The Braves are going so bad they can’t even depend on their strange hex over Nationals right-hander Stephen Strasburg to spark their moribund offense.
Strasburg dominated the Braves like most starters do nowadays, but like he rarely does. The Braves again wasted strong pitching—Ervin Santana was the victim this time—while losing 4-2 Monday at Turner Field.
The Nationals can clinch the NL East by winning one of the remaining two games in the series. The Braves lost their fourth game in a row and seventh of eight as their postseason chances continue to shrink with 12 games to go.
The Braves didn’t score until Justin Upton knocked a one-out, RBI double in the ninth inning off reliever Rafael Soriano. Christian Bethancourt’s two-out RBI single trimmed the lead to 4-2 but B.J. Upton grounded out to end the game.
The Braves had banged out three runs against Strasburg in a victory at Washington last week but in the rematch managed just five hits (four singles) over seven innings.
In four previous starts against the Braves this season, Strasburg was 0-3 with a 7.17 ERA. He’d been winless in his past nine starts against the Braves. And he was 3-7 with a 4.61 ERA in 16 career starts against the Braves, 37-23 with a 2.90 ERA in 90 starts against everyone else.
The Braves got just three base runners past first against Strasburg on Monday. The first of them, B.J. Upton, was thrown out trying to take third base on a pitch in the dirt in the third inning. Jason Heyward singled to lead off the fifth and went to third on Strasburg’s wild pickoff attempt but Chris Johnson, Christian Bethancourt and B.J. Upton left Heyward stranded.
The Braves had one final chance to break through against Strasburg when Andrelton Simmons doubled with two outs in the sixth inning. But Freddie Freeman struck out looking and then let his frustrations boil over.
Home plate umpire Tim Timmons ejected Freeman after he broke his bat while slamming it in the dirt in protest. Manager Fredi Gonzalez came out to argue and kicked a broken piece of Freeman’s bat, so Simmons ejected him, too.
That’s as much spark as the Braves showed against the Nationals until it was too late. That’s not including Santana, who halted his string of lackluster starts at two by holding Washington to three hits and two runs over six innings.
