The Braves offense has improved this year, no doubt about that. But for much of the past few days, they’ve been shouting it from the mountaintops.
The Braves swept a weekend series from the defending World Series champion Cardinals by scoring 23 runs, then on Tuesday took aim at Johnny Cueto, the Reds right-hander with the best ERA in baseball.
The Braves dominated Cueto in a 6-2 win Tuesday night to split the two-game series with the Reds and re-claim first place in the National League East. The Braves are one-half game ahead of the Nationals, who lost Tuesday afternoon to San Diego.
When asked about chasing a pretty good pitcher Tuesday, Braves catcher Brian McCann said: “We’re a pretty good offense.”
Between McCann’s solo home run and a four-run third inning, Tim Hudson was given more than enough runs to work with – six more than he’d gotten his last time out to the mound in Chicago.
Hudson pitched seven strong innings, allowing two runs, to move to 145-5 in games when his team supplies four or more runs while he’s on the mound.
Hudson, now 2-1 with a 3.96 ERA in four starts back from the disabled list, could relax and pitch aggressively after the job the Braves did on Cueto. The Braves rolled up six runs (five earned) in four innings on Cueto, who had given up only five earned runs in 32 1/3 innings all year entering Tuesday’s game at Turner Field.
“He came across a lineup that’ll battle you, and he may not have had his best stuff tonight,” Hudson said. “But we were able to take advantage of that. In years past we may not have been able to take advantage of it.”
The Braves chased Cueto after a season-low four innings and raised his ERA from 1.12 to 1.89. As a bonus, they moved teammate Brandon Beachy into the major-league lead in ERA in Cueto’s place, now at 1.60. Beachy takes the mound Thursday in the second game of a two-game series with the Miami Marlins.
Not bad for a night’s offensive work by the Braves, especially considering they did some more of the same to Lance Lynn two days earlier in St. Louis. Lynn was third in the NL with a 1.40 ERA and had won six starts in a row, when the Braves got him for three runs in six innings in a 7-4 win.
“I think it doesn’t really matter who’s out there on the mound,” Hudson said. “Our guys are going up there and they’re feeling confident they’re going to put some good at-bats on some guys.”
The Braves got 12 hits Tuesday night to reach double-digits for the fourth time in five games. Michael Bourn went 3-for-5 for his third three-hit game in the past five days. Martin Prado was 3-for-4 and reached base three times behind Bourn.
Chipper Jones singled to drive in his 11th run in the past 11 games and move within 13 RBIs for the all-time lead among third basemen. And the Braves are now 17-5 with Jones in the starting lineup this season.
“It’s some good pitching we’re facing,” Bourn said. “But we just try to work and continue to grind them down.”
The Braves might have felt a few lingering pangs from last Wednesday in Chicago, when they got shut out 1-0 by Paul Maholm and the Cubs to waste a dominant seven-inning, one-run effort from Hudson. This time they came out on the attack.
McCann turned on a 2-1 change-up from Cueto for a 1-0 lead in the second inning and his sixth home run of the year. The Braves followed with five hits in a four-run third inning. They batted around after Jack Wilson led off with a single, to set off a string of four hits from five Braves batters.
Hudson pitched six shutout innings before the Reds finally got to him. After they managed only five hits in the first six innings, the Reds strung together four in the span of six hitters in the seventh. Ryan Hanigan and Drew Stubbs each had run-scoring hits before Hudson got Brandon Phillips to fly out to shallow center.
“I feel like I’m as good now as I have been in a really long time from a health standpoint,” Hudson said. “Obviously you can always improve from a pitching standpoint. It’s something I intend to do.”
