The Giants used two strikeouts and a single to load the bases against Braves pitcher Mike Foltynewicz in the seventh inning, and that’s something you may never see again.
Unfortunately for the Braves, other elements in Friday night’s game that were all too common of late. They mustered just six hits, including Freddie Freeman’s ninth-inning solo homer, and wasted a strong performance by their starter in a 4-2 loss to Tim Hudson and the Giants at AT&T Park.
The Braves fell to 1-4 on their 10-game trip and 1-7 against the Giants since the beginning of the 2014 season.
Foltynewicz (3-2) left with the Giants ahead 2-1, and watched reliever Jim Johnson give up two more runs in the eighth inning to give the Giants some cushion. Freeman’s homer to straightaway center was his sixth of the season and first since May 5, snapping a 20-game drought.
The Braves are 2-14 in West Coast games over the past two seasons, and need to win both Saturday and Sunday to salvage a split of this four-game series. They face Tim Lincecum Saturday and Madison Bumgarner in the series finale.
About that seventh-inning oddity: Third-strike pitches to Brandon Belt and Gregor Blanco were scored wild pitches that got past catcher A.J. Pierzynski, with Blanco reaching to load the bases with two outs to give Foltynewicz a career-high eight strikeouts and also end his impressive performance.
Luis Avilan entered and got out of the jam with an inning-ending grounder by the first batter he faced, Naori Aoki, but that only prevented the Giants from extending their lead. It didn’t do anything to help revive Braves bats, which remained in a near-frozen state on a chilly night at the beautiful ballpark by the bay.
Foltynewicz allowed five hits, two runs and one walk in 6 2/3 innings, both runs scoring on Buster Posey’s two-out homer in the first inning.
Hudson (3-4), the longtime former Brave who’ll be 40 in July, allowed just one run and five hits in seven innings, after coming in with a 5.04 ERA. He was 1-2 with a 6.95 ERA and .348 opponents’ average in his past four starts before Friday.
After consecutive singles by Brandon Crawford and Angel Pagan to start the second inning, Foltynewicz induced a double-play grounder and struck out Hudson to end the inning. Those were the first two in his stretch of 11 consecutive batters retired by the hard-throwing right-hander before Aoki’s leadoff walk in the sixth.
Foltynewicz didn’t let the walk hurt, setting down the next three batters on a pop foul, a fly to the right-field warning track and an inning-ending grounder, which gave him 15 outs collected in a span of 15 batters beginning with the second-inning double play.
Giants pitchers have cranked out a remarkable eight shutouts at AT&T Park in May, the first National League team in 99 seasons to have at least eight home shutouts in any calendar month. That included four consecutive home shutouts before Friday’s game.
They had a 37-inning scoreless streak at home before Friday, matching their longest such streak in the franchise’s San Francisco era. When Hudson faced the minimum six batters through the first two innings, including Freddie Freeman’s inning-ending double play in the first, the Giants matched the overall franchise record of 39 consecutive scoreless innings at home, set by the 1948 New York Giants at the Polo Grounds.
The Braves stopped the streak there. They used three singles to piece together a run in the third inning, including two-out hits by Jace Peterson and Cameron Maybin. The latter was an infield hit (deflected by Hudson) that scored Andrelton Simmons and cut the lead in half, 2-1.
Hudson allowed a career-high 15 hits and six runs in 6 2/3 innings against the Marlins on May 7, and gave up eight runs in 3 2/3 innings at Colorado on Sunday. But he also pitched 6 1/3 scoreless innings against the Dodgers on May 19, so it’s not as if the aging sinkerballer had completely lost it.
In his first start against the Braves since leaving Atlanta as a free agent after the 2013 season, Hudson reached down and recaptured some of his old form. It must be noted, he did it against a Braves team that had hit just .220 with two homers and 46 runs in its previous 15 games and been shut out twice on this trip.
