A Look at the Phillies and Braves Final Month

As the dog days of summer are about to take us to the final month of the baseball season, the Phillies and Braves should give us some fun, interesting, baseball games down the stretch.

Here’s a look at where the Phillies and Braves stand in the N.L. East with the final month of the season about to begin.

Entering play on Sunday, the Braves are currently three games ahead of the Phillies. The two teams will face each other seven times over the final two weeks of the season, with four games in Atlanta, and three games to close out the season in Philadelphia.

As 97.3 ESPN Phillies reporter Frank Klose tweeted out, the last seven games could be fun, but there is another interesting stretch of games that could be a factor.

The first week of September, the Phillies will face the Mets and Marlins, which entering play on Sunday have a combined record of 111-149 (.426).  Meanwhile, the Braves will face the Red Sox and D-Backs, who have a combined mark of 161-98 (.621) entering play Sunday.

We've discussed must-win games a lot over the last week on the Sports Bash, but there are still too many games to play and with two young, inconsistent teams, its hard to see either team pulling away and those final and seven head-to-head match-ups being meaningless.

The schedule slightly favors the Phillies, so its still a little to premature to say the Phillies must-win, especially when they can control their own destiny.