Braves embarrassed by skid, 18-3 loss

St. Louis — A thesaurus is as useful as a media guide for covering the Braves these days. One needs a variety of words to describe the repeated debacles.

They were beaten unmercifully Friday night at St. Louis, where the Cardinals pounded Braves pitchers for 26 hits in an 18-3 thrashing at Busch Stadium.

It wasn’t as close as the score indicates: The Braves scored twice in the ninth inning. Oh, my.

“It’s embarrassing,” catcher Brian McCann said after the Braves’ sixth consecutive loss and 11th in 12 games. “There’s not one person on this club who would say it’s not embarrassing, the way we’ve played the last three weeks.”

The Cardinals had their most hits in a game since 1930, and their 21 singles were two shy of the major-league record. They scored their most runs in three seasons at new Busch Stadium and and their most without hitting a homer in research back to 1954. It was their largest margin of victory against the Braves since beating the Boston Braves 15-0 in 1950.

The Braves hadn’t allowed as many hits since San Francisco got 27 in a 23-8 rout in 1990, and hadn’t surrendered as many runs since Philadelphia’s 18-5 win in Atlanta on Sept. 9, 2003.

Rookie starter Charlie Morton (3-8) lasted 1 1/3 innings and allowed four runs, five hits and five walks, and journeyman Matt DeSalvo was blitzed for six runs and eight hits in the fifth inning.

“They’re a great hitting club,” said manager Bobby Cox, whose Braves have lost the first four on a six-game trip. “Charlie had not much luck, and not much control.

“It’s not embarrassing; those [games] happen occasionally. But we’ve got to make better pitches, our young guys. Too many bad games to [the number of] good games. We can’t go out there every game down five runs.”

Morton had his briefest of 12 major-league starts, and was pulled after retiring one of eight batters faced in the second inning, that on a sacrifice.

The other seven Cardinals he saw in the inning accounted for three singles, three walks and Albert Pujols’ two-run double.

Asked how it felt to experience what he did Friday, Morton said, “It’s a little bit of everything — everything negative, and very little positive. That kind of thing sets the tone for the rest of the game.

“When I tried to bear down, I just couldn’t find it. I couldn’t locate the pitches.”

After the Pujols hit, Morton intentionally walked Rick Ankiel with first base open. Then he unintentionally walked Troy Glaus with the bases loaded, which brought in the four run of the inning for a 4-0 lead. That was it for Morton.

It’s probably time for the Braves to make another revision of their already revised goal, since a .500 record would now require a minor miracle.

They would have to go 25-8 in their remaining games to finish 81-81. Anyone who has watched the past two weeks knows that 8-25 seems more likely.

“It’s frustrating — definitely very, very, very frustrating,” McCann said. “We’ve got to stop the way we’re playing. We’ve got to. Tomorrow. This is just unacceptable. We’re just not playing good baseball right now, top to bottom.

“It’s starting to snowball, and we have to stop it now.”

Their latest defeat was against former Braves pitching prospect Adam Wainwright, who held them to one run in 5 1/3 innings in his first start after 2 1/2 months on the disabled list for a finger injury.

The right-hander from St. Simons Island allowed five hits, including Greg Norton’s pinch-hit homer in the fifth inning.

Wainwright (7-3) also had a career-high three hits — more than any Braves batter — including an RBI single in the fifth when St. Louis took a 12-1 lead.