ATLANTA – Jair Jurrjens wants to please his father. Chipper Jones is trying to salvage a disappointing season.
Both helped the hottest team in baseball take another step toward an improbable trip to the playoffs.
Jurrjens pitched five-hit ball over seven innings, Jones hit a rare homer and the Atlanta Braves beat Florida 4-0 Monday night for their 15th win in 17 games, a stretch that has lifted them into contention with six games left in the regular season.
"We're taking the field like we expect to win," Jones said. "Earlier in the year we took the field hoping to win. And that's why we were a .500 ballclub. Now we're expecting to win."
Atlanta closed within two games of idle Colorado in the wild-card race and four behind first-place Philadelphia in the NL East. The Phillies lost 8-2 at home to Houston.
"We've got a chance to do it," said manager Bobby Cox, whose team hasn't made the playoffs since the last of its record 14 straight division titles in 2005.
The Braves won their seventh straight, matching a season high set at the start of this run, behind another dominant performance by Jurrjens (14-10). The right-hander won his fourth in a row and has gone at least seven innings in seven straight starts, allowing only eight earned runs in 50 2-3 innings (a 1.42 ERA) during that stretch.
Peter Moylan and Rafael Soriano finished off the five-hitter with one inning apiece.
Jurrjens' father, who still lives in the family's native Curacao, is a longtime Braves fan who's watching the playoff race as eagerly as his son. He plans to be at Turner Field if the Braves pull it off.
"I can make my dad's dream come true if we make the playoffs," Jurrjens said. "My mom said he's put his travel bag outside already."
Jones hit a towering shot off Anibal Sanchez (3-8) in the third inning, striking the right-field foul pole about halfway up for his 18th homer of the season but just his second since Aug. 29.
"I guess it's a pretty good time to be rounding into form, 156 games in," Jones said sarcastically. "I would be a lot more upset if I weren't contributing at this time of year. Especially with the team doing what it's doing."
Florida's third loss in four games all but finished off the Marlins, who dropped 5 1/2 games behind the Rockies and can do no better than tie for the wild card. One more Florida loss or Colorado win would eliminate the Marlins.
The Braves managed just three hits but took advantage of 11 walks by the Marlins — including a career-worst eight by Sanchez. He walked his first three hitters of the game, and the Braves jumped ahead 2-0 without even getting a hit.
"I never walked that many, ever," Sanchez said. "I don't know what happened."
Astros 8, Phillies 2
At Philadelphia, Yorman Bazardo (1-2) pitched 5 2-3 effective innings against the team that cut him in spring training and Houston prevented the Phillies from reducing their magic number of three to clinch a third consecutive NL East crown.
Miguel Tejada had four hits and Jeff Keppinger added three hits and two RBIs for the Astros, who are 5-0 against the Phillies this season.

Cole Hamels (10-10) gave up six runs and nine hits in 6 2-3 innings. Philadelphia has lost five of seven.

Pirates 11, Dodgers 1

At Pittsburgh, Andy LaRoche homered twice, doubled twice and singled, driving in six runs as the last-place Pirates again prevented Los Angeles from clinching the NL West.

Zach Duke (11-15) pitched shutout ball into the ninth inning against a patchwork Dodgers lineup. LaRoche set a career high for hits in going 5 for 5 and scoring four runs.

Already assured a playoff spot, the Dodgers lost three of four to the Pirates, who had dropped 23 of 26 going into the series — the franchise's worst stretch in 119 seasons.

Los Angeles' next chance to wrap up the division title is Tuesday night, with a win at San Diego or a Colorado loss to Milwaukee.

LaRoche had a two-run double off Hiroki Kuroda (8-7) during Pittsburgh's big second inning.

Nationals 2, Mets 1

At Washington, Mike Morse homered for the third straight game and Ross Detwiler (1-6) earned his first major league win. Mike MacDougal got his 17th save.

