Late rally falls short as Atlanta Braves fall to Cubs 4-3 at home

The final score of Monday night’s Cubs and Braves game will look a little better on paper than it actually was for Atlanta as a late rally fell short in the end.

With the defending world champions in town, the Atlanta Braves (45-46) had an opportunity to gain further ground in the hunt for a wild card berth, but couldn’t close the deal in a 4-3 loss to Chicago.

Atlanta got off to a solid start on both sides of the ball, going up 1-0 in the third inning on a Brandon Phillips that scored Ender Inciarte and getting four shutout innings from Julio Teheran.

Chicago scored a pair of runs in the fifth inning thanks to Teheran having trouble getting calls around the edges of the strike zone, plus a two-run single from Ben Zobrist that plated Jason Heyward and Javier Baez.  There were three walks in the inning, and that led to the core of the Cubs’ rally.

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Still, those two runs would be all that Teheran allowed, giving the Braves six solid innings of work – notably his best outing at SunTrust park since June 9 against the Mets and exactly matching his 2nd best home outing of the year (April 14 vs. San Diego).

He finished with five strikeouts and four walks on the night, giving up five hits.

An Anthony Rizzo solo homer in the seventh and an Addison Russell double in the eighth that again scored Javier Baez put the Cubs up 4-1 going into the bottom of the ninth inning.

Jon Lester gave up a run on three hits in seven innings of work. He struck out six Braves and walked only one.  Much

The Braves bats finally heated up against Chicago’s Wade Davis, scoring two runs in the bottom of the ninth as Brandon Phillips scored on a wild pitch and Freddie Freeman came home on a Matt Kemp single.

In the end, however, Davis would get a hard earned save, and secure the win for the Cubs as Johan Camargo popped out to end the game.

Teheran (7-7) earned the loss, while Chicago’s Lester moved to .500 on the year at 6-6 with the win.

This was the first game back in the majors for Sean Rodriguez, who started at 3rd base.  It was a bit of a rough go for him, committing a fielding error and going 0 for 3, though he worked a walk in the 9th that got the hot-hitting Camargo to the plate.

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Atlanta and Chicago will square off for game two of three in the series Tuesday night at 7:35 p.m. from SunTrust Park.