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Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Braves travel to-do list: Score a run, then perhaps win
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Los Angeles — Well, that Monday night shutout wasn’t quite what the Braves had in mind to start this crucial six-game trip, now was it?
At least it was quick and relatively painless for Braves hitters, Hiroki Kuroda carving them up with a surgeon’s precision.
For those counting at home, that’s two road games in a row with zero runs for Los Bravos. Eighteen innings, six hits, no runs at Toronto and at Dodger Stadium. Ouch. Yikes.
With six outs to go in last night’s 3-0 Dodgers win against the skidding Bravos, I was scrambling to gather information about no-hitters — how many the Dodgers had thrown over the years, how many had been thrown against the Braves, etc.
I covered Randy Johnson’s perfect game in Atlanta in 2004, and with six outs to go last night I really was starting to think I was going to see Kuroda throw one, too. If he had, he’d have joined the immortal Sandy Koufax as the only pitchers in Dodgers franchise history to toss one (a perfect game, not just a no-hitter).
It’s four no-hitters I’ve covered as a beat man, including two on the West Coast by Marlins pitchers A.J. Burnett (at San Diego’s former Jack Murphy Stadium, A.J. threw a nine-walk, one-hit-batsman beautiful mess) and Kevin Brown (at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park, the surling Georgia boy completely dominated one afternoon).
Alas, Mark Teixeira lightened our late-night workload Monday with his clean double leading off the eighth inning.
But it didn’t make Kuroda’s performance any less impressive, really. He needed only 91 pitches (61 strikes) to record 27 outs, with no walks and six strikeouts.
Braves hitters and Bobby Cox called it as good or better than any performance they’ve seen all season, and Brian McCann said the Braves, who didn’t get to their L.A. hotel until nearly 3 a.m. Monday after their marathon 17-inning game Sunday in Atlanta, couldn’t have hit Kuroda Monday even if fully rested.
He was that good. Everything down in the strike zone. Sinkers at over 90 mph. Ninth-inning fastballs at 93-94 mph, harder than he’d thrown for most of the night. Dodgers manager Joe Torre said he’d never seen a pitcher so “robotically” pump strike after strike against hitters.
And these were well-located strikes, not ones left over the middle of the plate.
Kelly Johnson marveled at how much better Kuroda - he’s only got a 5-6 record, folks — pitched last night than when the Braves faced him in spring training or when they got seven hits and two runs in six innings against him to beat the 33-year-old rookie in Atlanta on April 20.
“It was his night,” K.J. said of the performance Monday. “We saw him in the spring and early this year, and he wasn’t even close to that same pitcher. I don’t know where he was hiding that stuff.”
OK, but enough about Kuroda. What in the name of Otis Nixon is wrong with the Braves?
Ahh, if only there were an easy, pat answer, something the Braves and GM Frank Wren could fix with one move, or a couple of trades before the deadline.
A move to get a bat, preferably a right-handed bat, would certainly help the cause, because this Braves team has been shut out eight times and has a 1-25 record in games in which it’s scored two runs or fewer.
That’s 26 times in 90 games that Atlanta has scored fewer than three runs in a game. And on the road … oh, it’s much uglier.
Ninety games in, the home-road dichotomy isn’t as severe as it was earlier, but that’s only because the Braves have stopped winning so much at home. In other words, they’re not as good at home; they’re still about as bad as ever on the road, and much of that is the strange inability to hit on the road.
This is a team that plays its home games in a park that’s more pitcher-friendly than hitter-friendly, for sure. Those vast power alleys at Turner Field, especially in right-center, have frustrated a lot of hitters over the years.
Yet this Braves team hits better at home. Far, far better.
Among NL teams in home-game offensive statistics, the Braves rank second in average (.283) and on-base percentage (.360), sixth in slugging percentage (.432), and eighth in homers (46).
But in road games, the Braves are awful offensively (or awfully offensive) — 14th in average (.243), 11th in OBP (.318), 10th in slugging (.387), and tied for 11th in homers (39).
And here’s the big one: At home they are third in runs scored (237), while on the road the Braves are dead last with 157 runs.
Now, unless they can trade for the best road-hitting run-producer in the NL, the Braves are probably going to have to look in the mirror and get things figured out amongst themselves if they hope to get this road thing turned around before it’s too late (if it’s not already, as many here in Braves/MIB land believe it is).
No one has felt the sting of the Braves’ road futility more than Jorge Campillo, who pitched another good game last night — seven innings, five hits three runs — and came away with another loss.
He’s 1-4 with a 4.32 ERA in his past five starts, and the Braves have scored one or no runs while he’s been in four of those games.
He has three quality starts in that span, games in which he pitched seven or eight innings and gave up two or three runs, and Campillo has only a 1-2 record in those three games.
