Ridiculous!! This really doesn’t make any sense! The Brave have just lost their 3rd straight game to the Pirates and in doing so they just lost the season series to the Pirates! Think about that for a second. At best the Braves can be 3-4 against the Pittsburgh this season!!! Not to take anything away from the Pirates they are a pretty good team. But the Braves are a lot better of a team than the Bucs.
Chuck James was Chuck James tonight going 6 innings giving up 5 hits, 5 runs, walking 4, but he did have 7 strikeouts. Chuck was not that bad tonight. It didn’t help that his offense didn’t give him any runs (two runs to be exact). I thought that he made a few mistakes that essentially caused him the lost. One mistake was when he left a ball that was intended to be in the inside right down the middle and Jason Bay promptly deposited it into souvenir city for a two-run homerun in the 4th. Another mistake was when there were two on with two out he left a 3-2 pitch right down the middle to Ronny Paulina who double into right center for two rbi’s in the 6th. Aside from that he pitched decent. Campillo was excellent again today going 2 innings with 1 hit, no walks, no runs, and 2 strikeouts.
The offense was terrible aside from Tex. Infante leads off with a single in the 1st and Escobar tries to bunt him over but grounds into a fielder’s choice instead. Chipper pops up. And Tex hits a bomb to right field to put the Braves up 2-0 (for the time being). That’s about it for the offense. It’s like the offense is going in circles on the road and against left handers. They will have men on and instead of coming through and driving them in, they ground into double plays. It’s ridiculous how many double plays the Braves have grounded into. And there’s a horrible trend that I’m starting to see with the Braves and I noticed this last. They cannot bunt at all when the situations require a bunt. This is a huge reason why they are 1-10 in 1 run games. The Braves had opportunities to bust the game open last night and again tonight.
For instance the Braves had two on with no one out and Kelly Johnson strikes out trying to get the bunt down against a lefty (personally I would have lifted Kelly for Omar Infante in that situation). The Braves have to learn how to play situational baseball if they want to remain a contender. Hopefully the Braves can take the next two games to even the series. Braves lose 5-2 and that makes them 4-13 on the road this season.
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