The last time he pitched at Turner Field, Tim Hudson threw a one-hit shutout and the Braves played superb defense behind him.
Six days later, things got turned upside down for Hudson in a sloppy 7-6, series-opening loss to the Washington Nationals at Turner Field, where the Braves made things interesting with a five-run eighth in their second loss in nine May games.
A potentially bigger concern is the health of right fielder Jason Heyward, who was replaced in the eighth inning because of a sore shoulder that he said worsened to the point of causing numbness in his hand during the game.
"It’s been bothering me pretty good since spring training, and I’ve been playing through it, obviously," said Heyward, who went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts to make him 2-for-28 with 13 strikeouts in May.
"But tonight, after my last AB I went to right field and my right hand started going numb. And it didn’t go away for the next half-inning when we went up to bat, so [manager] Fredi [Gonzalez] said to come inside and get it looked at.
“Right now I’d say it’s starting to come up my forearm a little bit more, the numbness. The doctor is going to look at me before I go home, and I’m going to get an MRI on my shoulder Thursday.”
It's the first that either Heyward or the Braves have mentioned any problem with his shoulder. Gonzalez was asked how long the injury had bothered the young star.
“It's been bothering him seven, 10 days?" Gonzalez said. "It just got too bad there that last inning.... We’ll see tomorrow. I hope it’s not a big deal. We’re facing [lefty John] Lannan tomorrow, maybe we’ll give him a breather.”
The Braves were charged with two errors — it could have been four — and Hudson gave up a pair of three-run, two-out homers against a team he has dominated for most of his career — but a team that otherwise has been inexplicably successful against Atlanta.
Dan Uggla’s three-run homer capped a five-run eighth that brought the Braves back to within a run at 7-6, after Eric Hinske’s pinch-hit RBI double and Chipper Jones’ run-scoring single. Martin Prado’s single started the rally.
Prado also homered in the fourth inning off Jason Marquis (4-1), the former Braves right-hander who pitched 7-1/3 strong innings for his 100th career win.
Uggla grounded out with two on and one out in the fourth to drop him to 5-for-30 with runners in scoring position, before his no-doubt-about-it blast to the left-center seats off right-hander Tyler Clippard.
Brooks Conrad, the hero of so many late-innings rallies in 2010, flied out to the center-field wall for the second out in the ninth inning.
Hinske entered in the top of the eighth in place of Heyward.
The Braves mounted a rally, but fell short in another loss to their improbable nemesis. Since the beginning of the 2008 season, the Nationals are 32-26 against the Braves and 171-289 against everyone else.
Hudson (4-3) lasted five innings and was charged with five hits and seven runs, only three earned. Laynce Nix hit a three-run homer in the fourth inning, and Jayson Werth added a three-run homer in the fifth as the Nationals built a 7-1 lead.
“Obviously this is an aberration of how we’ve played," Hudson said. "We’ve been playing really good baseball. This is just something really flukey. I feel like I should have made some better pitches to bail the guys out, but that wasn’t the case.
“It makes me pretty sick to my stomach when we score six runs when I’m on the mound, and we don’t win. I really feel like we should have won the game, even with the errors. I feel like I should have done a better job out there.”
Nix’s homer came moments after center fielder Nate McLouth had a two-out flyball bounce out of his glove. McLouth momentarily took his eye off the ball to check on the location of Heyward racing over from right field. The two had a memorable collision on a similar play last summer, which left McLouth with a concussion.
“Huddy pitched well and he didn’t deserve that," McLouth said. "The ball I dropped in center field – there’s no excuse for it. I had a good break on it, saw it fine, and kind of took my eye off it at the last second to check where Heyward was, and just took for granted that I was going to catch it. There’s no excuse for it, and it ended up costing us the game....
“It’s a really tough loss, in a game that we feel like we should have won."
Werth’s homer pushed the lead to 7-1 and drove in the only earned runs against Hudson.
“It put Huddy in a big hole," Gonzalez said. "Not even counting the runs or earned runs, it creates stressful innings, instead of getting out of innings with… I’ll look at the tape, but I bet it was 18-20 more pitches that he had to throw because of the errors."
Hudson needed 102 pitches to throw a one-hit, one-walk shutout against Milwaukee on Wednesday and was 2-0 with a 1.52 ERA in his past three starts.
Against the Nationals, Hudson went 10-1 in his first 17 starts and allowed two earned runs or fewer in all but one of them. But in his past three starts against Washington, he’s 1-2 with a 5.09 ERA.
The tone was set Tuesday. The Nationals scored a run in the first inning after an error by usually sure-handed rookie first baseman Freddie Freeman on the first play of the game. Backup shortstop Diory Hernandez bobbled a grounder by the next batter and could have been charged with an error, but that was ruled a single.
The run scored when Werth followed with a double-play grounder.