NEW YORK – Hugh Jackman knows how to stop the show. He did it recently when a cell phone call interrupted a preview performance of "A Steady Rain," the Broadway play that stars Jackman and Daniel Craig. The moment captured on an amateur video shown by the TMZ.com Web site appears to have been recorded by someone in the audience.
It shows Jackman breaking character to tell the owner of the ringing cell phone, "You want to get that?" as the audience erupts in cheers. As the ringing persists, Jackman pleads: "Come on, just turn it off." He then paces the stage of the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, waits about a minute for the ringing to stop and the play resumes.
Producers of "A Steady Rain" declined to comment.
The interruption occurred during an intense moment in the play, when Jackman's character, a Chicago policeman, reveals haunting memories.
A customary loudspeaker announcement reminds theatergoers to turn off their phones. Since the incident, ushers who seat patrons and pass out playbills at Schoenfeld are also instructing patrons to silence their phones.
"A Steady Rain," a taut drama about the relationship between two policemen, opens Tuesday for a limited engagement through Dec. 6. The play by Keith Huff already has proven to be a potent box-office winner, playing to capacity audiences since it began previews on Sept. 10.
Jackman won a Tony Award in 2004 for his performance as Peter Allen in the musical "The Boy from Oz." Craig, filmdom's latest James Bond, is making his Broadway debut.
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UNITED NATIONS – In the highest-level conference yet on climate change, 100 world leaders come to the United Nations on Tuesday to decide how to start an energy revolution.
While attention turns to U.S. President Barack Obama's first U.N. speech, the most substantial changes may come from what the presidents of China, India and other major economies spell out for billions of people and their households, businesses and farms in the decades ahead.
Those leaders are expected to make more ambitious commitments than the U.S. leader, whose hands are still tied by Congress.
"We are asking developing countries to do as we say, not as we did," said Ed Miliband, Britain's climate secretary, whose nation has pledged to cut carbon emissions by more than a third from 1990 levels by 2020, and said 40 percent of the UK's electricity by then would come from renewable sources.
Tuesday's U.N. summit and the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh at the end of this week are intended to add pressure on the United States and other rich nations to commit to cuts and provide the billions of dollars needed to help developing nations stop cutting down their forests or burning coal.
China and the U.S. each account for about 20 percent of all the world's greenhouse gas pollution created when coal, natural gas or oil are burned. The European Union is next, generating 14 percent, followed by Russia and India, which each account for 5 percent.
Chinese President Hu Jintao is expected to lay out new plans for extending China's energy-saving programs and targets for reducing the "intensity" of its carbon pollution — carbon dioxide emission increases as related to economic growth.
China has been cutting energy intensity for the past four years and could the new carbon intensity goal in a five-year plan for development until 2015. China already has said it is seeking to use 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.
India, too, may draw away some of the spotlight for laying out plans for the fifth-biggest contributor of global warming gases to bump up fuel efficiency, burn coal more cleanly, preserve forests and grow more organic crops.
The United States, under former President George W. Bush's administration, long cited inaction by China and India as the reason for rejecting mandatory cuts in greenhouse gases.
Tuesday's meeting is intended to rally momentum for crafting a new global climate pact at Copenhagen, Denmark, in December. Bush rejected the 1997 Kyoto Protocol for cutting global emissions of warming gases, which expires at the end of 2012, based on its impact on the U.S. economy and exclusion of major developing nations like China and India, both major polluters.
But neither China nor India say they will agree to binding greenhouse-gas cuts like those envisioned in a new climate pact to start in 2013. They question why they should, when not even the U.S. will agree to join rich nations in scaling back their pollution.
"The crisis today on climate change is the inability of the United States to put on the table credible emissions reduction targets for 2020," said Jairam Ramesh, India's environment minister.
The EU is urging other rich countries to match its pledge to cut emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, and has said it would cut up to 30 percent if other rich countries follow suit.
Japan's incoming prime minister, whose nation generates more than 4 percent of the world's greenhouse gases, has announced a new goal of a 25 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2020.
Obama has announced a target of returning to 1990 levels of greenhouse emissions by 2020. Todd Stern, the top U.S. climate envoy, said the Obama administration is moving "full speed ahead" toward helping craft a global climate deal.
But with Congress moving slowly on a measure to curb emissions, the United States could soon find itself with little influence when 120 countries convene in Copenhagen.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a climate bill this summer that would set the first mandatory limits on greenhouse gases. But action in the Senate has been delayed as lawmakers wrestle with overhauling the health care system.

China's ambition to grow quickly but cleanly soon may vault it to "front-runner" status — far ahead of the United States — in taking on global warming, the U.N. climate chief said Monday.

"China and India have announced very ambitious national climate change plans. In the case of China, so ambitious that it could well become the front-runner in the fight to address climate change," U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer told The Associated Press. "The big question mark is the U.S."