Hanson, Braves overpower Diamondbacks

By CARROLL ROGERS

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Coming off a series loss to the Phillies and a game that didn’t end until after midnight Sunday night, the Braves were met by a mostly empty stadium for a makeup game Monday afternoon against Arizona.

They had plenty of reason to be lethargic, with what appeared to be less than half of the announced 23,668 in attendance at Turner Field.

But the Braves kept it together while the visiting Diamondbacks fell apart. A sloppy six-run third inning by pitcher Max Scherzer opened the door to a 9-4 Braves win and gave them a chance to cruise on a day when they really needed it.

“The park was so dead today,” Braves manager Bobby Cox said. “There were so few fans out here on a makeup. It’s that way everywhere you’d play one just about except Boston, I think. It was a great win because there was no energy in the park at all. I think we played a good ball game under those circumstances.”

The Braves generated some energy on their own with home runs by both Garret Anderson and Adam LaRoche.

“Nothing against Pittsburgh, but I’m used to that, “ LaRoche said of small crowds he played in front of for more than two years with the Pirates. “I think after the first inning in a situation like that, you’re over the fact that there aren’t a lot of people there. You realize that there’s a game to play and a game to win.”

With the Phillies idle Monday, the Braves were able to shave their deficit by a half-game in the NL East down to 5-1/2 games. They were happy to make up any ground after watching Ryan Howard homer twice in a 4-1 win Sunday night.

The Braves came back Monday to score as many runs in the first three innings against Scherzer as they had in three games against the Phillies. They handed Tommy Hanson a 7-0 lead and watched him cruise to his third consecutive win.

“That one inning got a little out of hand, but other than that, I felt pretty good,” said Hanson, now 8-2, of a two-run fifth inning, which he worked out of with a strikeout.

Scherzer got his first major league win against the Braves on May 16 with six shutout innings. But they’ve given him nothing but trouble in two starts since then, rolling up 17 runs in 8-2/3 innings.

Scherzer threw wildly to third base on a fielder’s choice that would have prevented the third inning madness on a flyball by Chipper Jones. Instead, Jones got a sacrifice fly, and the Braves loaded the bases and then cleared them on Ryan Church’s three-run double.

Both Church’s hit and LaRoche’s two-run homer two innings later came on Scherzer’s change-ups.

“I think he fell in love with the change-up at the wrong time,” LaRoche said. “He had so much life on that fastball. You got 98 [mph] in the bag, you need to feed off of that and mix the other stuff in.”