Braves skid continues, Miller’s winless streak reaches 13 starts

Aaron Harang came into Thursday night’s game lugging a career-worst eight-start losing streak, and the lumbering Phillies veteran had been every bit as bad as his record in that stretch indicated.

Shelby Miller came in with a career-worst 12-start winless streak, and the Braves All-Star had pitched far better than his record in that span would indicate.

One of those streaks continued, and those who’ve followed the Braves and Miller lately can probably guess which, even if you didn’t watch.

Eleven of 28 batters that Miller faced got hits, and the Phillies scored four runs in the fourth through sixth innings of a 4-1 win against the Braves to open a four-game series at Citizens Bank Park. It was the 14th loss in 18 games for the Braves, who’ve scored a total of 11 runs during their current 1-7 slide.

“They really didn’t give away any at-bats, so it was a tough battle the whole time,” Miller (5-8) said of the last-place Phillies, who’ve won 10 of 12 games since the All-Star break and are now seven games behind the Braves in the win column.

Harang (5-11) allowed nine hits but only one run in five innings, after going 0-8 with a 6.94 ERA and .309 opponents’ average in his past eight starts. He came off the disabled list Friday after missing four weeks with plantar fasciitis

“You’ve got to give him credit, he never gives in,” Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said of Harang, who had a career resurgence with the Braves in 2014. “He’s a guy that knows how to pitch, knows how to hit those corners and take advantage of the hitter’s aggressiveness. We saw him do it for about 30 starts last year and about three (vs. the Braves) this year. We scattered, what, seven or eight hits? Got no runs. Well, one run. Got bases loaded, and he just got out of it.”

The big right-hander is 2-0 with a 0.95 ERA in three starts against the Braves this season, and the Phillies won all three.

“That’s vintage Harang,” Braves third baseman Chris Johnson said of Thursday’s performance. “He goes after guys when nobody’s on, and pitches aggressive in the zone. So you can get some hits off him. Then when he gets guys on, in scoring position — we saw it last year, he buckles down and doesn’t give in.”

For Miller (5-8), an almost inexplicable streak continues unabated. He is 0-7 despite a solid 3.19 ERA in his past 13 starts, the longest drought of his career and the longest by any Braves pitcher since Kenshin Kawakami went 14 starts without a win early in the 2010 season.

The Braves scored one or no runs while he was in 10 of his past 13 starts, and Thursday marked the first time since June 13 that Miller had thrown a pitch while anything other than a zero was under the runs column besides the Braves’ name on the scoreboard.

The Braves got a dozen hits Thursday, the most they’d had in 19 games since totaling 15 hits in a 5-3 win at Milwaukee on July 6. They’ve won just five games since then, and the Braves had batted .216 and totaled 42 runs in their past 17 games before Thursday, averaging fewer than 2.5 runs in that stretch.

They’ve scored three runs or fewer in 14 of their past 17 games.

They staked Miller to a 1-0 lead in the third inning after loading the bases on three consecutive singles to start the inning. The Braves had a chance to blow the game open there, but Harang struck out Freddie Freeman and got Adonis Garcia on a weak comebacker to the mound that yielded a force at the plate for the second out.

Their only run scored when A.J. Pierzynski reached out to poke a two-out infield single fielded by the shortstop at the outfield grass. A 1-0 lead for Miller, who acted as if he didn’t know what to do with it, perhaps because he’d forgotten what it felt like.

The Phillies got two runs in the fourth inning on four consecutive one-out singles, the last one a two-out hit by Carlos Ruiz for a 2-1 lead.

“Granted the guys got on base and stuff, I obviously gave up a lot of hits,” said Miller, who has allowed a career-high 11 hits twice in his past four starts. “But with the runners in scoring position I made two good pitches that were broken-bat singles, three runs scored. You can’t really do nothing but get the ball back and keep going.