SAN FRANCISCO — The Giants used two strikeouts and a single to load the bases against Braves pitcher Mike Foltynewicz in the seventh inning, and that's something you've probably never seen and might never see again.
Unfortunately for the Braves, other elements in Friday night’s game that were all too common. They mustered just six hits, including Freddie Freeman’s ninth-inning solo homer, and wasted a strong performance by their young starter in a 4-2 loss to Tim Hudson and the Giants at AT&T Park.
The Braves fell to 1-4 on their 10-game trip and 1-7 against the Giants since the beginning of the 2014 season.
Foltynewicz (3-2) left with the Giants ahead 2-1, and watched reliever Jim Johnson give up two more runs in the eighth inning — after a leadoff walk — to give the Giants some cushion. That helped them withstand Freeman’s homer to straightaway center his sixth of the season and first since May 5.
“Tremendous outing by Foltynewicz,” said manager Fredi Gonzalez, whose Braves are 2-14 in West Coast games the past two seasons. “They were able to add on again, like they did last night. Like the Dodgers did earlier on the road trip in that eighth inning, same way. We need to figure that out. But I thought Folty was tremendous.”
Foltynewicz allowed five hits, two runs and one walk in 6 2/3 innings, both runs scoring on Buster Posey’s two-out homer in the first inning.
“In the first inning I just wasn’t really comfortable for some reason,” Foltynewicz said. “My arm was a little stiff. I think I might have sat a little bit too long before the game started. It’s one mistake, one bad pitch, I wish I could have it back but that’s baseball. But I think I settled down and attacked the zone pretty well after that.”
The Braves need to win both Saturday and Sunday to salvage a split of this four-game series. They face Tim Lincecum Saturday and Madison Bumgarner in the series finale.
About that seventh-inning oddity: Third-strike pitches to Brandon Belt and Gregor Blanco were bounced curveballs that got past A.J. Pierzynski for wild pitches. Blanco reached to load the bases with two outs, giving Foltynewicz a career-high eight strikeouts and also ending his impressive performance.
Luis Avilan entered and got out of the jam with an inning-ending grounder by the first batter he faced, Naori Aoki, but that only prevented the Giants from extending their lead. It didn’t do anything to help revive Braves bats, which remained in a near-frozen state on a chilly night by the bay.
“I’m not going to go out next outing and not throw a curveball in the dirt because that happened,” Foltynewicz said of the third-strike wild pitches. “I have all the trust in the world in A.J. It’s tough blocking balls like that. Nothing to worry about.”
No, what’s worrisome is the Braves have hit .218 with three homers and 48 runs in their past 16 games, and scored two runs or fewer in six of their past 10 games, including two runs in each of Foltynewicz’s past two starts.
“I know the offense will explode sooner or later,” he said. “It’s happened before. Just go from the positive notes and in the next five days get a good bullpen session and go out there and attack them in Arizona.”
Hudson (3-4), the longtime former Brave who’ll be 40 in July, allowed just one run and five hits in seven innings to beat the Braves, leaving his original team, Oakland, as the only major league team he hasn’t won against. He came in with a 5.04 ERA, including 6.95 in his previous four starts after giving up eight runs in 3 2/3 innings Sunday at Colorado.
“It’s really nice seeing these guys,” Hudson said of the Braves, whom he had not faced since pitching nine seasons for Atlanta and leaving as a free agent after 2013. “The lineup’s a lot different but there are still a few guys I was teammates with. It’s cool facing these guys and competing against them. At the same time, it was a nice rebound game for me.
“That game in Colorado left a pretty sour taste in my mouth. I just didn’t feel very good. It was nice to make some pitches and feel good, physically.”
Three of the Braves’ five hits against Hudson were third-inning singles, and the sinkerballer induced an inning-ending double-play grounder from Freeman to limit the damage to one run.
“He was good; he was Huddy,” Braves third baseman Chris Johnson said. “We’ve seen that before. Knows how to pitch, knows how to keep you off balance, knows how to get ground balls. That’s what he’s done his whole career.”
After consecutive singles by Brandon Crawford and Angel Pagan to start the second inning, Foltynewicz induced a double-play grounder and struck out Hudson to end the inning. Those were the first two in his stretch of 11 consecutive batters retired by the hard-throwing right-hander before Aoki’s leadoff walk in the sixth.
Foltynewicz didn’t let the walk hurt, setting down the next three batters on a pop foul, a fly to the right-field warning track and an inning-ending grounder, which gave him 15 outs collected in a span of 15 batters beginning with the second-inning double play.
Giants pitchers have cranked out a remarkable eight shutouts at AT&T Park in May, the first National League team in 99 seasons to have at least eight home shutouts in any calendar month. That included four consecutive home shutouts before Friday’s game.
They had a 37-inning scoreless streak at home before Friday, matching their longest such streak in the franchise’s San Francisco era. When Hudson faced the minimum six batters through the first two innings, including Freddie Freeman’s inning-ending double play in the first, the Giants matched the overall franchise record of 39 consecutive scoreless innings at home, set by the 1948 New York Giants at the Polo Grounds.
The Braves stopped the streak there. They used three singles to piece together a run in the third inning, including two-out hits by Jace Peterson and Cameron Maybin. The latter was an infield hit (deflected by Hudson) that scored Andrelton Simmons and cut the lead in half, 2-1.
About the Author
