If something could go wrong for Kris Medlen this season, it has. But his streak of hard luck culminated Wednesday night when he lasted only two innings after getting hit in the left calf by a low line drive from Toronto’s Emilio Bonifacio.
Medlen was diagnosed was a contusion and he is expected to be OK for his next start. But he left the Braves in a precarious spot, down 3-0 in the game, which despite seven scoreless innings from the Braves bullpen, turned into a 3-0 loss.
The Braves were shutout for the seventh time this season, and Medlen took the loss in the shortest start of his major league career. He dropped to 1-6 in 11 starts this season, despite a 3.48 ERA.
“I’ve been hit by a lot of balls in my life playing short and whatever else,” said Medlen, barely audible because he’s also battling laryngitis. “That’s probably one of the harder ones that I’ve felt. I knew right away, but I just wanted to at least get through the inning. I know how tough it is for our bullpen to have to do something like they did today. They picked me up big-time. I mean I was the worst pitcher out there.”
An ailing Blue Jays rotation did some patchwork of its own with converted reliever Esmil Rogers making his first start since 2011. He outlasted Medlen with 3 1/3 scoreless innings.
Rogers was followed by Juan Perez and Neil Wagner – both recent call-ups from Triple-A, both throwing in the upper 90s, and both of whom combined with closer Casey Janssen to face the minimum over the final 5 2/3 innings.
“I tip my hat to that starter tonight,” Brian McCann said. “He was throwing whatever pitch he wanted, wherever he wanted. And they matched up the rest of the game. They threw some really good arms at us tonight.”
The Braves lost for the third time in the past four games and snapped a seven-game winning streak at Turner Field.
Now the Braves have to evaluate whether they can stick with the six-man bullpen they’ve been using for the past two weeks. They got good work from their relievers Wednesday but a lot of it, with seven scoreless innings from David Carpenter, Anthony Varvaro, Jordan Walden and Cory Gearrin.
“We’re going to sit here and talk about it a little bit and see what we can do,” Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said.
A struggling B.J. Upton returned to the bottom-third of the Braves lineup, and that’s where their best scoring opportunity went to die. Freddie Freeman tripled to lead off the second inning and failed to score.
McCann had walked, leaving matters up to Dan Uggla, Juan Francisco and Upton, who were hitting a combined .182 (34-for-187) with 75 strikeouts in May. Uggla and Upton both struck out. A strikeout by Francisco would have been better than the result he got - a groundout to the pitcher - when Freeman took off from third base on contact and was tagged out.
After striking out to strand two more runners in the fourth, Upton flung his bat and bounced his helmet high in the air in frustration.
“I can’t work any harder than I’ve been working,” Upton said. “That’s the frustrating part. If I didn’t care and I wasn’t working that would be one thing, but I continue to work at it, and it’s not getting any better. I keep getting the same results, so I’m at a loss for words.”
Melky Cabrera went 3-for-3 for the Blue Jays, including the decisive two-run single off Medlen, amid boos from Braves fans. His previous trip to Turner Field with the Giants last July, Cabrera drew the ire of both his former teammates and Braves fans by making crude celebratory gestures. Wednesday night he did the most harm with his bat.
Cabrera singled and scored in the first inning. Three batters after Encarnacion singled off Medlen’s calf in the second inning, he singled to left to make it 3-0.
After Bonifacio’s comebacker, Medlen had limped around behind the mound but stayed in after testing his calf out with a warm-up pitch in front of Gonzalez and assistant trainer Jim Lovell. Medlen issued a four-pitch walk to the next batter, Munenori Kawasaki, but mustered strikes on six of his final nine pitches.
He said afterward his calf was already tightening up as he walked off the field. Gonzalez sent Carpenter out to pitch the third inning. Medlen’s two-inning outing was shorter even than his three-inning major league debut when he gave up five runs to the Rockies.
“Lovey checked him downstairs and he said it’s just going to keep getting worse and worse,” Gonzalez said. “Hopefully five days from now he should be able to make a start and we’ll go from there.”
