ST. LOUIS — With the division-leading Braves ranked 29th in the majors in scoring, never has it been more obvious how important pitching and defense remain to an organization that's long stressed those components.
Their pitchers lead the majors in overall ERA and starters ERA, so it’s easy to overlook the defense at times. But manager Fredi Gonzalez and his coaches stress the importance of it.
“It’s of ultimate importance,” Gonzalez said. “It’s important to me, it’s important to winning baseball games. What we’re going through right now – there’s three or four aspects of a team. Pitching, hitting, baserunning and defense. You can live without the hitting. Even with the team kind of struggling. But you can’t live without good pitching, and you can’t live with shoddy defense. We can’t. It’s impossible. That combination doesn’t work.”
The Braves have a Gold Glove winner in shortstop Andrelton Simmons and a former Gold Glove winner in right field, Jason Heyward, who appears to be well on his way to winning another this season. When Heyward got a rest Wednesday at San Francisco, a ball landed in front of fill-in right fielder Ryan Doumit for a hit. A ball that Heyward catches routinely.
It’s why Gonzalez hates is reluctant to rest Heyward even when the big outfielder is struggling at the plate.
“When you make all the plays – I’m not talking about highlight plays – pitchers don’t have big innings (go against them),” Gonzalez said. “You boot the ball, then all of a sudden they have to use 8, 10, 12 more pitches to get out of that inning. Now instead of them going into the sixth, they’re out in the fifth. Or they can’t get into the seventh, because it takes them an extra 10 pitches to get out of an inning. And not necessarily having errors – it’s ball that drop in, and you go, man, a good right fielder… We’ve got the best right fielder in the game, I’m just thinking a good right fielder would have caught that ball.
“Next thing you know it’s another three hitters he’s got to face to get out of that inning. It shortens that starter’s day.”
The Braves ranked fifth in the National League in fielding percentage (.983) before Friday and had 24 errors through 39 games, or nearly one-fourth of the season. They also were fifth in fielding percentage in 2013 after leading the league in 2012, Simmons’ rookie season and year that Heyward won a Gold Glove.
“It’s good, but it can be better,” Gonzalez said of the current defense.
