The thing that bothered Braves pitcher Matt Wisler about Friday’s 7-4 loss to the Cardinals was how he squandered a four-run early lead, giving back most of it right away.
“It’s kind of frustrating, that fourth inning I needed to go out and have a shutdown inning and I didn’t do that,” said Wisler, who was staked to a 4-0 lead in the third inning and gave up three runs in the fourth.
Three of the Cardinals’ four hits in the fourth inning included a couple of soft flies – one landed in front of left fielder Hector Olivera after he got a bad read — and an infield single that second baseman Gordon Beckham couldn’t field cleanly going to his right.
“It’s still frustrating,” Wisler said. “I thought my execution was pretty good. I didn’t get the results that we needed to win a ballgame. That’s probably the more frustrating part, is the fact that they did count for runs and eventually led to us losing the game.”
After going 2-0 with a 1.15 ERA in two starts against the Cardinals as a rookie, Wisler was charged with seven hits, four runs and one walk with six strikeouts in 6 2/3 innings Friday, including a game-tying pinch-hit homer by Jeremy Hazelbaker with one out the seventh inning.
“I only gave up a couple of hard-hit balls today and that was definitely the big mistake of the day,” Wisler said of the fastball to Hazelbaker that caught more of the plate than he intended. “I was trying to go in on him, and I just hung a fastball. If I execute the pitch I get an out. I didn’t execute it and he took care of it.”
Braves catcher Tyler Flowers, in his first start of the season, said it was him, not Wisler, to blame for the pitch to Hazelbaker. Flowers said Wisler didn’t pitch badly.
“In that big inning they had a number of bloops in there,” Flowers. “(He) made some good pitches on those guys, they just kind of reached out and found holes. After that they definitely drove some balls as well, but that one inning that it kind of got away, three or four bloopers fell in there.
“The one to Hazelbaker really wasn’t that bad of a pitch. That’s probably more on me as far as calling that pitch than the execution of it. It was actually pretty close to where I wanted it, so I’ll take the heat on that one. I’ll be better.”
Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez was asked about not bringing in left-hander Eric O’Flaherty to face left-handed-hitting Hazelbaker when he came in to pinch-hit in the seventh. (O’Flaherty was brought in an inning later to face Matt Adams, but the Cardinals pinch-hit for the cleanup hitter and got a pinch homer from righty Aledmys Diaz off O’Flaherty.)
The Cardinals set a major league record three pinch-hit homers in the game.
“I thought Wisler did fine,” Gonzalez said. “First time out there, you try to extend them. You try to pitch them because that’s how you develop young pitchers, you keep running them out there. And he left a ball out over the plate to Hazelbaker….
“I could have brought in anybody, but you’re talking about developing young starting pitching. At the time Wisler might have had about 87 pitches, and you’re trying to get these guys to the next level, and that’s the way you do it.”
