These Braves are never out of a game, after only having two hits in the first six innings of today's contest, the Braves bats came to life in the final innings of today's contest. Like game 2 against the Cubs and the first game against the Nationals, the Braves were on the ropes and looked like a loss was inevitable but clutch late inning rallies against the other teams bullpens fueled this high powered Braves offense to wins. Tonight the power shined through with 5 solo homers including 3 in the bottom of the 8th to lead the Braves to a 6-3 victory.
Juan Francisco hit a rope to the RF bleachers to score the Braves first run in the bottom of the second. Chris Getz answered back with his own solo shot to RF in the top of the third. In the top of the 4th, the Royals jumped to a lead after a Juan Francisco throwing error allowed Salvador Perez to reach base and a few batters later former Brave, Jeff Francouer drove him in with a single to right. However, the Roadrunner smashed another solo shot to straight away center to tie up the game in the bottom of the 7th off of Guthrie. Jason Heyward cracked an opposite field home run off Royals reliever Kevin Herrera to allow the Braves to go up 3-2 in the bottom of the 8th, followed by a LOOOOOOONG bomb by Justin Upton (his 8th) to go back-to-back. Uggla smashed another ball into the LF chairs for the Braves fifth solo blast of the game. Francisco walked to end Herrera's night and Chris Johnson hit another opposite field single to knock in pinch runner Jordan Schafer from 2B which he stole two pitches earlier. The Royals battled in the ninth scoring their third run on an Alex Gordon single to RF off of Kimbrel to drive in Chris Getz (run charged to Avilan).
Coming into the spring, the Braves were planning on having a competition for the 3B spot between Chris Johnson and Juan Francisco. Both players put up great numbers in Spring Training, so Fredi Gonzalez went into the season with a platoon, both continued their success. When Freddie Freeman landed on the DL, this allowed the Braves to get an extended look at both, with Chris Johnson filling in at 1B. Both have continued their success offensively with Francisco hitting his second and third homers of the season in this game, while hitting .306 and Chris Johnson has been a hitting machine quietly hitting .415 so far this season. The Braves pitching gave another great performance as Kris Medlen only allowed 1 earned run in 7 innings, to lower his ERA to 1.42 for the year. O'Flaherty pitched a one-hit 8th to earn the win. However, bad news struck up and coming reliever Luis Avilan in the 9th as he was coming home with a pitch, he collapsed to the ground holding his left leg. Not a good site to see considering how valuable he's been to this bullpen, especially with Jonny Venters out for the foreseeable future.
After being the top defense in the National League last season, with another 3 errors in today's contest, the Braves are no where near being that good this season, especially Dan Uggla (4 errors) and Juan Francisco (3 errors). This can only improve when Freddie Freeman's vacuum-like glove comes back from the DL, although even he couldn't have come down with Francisco's airmail. The other error was the ever rare catcher's interference by Evan Gattis after Royals' pitcher Jeremy Guthrie literally knocked the glove off his hand. However, a great leaping catch by Jason Heyward to rob extra bases as well as a great play by Dan Uggla to go up the middle and make a great turnaround throw to first to make the final out of the game show why this Braves defense has potential to turn it around.
No comments:
Post a Comment