Well, all good things must come to an end, right? The Braves snapped their 3-game winning streak with a loss on Saturday night against the Nationals. This came as a result of the pitching staff’s poor performance and the failure on part of the offense to get more than a few runs to cross the plate. The outcome is a series that is tied at one game each.
Jurrjens started tonight but wasn’t his usual phenomenal self. To me, he’s become a staple of the rotation, one of the most consistent starters the Braves have. That said, he’s human, and tonight, he just didn’t have his normal, great stuff. He went 6 1/3 while allowing 8 hits, 5 runs, 1 walk, and 5 K’s. These stats were bad enough to earn him a loss. Carlyle relieved him in the 7th inning, and allowed one of his runs to cross the plate. He also allowed three hits, but got out of the inning with a strikeout. Ring came in the 8th, but only lasted 1/3 of an inning. Ring followed, he struck out the first batter he saw, walked the next, and then allowed a pair of singles which plated a run. Nunez came in to cool the flames, but he gave up a single and a sacrifice fly, which amounted to three runs being charged to Ring. Tavarez pitched the 9th, he was perfect and struck out one. The pitching staff dug a pretty deep hole for the offense to climb out of, 8 runs, and they were unable to do so.
Leading the offense for the day was Gregor Blanco, who singled three times, but never got passed third base. Chipper’s only hit was an RBI single in the 5th, which actually lowered his average to .374. Teixeira, McCann, and Francoeur all had singles of their own. Norton hit a solo shot in the 9th, but by that point, it was too little, too late. The inability to plate more than two runs was helped by the fact that runners were stranded in scoring position in three of the innings. In two of those innings, they were left standing on third.
(Image: Yahoo! Sports)
As a matter of fact, the only player that managed to score without the help of the long ball was Jair Jurrjens. A little disheartening, but sometimes bad days just happen.
Braves lose by three-fourths, 8 - 2.
Tomorrow’s rubber game, at 1:30 PM EST, not nationally televised.
Ugly performance, and at a bad time too, with the Phillies having lost earlier in the day. Braves absolutely have to win today … no way they can go into the most important road trip of the year coming off a series loss to the Nationals.
Gotta keep winning series to get back into this thing. Jo-Jo hasn’t pitched too well lately and hasn’t won a start since June 13. Bravos need the Jo-Jo we saw in late May and early June, and not the one who can’t get out of the fifth inning.
Bud.
http://braves.today.com
Comment by Bud — July 20, 2008 @ 7:56 am
man this braves team is really hard to stomach the braves really got it wrong when they gave up or best clutck-hitter for nothing (renterria) and now its biting you in the ass no timely hitting= 1-26 in one run games enough said
Comment by benjamin — July 21, 2008 @ 2:26 pm
You’ve got that right, Benjamin. I surely miss Renteria, but Jurrjens has been pretty good so far, and the offense would only have worked with Escobar playing second instead of KJ.
Still, I think the more in-depth problem is the outfield is relatively weak compared to every other team in baseball. It seems like the only power on the team is coming from Teixeira at this point.
Comment by BenMurphy — July 21, 2008 @ 5:34 pm