PHILADELPHIA — The Phillies spent seven innings Sunday answering the question every contender eventually faces in October.
Can your starter get the game to the bullpen with a lead?
Aaron Nola did.
Then the Phillies spent two innings creating a more uncomfortable question.
Who, exactly, is supposed to finish it?
That is what should linger from Atlanta's 5-4 comeback victory at Citizens Bank Park — more than the five-game deficit in the National League East, more than Ronald Acuña Jr.'s home run, even more than the three-run lead Philadelphia carried into the eighth inning.
The Phillies had gotten the game where they wanted it.
And lost it anyway.
Nola gave them seven innings of one-run baseball. Derek Hill and Kyle Schwarber homered in the seventh. The Phillies led 4-1 with six outs remaining and a chance to leave the afternoon only three games behind Atlanta.
Two innings later, they were five back with 19 games remaining. Atlanta improved to 85-58; Philadelphia fell to 80-63.
That's not just a bad loss.
At this point in the calendar, it's information.
Nola provided the first piece.
His final line — seven innings, four hits, one run, one walk — was excellent. The way he arrived there may have been more important.
Nola threw 93 pitches and used five different offerings. His knuckle curve led the way at 33 percent, followed by his four-seam fastball at 29 percent and sinker at 18 percent. He threw 70 percent strikes and generated a 46 percent chase rate outside the strike zone.
Atlanta never got comfortable sitting on one thing.
That's pitching.
And when Hill and Schwarber went deep in the seventh — Schwarber's major-league-leading 42nd homer — Nola's afternoon suddenly looked like the opening chapter of a postseason game the Phillies would happily play again.
Starter dominates.
Power creates breathing room.
Bullpen gets six outs.
Except those six outs never came.
Interim manager Don Mattingly handed the eighth to Alex McFarlane, the rookie who entered with a 0.79 ERA through his first 11 major-league appearances. It was McFarlane's first opportunity this late in a game with the outcome truly hanging on him.
“It was the right spot for [McFarlane] today,” Mattingly told MLB.com.
He's right about that much.
The Phillies have less than a month to determine who belongs in these innings. They can't learn whether McFarlane can handle October leverage by protecting him from September leverage.
But Sunday also demonstrated the difference between having great stuff and weaponizing it.
McFarlane threw 13 pitches.
Nine were four-seam fastballs.
They averaged 100.4 mph.
Braves hitters swung 10 times.
They didn't miss once.
After Mike Yastrzemski singled and Drake Baldwin doubled, Acuña came to the plate representing the tying run.
McFarlane threw him seven straight fastballs.
The last came in at 100.5 mph.
Acuña sent it out at 105.9 mph and 413 feet, turning 4-1 into 4-4.
“Every pitch was a fastball,” Acuña told MLB.com.
That's the sentence that explains the inning better than almost anything else.
Because Nola had just spent seven innings making Atlanta account for five pitches.
Acuña had to account for one.
McFarlane's slider and sweeper aren't emergency pitches, either. Seven of his first 11 major-league strikeouts had come on those two offerings, and hitters had been 1-for-14 against them. Yet neither appeared during the biggest at-bat of the afternoon.
“The plan was just to attack,” McFarlane said afterward.
There is nothing wrong with attacking.
There is a difference between attacking and becoming predictable.
That is worth remembering because velocity wasn't the problem in the ninth, either.
Jhoan Duran entered with the score tied. His four-seamer averaged 100.8 mph. His splitter averaged 97.6.
Again: tremendous stuff.
Again: zero whiffs.
Atlanta swung 11 times against Duran and didn't miss one.
Ozzie Albies doubled. Austin Riley tripled him home.
A 4-1 Phillies lead had become a 5-4 Braves lead in the span of six Atlanta outs.
Philadelphia still had a chance in the ninth. Bryson Stott reached third with one out, but Raisel Iglesias retired Bryan De La Cruz and struck out Edmundo Sosa to end it and record his 31st save.
Now consider what those two innings did to the larger picture.
FanGraphs gives Atlanta a 94 percent chance to win the NL East.
The Phillies are down to 6 percent.
That doesn't end the race. These teams meet again. Nineteen games remain.
But there is a massive difference between leaving Sunday three games behind and leaving five back. At three, you're chasing. At five, you're beginning to require help.
And that's why this loss matters beyond one Acuña swing.
The Phillies aren't spending September simply trying to qualify for October. They're trying to figure out how they would survive it.
Nola showed them one part of the answer Sunday.
He changed speeds. He changed shapes. He controlled counts. He got them through seven.
The offense supplied the other part.
Hill homered.
Schwarber homered.
Four runs were on the board.
Then came the part that remains unresolved.
Who gets the final six outs?
Maybe McFarlane eventually becomes part of that answer. Maybe Sunday becomes a useful lesson rather than a warning. The Phillies should hope so.
But there was something almost cruelly instructive about this loss.
They didn't need another hit.
They didn't need another homer.
They didn't need another inning from their starter.
For seven innings, the Phillies had built almost exactly the game they wanted.
They just couldn't finish it.
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