Both losses in that stretch came in Los Angeles, against the Angels and Dodgers, when he gave up a total of 12 hits and five runs in 15 innings, and got exactly zero support runs. In both games, the Tijuana native pitched with plenty of family members and friends in attendance.
They might be wondering if the Braves have something against their guy. No, friends and family members, they don’t. The Braves don’t score much for several pitchers, particularly on the road. It’s nothing personal.
At Turner Field, five Braves regulars (20 or more games) have hit .300 or higher, including Chipper Jones (.437), Brian McCann (.323), Matt Diaz (.319), Yunel Escobar (.316), and Kelly Johnson (.300).
On the road, Chipper Jones (.323) is the only Braves regular hitting above .287, and six are hitting .250 or below.
At home, eight Braves regulars have slugged over .400. On the four, it’s four.
Not too surprising, then, that the Braves have lost 23 of their past 31 road games, despite a respectable 3.92 ERA in that span. They hit just .236 in those 31 games, and averaged 3-1/2 runs.
And in their past seven road games, the Braves are 2-5 with a ghastly .200 batting average and only 23 runs. They’ve been shut out in consecutive road games, by A.J. Burnett and two Toronto relievers to end the last trip and by Kuroda to start this one.
Gotta love Carlyle: Buddy Carlyle’s opponents’ batting average has improved each month, from .292 in April to .167 in May, .152 in June, and .111 so far in three July appearances.
Since April 23, the journeyman right-hander has posted a 0.78 ERA and .165 opponents’ average in 14 games, allowing 13 hits and two runs in 23 innings, with 10 walks and 25 strikeouts.
He has a 1.38 ERA in 26 innings this season, a .178 opponents’ average that includes .153 by righty hitters, and he’s allowed just a .171 average with runners on and .152 (5-for-33) with runners in scoring position.
“Damn, we’re going to have to move him up [in the bullpen],” Bobby Cox said yesterday, when I asked about Carlyle’s recent work. “He’s going right after [hitters]. He puts the ball right where he wants it. I preach that all the time, but some people don’t get it. You’ve gotta locate.”
Carlyle told me yesterday that he likes his role, feels comfortable there, and hopes the starters begin going deeper into games again so he doesn’t have to pitch much, because then he knows the staff’s performing well. You know, when he doesn’t have to enter many games in the middle innings.
“I’m trying to make pitches where I’m putting everything into that particular pitch. Like [Sunday vs. Houston] when I was pitching, if I was going to give up a hit in a certain situation, I was going to put everything into the pitch,” he said.
“And if I gave up the hit or the run, I could go home and feel like, ‘OK, alright, I gave up the run there, but I gave it everything I had on that particular pitch.’ And it’s a lot easier to do that out of the bullpen than as a starter, because as a starter you’re looking at, you’ve got to throw 100 pitches, and sometimes you’ve got to conserve a little bit too much.
“I’m just trying to make sure I put everything into it, and if something bad happens I can live with it.”
More on his role and whether he would like to start again: “I feel comfortable where I am right now. The starters have been doing such a good job and they’ve been getting deep into games. That’s why for three weeks before last weekend I didn’t pitch at all, because guys have been doing such a good job.
“Hopefully they’ll continue pitching the way they are and that decision won’t even have to be made and it’ll be completely irrelevant. I feel comfortable with where I’m at and just glad that I have an opportunity to be here playing, and hopefully we can start winning.”
A man who knows his role. Appreciates it, relishes it. Good stuff.
OK, time for lunch. But first …. Those of you who, for some unknown reason, feel compelled to remind us that college football season is just around the corner: We get it. Hey, most of us love college football. I know I do.
But let me know when musicians as cool as these sing an ode to that sport, much less name a group for it and put out a CD full of songs about it.
It’s The Baseball Project, Peter Buck and Steve Wynn are in it, and their first album’s in stores today. Here’s a link to their appearance on Letterman: http://youtube.com/watch?v=A2RNfhhlY-Y
I can’t help but think that if Warren Zevon were still with us, he might want to be part of that project. (By the way, I think our AJC.com entertainment section is posting a bunch of other info and links to the band today.)
”DESPERADOS UNDER THE EAVES” by Warren Zevon
I was sitting in the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel
I was staring in my empty coffee cup
I was thinking that the gypsy wasn’t lyin’
All the salty margaritas in Los Angeles
I’m gonna drink ‘em up
And if California slides into the ocean
Like the mystics and statistics say it will
I predict this motel will be standing until I pay my bill
Don’t the sun look angry through the trees
Don’t the trees look like crucified thieves
Don’t you feel like Desperados under the eaves
Heaven help the one who leaves
Still waking up in the mornings with shaking hands
And I’m trying to find a girl who understands me
But except in dreams you’re never really free
Don’t the sun look angry at me
I was sitting in the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel
I was listening to the air conditioner hum
It went mmmmmm….
Look away…
Look away down Gower Avenue, look away….
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