Braves, Reds, Phillies continue winning while the Cardinals and Padres continue losing

The Braves beat the Mets last night 4-1 for their 5th straight win. However, the Phillies have won 5 of their last 6, so the Atlanta lead in the NL East is still 3 games. The Braves play the Mets on Thursday in a great pitching matchup. Tim Hudson will go to the mound for Atlanta against the Mets' Johan Santana. This weekend, the Braves travel to Florida. The Phillies travel to Colorado on Thursday for a make-up game, then host Milwaukee for a three-game series over the weekend.

The Reds have won 4 games in a row and 6 of their last 7 while the Cardinals just got swept by the lowly Astros and have lost 8 of their last 10 games. About a month ago, the Cardinals swept the Reds to take a one-game lead in the NL Central, but now the Reds lead the division by a staggering 8 games. Both teams have an off day on Thursday before a big three-game series between the two teams at St. Louis. The Cardinals must sweep the series to have any chance at the playoffs.

The Padres had the best record in the NL a week ago, but after a 7-game losing streak they have to worry about the NL West division title. The Giants are only 3 games behind after Wednesday's games. San Diego hosts the Rockies this weekend while San Fran travels to LA to play the Dodgers.

Inconsistency could hurt Braves in the long run

Even though the Braves were 2-2 over the last 4 games, they were not very consistent in doing so. On Thursday, they had a catastrophic fall from a 10-1 lead to a 12-10 loss. They made up for that on Sunday with 6 runs in the last two innings to recover from a 6-1 deficit to win 7-6.

How are the Braves inconsistent? Check out the scoring for those 4 games, starting on Thursday:

10 runs in 3 innings
followed by
1 run in the next 16 innings
followed by
10 runs in the next 3 innings
followed by
3 runs in the next 11 innings
followed by
6 runs in 2 innings

Over that span, they scored the equivalent of 4 runs in the 27 innings where they didn't feast on pitching. If the Braves get to the playoffs, they can't have scoring droughts like that or they will not make it very far.