top of the Phillies' lineup, particularly the very top, where Jimmy Rollins ended a four-game benching with an 0-for-5 night that included two strikeouts, two groundouts and a pop-up.
Manuel gave the verbal equivalent of a shrug when asked about Rollins' performance. At this point there isn't much more to say, isn't much more to do except wait for the 2007 National League MVP to emerge from his epic funk.
Instead, Manuel turned his attention toward the top of the Braves' lineup, which truly was the difference in the game.
Prado, batting second, and Blanco, leading off, combined for seven of the Braves' 13 hits, three of their five runs, and - thanks solely to Prado - four of their five RBI.
The Phillies, meanwhile, took a different moral from this defeat than many of the others that have plagued them over the past 3 weeks. Unlike their performance in interleague play, when Manuel grew so disgusted with what he perceived to be the team's self-inflicted wounds that he called a team meeting in Toronto, the feeling after last night's loss was that Atlanta simply beat them.
Back-to-back home runs by John Mayberry Jr., his fourth of the season and first as a pinch-hitter, and Pedro Feliz in the top of the eighth gave the Phillies a 4-3 lead with the setup/closer combo of Ryan Madson and Brad Lidge rested and ready.
But after Madson recorded two quick outs in the bottom half of the frame, the Braves cobbled together a rally. Blanco walked, then moved to second after an attempted pickoff bounced past first baseman Ryan Howard and rolled to the fence. That set the stage for Prado, who slapped a 1-2 pitch just inside the first-base line that scored Blanco and tied the game.
The errant pickoff attempt was one of three errors committed by the Phillies, but Manuel said after the game he thought it was moot, and that Blanco would have scored even from first.
The other two errors - a booted grounder by Chase Utley at second base and a fielding error by Jayson Werth on the eighth-inning double that allowed Blanco to move to third - did not result in Braves' runs.
Both teams missed their share of opportunities. The Braves left a runner in scoring position in five of the first nine innings, including the bases loaded in the second and fifth. The Phillies, meanwhile, grounded into two pivotal doubleplays, by Carlos Ruiz in the second inning with the bases loaded and one out, and by Werth in the top of the 10th on a sharp grounder that Chipper Jones inhaled.
In the bottom of the 10th, with righthander Chan Ho Park in his second inning of work, Matt Diaz hit a one-out single, then moved to third on a single by Blanco. That again brought Prado to the plate. This time he connected on a 2-2 pitch, sending it sailing over the head of a drawn-in Mayberry in left, and sending the Braves streaming out of their dugout.
Atlanta has now beaten he Phillies five times this season, one more than they did all of last year when the Phillies were 9-0 at Turner Field.
"They made the plays," Manuel said. "The difference between this game tonight and the games we beat them last year, last year, we made the plays, we got the hits. Tonight, they got the big play and got the hits when they really needed them." *
