The Braves have come to expect a few things to go wrong when they play the Nationals.
On Sunday for everything that went wrong, the Braves made something good out of it -- right down to the bottom of the ninth inning when Brooks Conrad came up with a face full of dirt, a cut on his temple and the second out at third base on a baserunning gaffe.
No matter, Martin Prado, stole second to get the winning run back into scoring position. And even though the Nationals walked Brian McCann with first base open, they had to face not-such-a-rookie-anymore Freddie Freeman. He singled to right for the first walk-off hit of his career and a wild 9-8 win.
“I haven’t been in those situations very often so when they walked [McCann] I did get a little excited,” Freeman said. “I focused a little more.”
Freeman has hit .307 (61-for-199) in his past 51 games going back to mid-May.
“He knows he can hit,” Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said. “He has a great approach at the plate. He doesn’t let the moment get too big for him.”
With the Braves’ 24th come-from-behind win and sixth walk-off win of the season, they've won two of three games this weekend to move to 5-4 against the Nationals this season and 23-22 since the start of 2009. They head to Colorado 3 1/2 games back in the NL East.
Losing a game in the standings in a series loss to the first-place Phillies before the All-Star break is one thing. But dropping another one to the fourth-place Nationals after the break would have been harder to accept.
So the Braves kept coming back. When the Nationals racked up a season-high six runs on their ace Jair Jurrjens, the Braves rallied with a five-run fifth. When reliever George Sherrill gave up a two-run homer to Danny Espinosa in the sixth, Nate McLouth followed by tying the game again with a home run off All-Star reliever Tyler Clippardin the eighth, McLouth’s first since May 14.
The back end of the Braves bullpen took care of the rest, with scoreless work from Eric O’Flaherty, Jonny Venters and Craig Kimbrel.
“Especially in the second half we need to try to win every series we can,” Jurrjens said. “And teams we need to beat, we need to try to beat them. That’s how Philly stays in first place; they beat the team they need to beat. Washington always plays us really hard. That’s one of the teams that really gives us problems, but it’s a big win.”
Fresh off his first ever All-Star game, Jurrjens looked like a pitcher off his routine. He’d thrown only 1 2/3 innings in the All-Star game since his previous start against the Rockies 11 days earlier.
Jurrjens gave up a season-high eight hits and watched his ERA climb from an NL-leading 1.87 to 2.26.
“My mechanics were off,” Jurrjens said. “I was flying open and just leaving pitches up. I felt it since the bullpen, seeing the ball was cutting. It’s just something I need to work on in the next bullpen and try to get ready for my next start.”
His battery mate McCann hit a three-run home run off lefty reliever Sean Burnett to wipe the slate clean in the fifth and even it 6-6. That lasted until Sherrill gave up his first runs in eight appearances on Espinosa’s two-run homer.
The Braves had taken a 2-0 lead in the first inning after Nationals starter Tom Gorzelanny was penalized a ball for going to his mouth and walked Dan Uggla to load the bases. He followed it up with a wild pitch to score the second run.
Gorzelanny had to leave the game after two innings after twisting his ankle in a collision with McCann at the plate. It was one of many adventures on the basepaths Sunday for both teams.
Conrad, who represented the winning run in the ninth inning, was the second Brave to be thrown out at third trying to advance on a groundball in front of him in the past two games.
“I ended up getting crushed at third when I shouldn’t have been running over there anyway,” Conrad said. “But it worked out in the end.”
