SAN DIEGO – The Braves came with a four-game winning streak and the second-best record in the National League, but Friday was a reminder of their biggest flaw. They don't hit much.
If that seems an odd thing to point out after a game in which the Braves were blown out 11-2 by the San Diego Padres at Petco Park, well, it’s not if one considers how close the game was much of the night.
The Padres led 2-0 after five innings against the Braves’ Derek Lowe (3-6), whose winless streak is at nine starts. He had not pitched poorly to that point, and retired 10 consecutive batters after giving up a run in the second inning and another run in the third.
Meanwhile, Braves hitters were going down with alarming ease against Padres starter Tim Stauffer (3-5), who became the latest in a series of pitchers to record a career-high in strikeouts against the Braves this season. He had nine in seven innings, with no walks and four hits allowed.
"Unfortunately we just didn’t get him any runs while he was out there," said Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman, whose two-run homer off Stauffer in the seventh inning was one of only four hits for the Braves.
"[Lowe] is trying to make the perfect pitch, and he can’t do that every time he’s out there. We just didn’t get him any runs to feel a little bit comfortable. He was always on the edge tonight.”
Stauffer retired 16 consecutive batters between Chipper Jones’ two-out single in the first inning and Jason Heyward’s leadoff single in the seventh. The Braves did not hit a ball in the air for four consecutive innings.
Two outs after Heyward's seventh-inning single, Freeman hit a mammoth shot over fence in straightaway center field to end Stauffer’s shutout bid and cut the lead to 5-2. It was the eighth homer for the rookie first baseman, and came on a full-count pitch.
But by that point, the Padres had already scored enough against a Braves team that's hit a league-worst .221 in June.
No NL team had more homers for June before Friday, but the problem with the Braves’ lineup is they don’t do much else except hit homers.
“That’s the way we’ve been hitting most of the year," Gonzalez said of the return to form following consecutive 5-1 wins against Toronto. "If you look at our stats over the course of the year, we’re not where we want to be offensively as a team, as a club.
"But we’ve pitched better than this. That seventh inning got away from us a little bit.”
The Padres blew the game wide open with a six-run seventh inning against rookie reliever Jairo Asencio, three of the runs unearned after a Dan Uggla throwing error.
They had turned a 2-0 lead into a five-run lead with a two-out rally in the sixth that began when Heyward misplayed Anthony Rizzo’s fly ball into a double at the right-field warning track. He took a bad route to the ball, then had it sail just beyond his outstretched glove.
That’s when things came unraveled for Lowe, who gave up an infield single -- Chipper Jones bobbled it trying to field-and-throw quickly -- anda walk to the next two batters, before No. 8 hitter Alberto Gonzalez’s two-run groundball single to right.
Stauffer, the pitcher, added the final blow with a groundball single up the middle that drove in the third run of the inning. That was all for Lowe, who is 0-3 with 5.29 ERA in his last nine starts.
“The only pitch I’d take back was to Gonzalez," Lowe said. "I’d try to throw it away… It was definitely a frustrating game. They weren’t hitting the cover off the ball, but they were getting some runs.
"That inning went from two outs to out-of-the-game pretty fast. Wish I’d have gotten the ball away to Gonzalez instead of inner half [of the plate].
“That’s about it.”
Lowe has allowed five earned runs in six or fewer innings in four of those starts. He was charged with five runs, eight hits and two walks in 5-2/3 innings against the Padres.
The Braves have scored two runs or fewer while Lowe has been in eight of his past nine starts.
“It seems like there’s always one guy in the rotation that doesn’t get any run support," Gonzalez said of Lowe, who had the fourth-lowest run support among NL starters before Friday. "And I’m sure he’s pitched that way, thinking about that stuff.
“They got a bunch of ground balls; I don’t think they hit the ball hard. That inning, there were a couple of plays that maybe we should have made, and it snowballed on him. But again, they held us to four hits."
Lowe's last win was May 6 at Philadelphia, when he pitched six scoreless innings of two-hit ball and had a no-hit bid spoiled by a foot blister.
Before the winless drought, Lowe had gone 8-3 with a 2.39 ERA in 13 starts since the beginning of September.
“I wanted to keep him in there," Gonzalez said, "because he’s been pitching pretty good -- better than pretty good -- and not getting anything to show for it. I’m sure he’s frustrated; we’re frustrated, and pulling for him. The team’s pulling for him. It’s just the way it goes sometimes."
Frustrated? Yes.
"To say the least," Lowe said. "Three wins in 16 or 17 starts is probably not what I had in mind during the spring. But that’s where we are. Everyone else [in the rotation] is pitching great; that definitely makes it a little easier.”
It was a rare night of offense for the Padres, who were 6-11 with just 42 runs scored in their previous 17 games at Petco Park. They had had one or no runs in eight of those 17, and more than three runs in only four of 17.
Stauffer came in with the worst run support in the majors, and Friday was only the third time in his 16 starts that the Padres scored more than two runs while he was in a game.
