Braves Alex Wood (1-2, 3.51 ERA) at Phillies LHP Cliff Lee (10-4, 3.05 ERA), 8:05 EST. Nationally televised on ESPN Sunday Night Baseball.

Line: PHI -125, ATL +115

The Atlanta Braves come into Sunday night’s game looking for a 3 game sweep against their NL East rivals. It’ll be a tall order against one of the premier left handed pitchers of the past 5 years in Cliff Lee. It took 12 innings and a manufactured run for the Braves to finally put the Phillies away Saturday. The ATL bullpen pitched 5 scoreless down the stretch to further dampen any Phillies post season aspirations. Currently 10 games back in the Wild Card race the Phillies are on the outside looking in.

The Braves send 22 year old rookie Alex Wood to the mound looking for the sweep. This promising youngster gave up 3 earned runs to a formidable Rockies team last Tuesday to record his first big league win. If it wasn’t for a 2 run homer to the Rockies 8th place hitter his numbers would’ve been even better. Wood is a second round draft pick from last year with big league stuff. With Hudson down and the rest of the Braves pitching staff struggling don’t be surprised to see this kid start a post season game in a couple months. He’s that good already.

Charlie Manuel sends old faithful Cliff Lee to the mound. Cliff can be dominating at times and he can get hit at times. His first half of the season was spectacular but right now he is struggling and struggling badly. In his last 3 starts he’s given up 13 runs over 19 1/3 innings yielding a whopping 8 homeruns over that same span. We think his recent stiff neck injury is a direct result of him snapping his head around watching his hanging curveballs fly over the fence.

ATL banged Lee around for 8 hits and 4 runs July 5th and we fully expect a similar effort from the Braves tonight. The Braves smell blood and they’ll pounce on the aging Cliff Lee early.

Prediction: Braves 5, Phillies 2, PLAY: BRAVES +115