Brandon Beachy wanted to be more efficient this season and go deeper in games. Well, the perfectionist reached the ultimate goal eight starts into it. The 25-year-old Beachy pitched the first complete game of his career Thursday night via shutout in a 7-0 win over the Marlins.
“Yeah, that’s about as deep as you can go,” a smiling Beachy said afterward. “I told (closer) Craig (Kimbrel), ‘Man, I’m jealous. You get to do this all the time.’ You get pumped up there in the last inning. That’s a lot of fun.”
Beachy had thrown 110 pitches through the first eight innings, one shy of his season-high, but Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez didn’t get anyone up in the bullpen until Beachy had started the ninth. This was his night.
Beachy had kept his mindset of pitching to contact to that point, but let it all go in the ninth. He struck out the first two batters he faced, as chants of “Let’s go Beachy” broke out at Turner Field. With his 122nd pitch he coaxed one last groundout to Tyler Pastornicky.
“He was pitching with a lot of confidence and pounding the strike zone,” said veteran right-hander Tim Hudson, who has 12 complete-game shutouts of his own. “When you’re the aggressor out there on the mound, it’s a lot different. Hitters react to you a lot differently than when you’re on the ropes and when you’re nibbling. He takes the game to them, and that’s what it takes to be successful.”
With nine shutout innings Beachy lowered his ERA to 1.33 which leads the major leagues. He’s competing with some exclusive company from the past as well. Beachy’s ERA is the third-lowest by an Atlanta Brave through eight starts, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. He’s third behind Buzz Capra (1.06 in 1974) and four-time Cy Young award winner Greg Maddux, who had a 1.13 ERA through eight starts in his record-setting 1994 season.
Beachy said the same thing Maddux would have said when told about that feat: “That’s pretty cool.”
Until Thursday night, Beachy had never pitched eight full innings in any of his first 35 career appearances. But he used 12 groundball outs and six flyball outs to keep his pitch count low. After going seven innings or more only twice in 25 starts last year, Beachy has pitched seven or more innings four times already this season.
“He went into this offseason and gathered all the information (from) the year before and worked on his weaknesses,” catcher Brian McCann said. “And those weaknesses are now strengths. That shows you the character of who he is.”
Beachy, now 5-1, used another good offensive night from his teammates and some great defensive plays behind him to get in a nice rhythm and stay there. He gave up five hits, struck out six, walked none and walked off the mound to a happy and relieved manager.
“(Pitching coach) Roger (McDowell) and I are hanging on every pitch because you want the kid to be successful,” Gonzalez said. “You want him to have the complete game. You want him to have the shutout. But then you want to be able to keep him healthy. I don’t know what the number [of pitches] would have been. He was fine. Other than the second-and-third situation (in the fifth), he really didn’t have any stressful innings.”
Beachy's was the first shutout by a Brave since Jair Jurrjens did it last July 1 against Baltimore.
The Braves reached double-digits in hits (12) for the sixth time in the past seven games. Seven of nine batters in their lineup collected an RBI, including one by Beachy on a single in the fifth to give him four RBIs on the season.
The Braves got multi-hit games from Michael Bourn, Chipper Jones, Tyler Pastornicky and Martin Prado, who went 2-for-4 with a double and a triple. Freddie Freeman added his seventh home run of the season.
With that, the Braves split the two-game series with the Marlins to move back into first-place in the NL East after six days of flip-flopping with the Nationals.
The Braves head back out where they seem most comfortable these days, on the road, where they have a majors’ leading 14 wins. They open interleague play with a weekend series in Tampa, and with Beachy’s performance Thursday, they were feeling good on the late-night flight there.
“It’s fun to watch the young guys make the transition from not knowing that they belong here, to thinking they belong here, to knowing they belong here,” Jones said. “And he’s starting to get to the point where he knows he belongs here.”
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