Howard's homer off Soriano beats Braves

By David O’Brien

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

With the way that closer Rafael Soriano has been going, big Ryan Howard was about the last guy he needed to face in the last inning of a tie game Friday.

Howard strode to the plate to start the ninth, and trouble ensued.

The Phillies slugger connected squarely with a Soriano slider and drove it beyond the center-field fence, lifting Philadelphia to a 3-2 win in the opener of a potentially crucial series for the Braves at Turner Field.

“I made a bad pitch,” said Soriano, who has made a few of them lately while allowing three game-winning homers in his past eight appearances. “Everybody has, like, one month that’s not good. After that, see you in September.”

Howard has hit .330 with 25 homers and 74 RBIs in 76 games against the Braves.

The Braves had two on in the ninth when Nate McLouth flied out to the left-field warning track against closer Brad Lidge for the final out — the fifth ball hit by the Braves that was caught against the wall or on the track.

“The high fly balls weren’t traveling for us tonight,” said manager Bobby Cox, whose Braves had their five-game winning streak snapped. “I think we just played in the wrong ballpark tonight. We did everything but win the damn game.”

They also had their five-game winning streak against the Phillies snapped, as the third-place Braves fell to six games behind Philadelphia and 1-1/2 games behind Florida in the National League East standings.

The Braves are fourth in the NL wild-card standings, still 3-1/2 games behind leader Colorado.

“We hit some balls hard that just weren’t enough,” said catcher Brian McCann, whose towering fly to center in the fifth was snatched by Shane Victorino with a spectacular leaping catch against the wall to end the inning with a runner at third.

“He’s a good center fielder. He covers a lot of ground,” McCann said.

“He’s been doing that all year,” first baseman Adam LaRoche said of the plucky Braves nemesis.

Victorino, Howard and Chase Utley were thorns in the Braves’ side, as they have been so often in recent seasons.

After Victorino led off the fourth with a single, Utley’s homer off Jair Jurrjens gave the Phillies a 2-1 lead.

It was Utley’s fifth in his past 16 games against the Braves, who tied the score in the fourth on Ryan Church’s two-out RBI double off Joe Blanton.

Jurrjens and Blanton each pitched seven innings, Jurrjens allowing two runs on five hits with six strikeouts, and Blanton allowing two runs (one earned) on seven hits.

“Blanton pitched a great game, as did J.J.,” McCann said. “You knew it was going to come down probably to who hit the long ball.”

Soriano (1-4) struck out the next three batters in the ninth after Howard’s home run, but the damage was done.

Soriano has an 0-3 record, 9.95 ERA and two blown saves in his dreadful eight-game stretch, which began with Ross Gload’s game-ending two-run homer at Florida on July 22 and included Andre Ethier’s game-ending three-run homer in a 5-4 loss to the Dodgers on Aug. 6 — the Braves’ last loss before Friday.

Before his homer-stained skid, Soriano had posted a 1.54 ERA in 45 appearances this season, allowing only eight runs and one homer while converting 14 of 15 save opportunities.

“A little breaking ball that he hit out,” Cox said of the fateful pitch Friday.

The Braves are 7-3 against the Phillies this season, after going 4-14 against them in 2008.

Chipper Jones’ RBI single in the first gave the Braves the early lead against Blanton, who had been 0-1 with an 8.53 ERA in four previous starts against them.

Jurrjens allowed only one runner to reach (on a two-out single in the second) until the fourth inning, when Victorino singled and Utley went deep.