Bullpen and offensive woes cost Phillies in 6-1 loss to Braves

ATLANTA — Jordan Romano listened closely and nodded his head during a mound meeting that lasted about a minute.

Then, on his next pitch, he threw away the game.

OK, so it wasn’t the primary reason why the Phillies lost, 6-1, to the Braves here Saturday night. But with the offense going missing again, the first-pitch slider over the middle of the plate from Romano to Sean Murphy for a seventh-inning grand slam proved to be a backbreaker.

“It’s just tough, you know?” Romano said. “I feel like I’ve been getting in a groove a little bit, feeling good, and tonight definitely [stinks]. It [stinks] when you take your team out of the game.”

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A case could be made that the Phillies were never really in the game, that a one-run deficit in the seventh inning was an optical illusion.

Consider: After a 13-run eruption in the series opener, the Phillies were muted by righty Spencer Schwellenbach. They picked up all of four hits (three singles). Between Kyle Schwarber’s double in the first inning and Brandon Marsh’s single in the sixth, they didn’t have a baserunner.

Oh, and they struck out 14 — count ‘em, 14! — times, 12 against Schwellenbach. It marked his career high, but the second time in three games that the Phillies punched out 14 times.

“I think sometimes you’ve got to tip your cap,” manager Rob Thomson said. “[Schwellenbach’s] good. But he was on tonight.”

The Phillies (48-35) have tipped their caps a lot this week. They scored a total of two runs in four losses, three of which came against top-flight starters (Houston’s Framber Valdez and Hunter Brown before Schwellenbach).

It won’t get easier Sunday, when they’re scheduled to face Atlanta’s Spencer Strider in the finale of a mostly miserable road trip.

“Schwellenbach, he’s one of the best, in my opinion, and he had his stuff tonight,” Bryson Stott said. “We were taking some good at-bats at first, and he was just pounding the strike zone. A guy like that, you’ve got to get a little aggressive to try to get him out of the strike zone, and the hits just weren’t falling.”

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The offense figures to get a boost next week. The Phillies flew in minor league pitchers Jack Dallas and Joel Kuhnel to face Bryce Harper on the field before batting practice. If Harper’s sore right wrist responds favorably, he could be back in the lineup early in the week, perhaps even Monday.

It’ll be a sight for the sore eyes of anyone who has watched the lineup go icy cold. Maybe it’ll finally give the pitchers — Romano, for one; Jesús Luzardo, for another — more leeway to make a mistake.

The Braves made Luzardo grind for five innings. He threw 31 pitches in the second and put 10 runners on base in all. But he also gave up only two runs.

Luzardo yielded a run in the first inning on back-to-back singles by Ronald Acuña Jr. and Matt Olson before Austin Riley tapped a well-placed roller (exit velocity: 43.8 mph) to an undefended spot on the right side of the infield.

Braves third base coach Fredi Gonzalez aided Luzardo in the second inning. After a one-out walk and a ground-rule double, No. 9-hitting Nick Allen punched a single to left field. Eli White scored easily, but Stuart Fairchild got thrown out at the plate after Gonzalez’s aggressive send.

“Definitely I would consider that a grind,” Luzardo said. “Good lineup, a lot of familiarity between us, and they made me work, so hats off to them.”

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Alec Bohm’s two-out RBI single cut the margin to one run in the sixth inning. But Romano was on the ropes almost immediately in the seventh, allowing back-to-back-to-back singles on the ground to Marcell Ozuna, Austin Riley, and Ozzie Albies.

It was a big spot for Romano, who didn’t allow so much as a hit in his previous five appearances. After the meeting on the mound with pitching coach Caleb Cotham, Romano tried to throw a slider down and away. It stayed over the plate.

Romano bent at the waist and put his hands on his knees, a familiar pose for the reliever, as Murphy rounded the bases in front a sold-out crowd. Signed to pitch in the late inning of close games, Romano has a 7.28 ERA that’s inflated by five homers.

And with the way the Phillies are hitting, even a solo homer is damaging. A grand slam is downright crushing.

“We faced some studs,” Luzardo said, referring to Valdez, Brown, and Schwellenbach. “They’re doing it to everyone. It’s not just us. It’s a long season. We’re going to have stretches like this. There’s going to be a lot of games where [the hitters] pick us up. I think we just keep going.”