The Philadelphia Phillies have climbed back into second place in the NL East under Don Mattingly, breathing life into a season that once looked to be slipping away. Even so, they remain nine games behind the Atlanta Braves, a sizeable deficit for late May, though far from impossible to overcome.
With Atlanta currently dealing with injuries to several key contributors, this would seem like the ideal opportunity for Philadelphia to chip away at that lead. Naturally, you’d expect a head-to-head showdown to be approaching soon.
Not exactly.
The Phillies and Braves will not face each other again until September, meaning there will be no direct opportunity for Philadelphia to make up ground against its division rival during the summer months.
For two teams that meet 13 times each season, it’s hard to believe their matchups are essentially confined to April and September. It’s a scheduling oddity that Major League Baseball may eventually need to revisit. For now, however, the Phillies have only one option: keep winning and position themselves for what could become a season-defining stretch later this year.
Phillies-Braves Schedule in 2026 Has Made Another NL East Crown Harder to Reach
During a rough stretch in mid-to-late April, the struggling Phillies were forced into 10 games across 10 days, including six contests against the Braves. Looking even closer, Philadelphia’s schedule from April 13 through April 26 featured only two opponents: the Chicago Cubs and Atlanta Braves. Remarkably, the Phillies completed their entire season series with Chicago during that brief two-week span.
Unfortunately for Philadelphia, the timing could not have been worse.
Caught in the middle of a difficult start to the season, the Phillies dropped five of six games against Atlanta. Now, they will not meet again until Sept. 4, when the rivals are scheduled to play seven times in just 10 days. It’s a scheduling setup that raises plenty of questions.
Each NL East club faces its divisional opponents in four series, totaling 13 games. Some overlap is unavoidable. However, having all 13 Phillies-Braves meetings squeezed into a combined 20-day window, separated by nearly five months, feels like a poorly constructed schedule.
The silver lining is that Philadelphia’s early struggles did not completely derail its season. The Phillies remain just four games out of a National League Wild Card spot and firmly in the postseason conversation. Still, those April losses may have dealt a significant blow to their hopes of capturing a third consecutive division title, particularly because they encountered the Braves while one team was struggling and the other was surging.
Now that the Phillies have rediscovered their winning form, Mattingly’s squad can spend the next four months without crossing paths with baseball’s top team by record. The challenge, however, will return in September, when another demanding Braves gauntlet finally arrives.