Bryce Harper, Trea Turner, Kyle Schwarber come up empty in Phillies’ series-opening loss to Braves

ATLANTA — Kyle Schwarber stood at home plate, stared out at the third base umpire, and waved his index finger.

“Not a swing,” he said, as any amateur lip-reader could attest.

It was that kind of night Tuesday for the Phillies. For a change, though, a late-season loss to the Braves — 3-1, for the record, on Marcell Ozuna’s sixth-inning solo homer against Zack Wheeler — wasn’t the end of the world. Hardly.

Well, at least not yet.

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The sky isn’t falling because the Phillies arrived here with a seven-game lead in the NL East and 38 games left. It’s the first time they’ve visited Atlanta in first place this late in a season since the last series in 2011, when they dashed the Braves’ wild-card hopes. (And helped usher in the Cardinals, who wound up as their eventual vanquishers. But, well, never mind that.)

So, before you hyperventilate over the top of the order — Schwarber, Trea Turner, and Bryce Harper — going 0-for-12 with seven strikeouts in an impossibly punchless performance, remember that the Phillies have the cushion to withstand a few clunkers.

Not that they should view it through that lens. And Harper doesn’t think that they do. But it’s also undeniable that this series, and the four-game set next week in Philadelphia, has greater implications for the depleted, six-time division champion Braves.

“It should be a big series for us, too,” said Harper, who went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts. “I mean, we’ve got a long ways to go. Still got a month of baseball left. We should come in here wanting to win games. It doesn’t matter how far [ahead] you are, or anything like that.

“Obviously you know what happened late in ‘07.”

Harper might as well have majored in baseball history, so it’s no surprise that he would invoke an epic race from 17 years ago. If you’re too young to remember, the Mets’ September collapse coincided with the Phillies’ surge, and a seven-game division lead evaporated in the final 17 games of the season.

But there’s a more recent cautionary tale for the Phillies that is relevant for their chief rival. Three years ago, with injured star Ronald Acuña Jr. out for the season, the Braves went on a late-season run to win the NL East and eventually the World Series.

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Atlanta is looking for a repeat of history, only with Ozzie Albies, Austin Riley, and ace Spencer Strider joining Acuña on the injured list. As Harper put it, the Braves have “an All-Star team on the shelf.”

“They may be depleted, but they’ve still got really good pitching and bullpen. And they still have good hitters,” Wheeler said. “They’re still a good team. They may not have their regulars in, but they’re still a good team all around.”

Said manager Rob Thomson: “It doesn’t matter who’s on the field, they compete. They do a good job with filling holes. We’ve got to get after it. We cannot lay down at all thinking that, well, they have a bunch of broken-down pieces and guys not in the lineup. That’s not a formula for success.”

Neither is leaving the bases loaded in the second inning or runners on first and second with one out in the fourth against hard-throwing Braves starter Reynaldo López in his first start after three weeks on the injured list. Nor is striking out 13 times.

And certainly neither is walking four of six batters to allow an insurance run, as José Alvarado did in the eighth inning.

Wheeler did his part, as usual, in his hometown. He was born in Smyrna, Ga., a few miles from where Truist Park sits, and grew up in suburban Atlanta. The Braves were poised to draft him out of high school in 2009 until the Giants swooped in and snatched him up one pick earlier in the first round.

Ever since, he has been a pain in Atlanta’s you-know-what.

In particular, Wheeler has tormented the Braves since 2020, his first year with the Phillies. In 14 regular-season matchups entering Tuesday night, he had a 2.17 ERA, including a 2.14 mark in seven starts in Atlanta.

It’s a wonder he’s still allowed to set foot in Georgia in the offseason.

So, no, the sight of Wheeler carving up the Braves wasn’t unfamiliar. But it was downright foreign to see him leave after six innings without a lead thanks to a stray fastball over the plate to Ozuna.

“Definitely left it over, yeah,” Wheeler said. “Trying to go away, and I just left it middle and he made me pay for it.”

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Wheeler scattered six hits, two from old friend Whit Merrifield, who tripled and scored in the third inning, but the whole thing was aided by Nick Castellanos’ misread of the carom off the side wall in right field. Merrifield finished with the triple, a double, and a walk.

“I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel good to play well against a team that told you that you weren’t good enough to play for them,” Merrifield said in a television interview on the field. “I wasn’t playing very good over there, so it might’ve been true at the time. I do love those guys and wish them nothing but the best.”

Said Harper: “He’ll probably get nine hits this series. That’s kind of how baseball works.”

Overall, though, it was more good than bad for Wheeler — and not nearly enough from the rest of the Phillies.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re up or down, chasing somebody or not. You’re just trying to win every game,” Wheeler said. “These are important games, and we need to win.”