PHOENIX - Aaron Blair was not good in his major league season debut Wednesday, but plenty of the Braves right-hander’s teammates weren’t a lot better in a listless 10-3 loss to the Diamondbacks at Chase Field that completed a three-game series and the western two-thirds of a three-city trip.
Making a fill-in start after Jaime Garcia was traded this week, Blair gave up five hits, five runs and five walks in three innings including an eventful four-run third inning — there was a stand-up inside-the-park homer — that sent the Diamondbacks to a series-clinching win and left him with a 2-8 record and 7.89 ERA in 16 starts over two seasons.
“Couldn’t really locate the fastball when I needed to,” Blair said. “I had the slider and the curveball for strikes when I needed it, just kind of fell behind and when I needed to make a pitch it just wasn’t there.”
The Braves botched a rundown on a Gregor Blanco stolen base that helped the Diamondbacks score a tying run in the first inning, and Blair gave up a two-run triple and an inside-the-park homer on hard-hit balls that also took quirky bounces. But the fact remained, neither he nor the bullpen could stop the bleeding.
“It all comes down to making pitches,” Blair said. “Five free passes in three innings is not going to help you at all.”
J.D. Martinez added a pair of homers for the Diamondbacks, against relievers Luke Jackson in the fourth inning and Ian Krol in the eighth, giving the Arizona newcomer three homers in the three-game series.
“(Blair) just had trouble making some pitches,” said manager Brian Snitker, whose Braves have seven losses in 10 games since their three-game sweep of the Diamondbacks in Atlanta in the first series after the All-Star break. (Martinez was still with Detroit at that time.)
“We screwed up the rundown, which cost him a run, and it just kind of got away from him there in a hurry. … We walked way too many guys. They’re just too dangerous, too deep, their lineup’s too long to do all that.”
The Braves are 3-4 on an 11-game, three-city trip that started in Los Angeles and will conclude with a four-game series at Philadelphia that begins Friday.
They finished 8-11 in a 19-game stretch that included six series against five teams with a combined .612 winning percentage before Wednesday, including the division-leading Astros, Nationals and Dodgers, plus the Cubs and two series against the Diamondbacks, who have baseball’s second-best home record (36-18).
“We’ve been playing good,” said Braves center fielder Ender Inciarte, a former Diamondback. “I always talk about consistency. Today we didn’t play the way we’ve been playing. It’s hard to win every night, but every time I come to the ballpark I expect us to win, and it’s frustrating that we couldn’t take that series here.”
Blair was staked to a 1-0 lead before throwing a pitch, when Brandon Phillips singled in the first inning, Freddie Freeman doubled and Matt Kemp drove in a run with a ground out. But after a Tyler Flowers walk, Sean Rodriguez struck out to end the inning and set a pattern for the day against left-hander Patrick Corbin (8-9).
The Braves were 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position through the first four innings, leaving nine runners on base in that stretch including multiple runners in every inning. They also failed to score after a leadoff walk in the fifth against Corbin, who allowed seven hits and four walks in six innings but only two runs.
Blair failed to protect the lead, giving up a run in the bottom of the first when Blanco hit a leadoff single, stole second and third bases (the latter on the botched rundown) and scored on a sacrifice fly. Blair also allowed a double and a walk, but got out of the first without more scoring damage, then worked out of a jam in the second inning by striking out A.J. Pollack with two in scoring position.
But there would be no escape from the tight spot he got himself into in the third inning after walking the first two batters. One strikeout later, Daniel Descalso hit a triple off the center-field wall, with Inciarte stopping at the warning track and trying to deke the Diamondbacks runners into thinking he was settled under it. It didn’t work and the ball bounced back into the field before right fielder Rodriguez picked it up.
Two runs scored on the triple for a 3-1 lead, then Ketel Marte drove an 0-2 pitch to the right-field corner into a triangular area where the fence juts out from the bullpen. Rodriguez was in right with Nick Markakis getting a rare day off, and when Rodriguez tried to make a running catch at the wall, the ball caromed back sharply from that tricky corner and rolled about 100 feet back up the first-base line before he could retrieve it.
That gave Marte enough time to circle the bases and score standing up for a two-run homer, the first inside-the-park homer against the Braves since Willie Harris hit one in September 2010.
Corbin gave up a leadoff single to Dansby Swanson in the fourth inning and walked the next two batters including Blair on four pitches. Phillips followed with a sacrifice fly to cut the lead to 5-2, and the Braves had a chance to do considerable damage when Freeman was hit by a pitch to re-load the bases with one out.
But Corbin once again got out of trouble, striking out Kemp and getting Flowers on a fly out to end the inning.
Blair needed 75 pitches to get through three innings and has now lasted 4 1/3 or fewer innings in half of his major league starts. This outing was his second-shortest in the majors, longer only than the 25-year-old right-hander’s fifth start May 17 last season, when he gave up nine hits and nine runs in 1 1/3 innings at Pittsburgh in what was Snitker’s debut as interim manager after Fredi Gonzalez was fired.
Beginning with that game against the Pirates, Blair has a 9.34 ERA in his past dozen starts while allowing five or more earned runs in seven of those games and lasted more than five innings just four times.
The Braves haven’t said who’ll fill the rotation spot when it comes up again Tuesday against the Dodgers, but Lucas Sims at Triple-A Gwinnett is considered a leading candidate, along with veteran Kris Medlen, who’s also at Gwinnett.
