This time not even Marlins ace Jose Fernandez could do anything about the Braves’ mastery of his team.
The Braves roughed up Fernandez for a 9-1 victory Saturday at Turner Field. The Braves (28-53) won for the eight time in 11 games this season against the Marlins (42-39).
The Braves evened the score against Fernandez. He made his first career pinch-hit appearance Friday and hit a go-ahead, two-run double in the 12th inning that sent the Marlins to a 7-5 victory over the Braves.
Fernandez also pitched seven shutout innings against the Braves on June 21 in Miami before they broke through against the bullpen for a 3-2 victory. Fernandez wasn’t sharp early in that game, but the Braves couldn’t take advantage.
In the rematch, the Braves’ two hottest hitters, Freddie Freeman and Jace Peterson, each homered as the Braves touched Fernandez for nine runs (six earned) over 5 2/3 innings. The Braves scored seven runs in the sixth.
“That doesn’t happen very often against him,” Freeman said. “We were able to get some pitches up in the zone, put some swings on them and actually get them up for hits. That was a big inning for us, and things kind of snowballed from there.”
Fernandez (10-4) allowed the most runs of his career and the most earned runs since the Braves had six against him on Sept. 25 at Turner Field. After uneven results to begin this season, Fernandez had allowed more than one run in just one of his past nine starts.
The Braves put an emphatic end to that trend.
Freeman put the Braves ahead in the first inning with a two-run homer. Freeman went 3-for-4 and had at least one extra-base hit for the fifth time in his past seven games. In June, Freeman hit .346 with a .426 on-base percentage and .654 slugging percentage.
“It’s always huge when we get him going,” Braves interim manager Brian Snitker said. “The last month he’s been the Freddie we know is there. He’s the guy that kind of makes us go.”
The Marlins cut the lead to 2-1 on Ichiro Suzuki’s RBI triple in the third against Lucas Harrell (1-0) before the Braves knocked out Fernandez in the sixth.
Freeman got the big inning started with a one-out single. Nick Markakis followed with another single, and Adonis Garcia’s RBI double extended the lead to 3-1. Marlins manager Don Mattingly intentionally walked the next batter, Erick Aybar, to load the bases for A.J. Pierzynski.
Pierzynski smacked a hard single that scored two runs, and then Aybar scored when first baseman Chris Johnson committed an error on Emilio Bonifacio’s ground ball. Peterson delivered the final blow when he pulled Fernandez’s 1-0 pitch into the seats in right field for a 9-1 Braves lead.
Peterson already had extended his career-long hitting streak to 13 games with a double to lead off the bottom of the first inning. In 20 games since returning from Triple-A Gwinnett Peterson is 26-for-75 (.347) with nine extra-base hits.
“Ever since he’s come back he’s kind of been our catalyst and getting things going,” Snitker said. “I think it’s just (getting) another chance. Guys go down and they see how precious this is here, maybe. It’s not always a bad thing.”
The Braves generated more than enough runs for Harrell, who last pitched in the majors for the Astros in 2014. He limited the Marlins to three hits and a run over six innings.
