Diamondbacks pitcher Zack Greinke is on his best roll of the season, while Sean Newcomb and the slumping Braves are stumbling into the All-Star break. Another sellout crowd Saturday at SunTrust Park, another loss for the home nine.
The Braves presented no problems whatsoever for Greinke on a steamy afternoon, the right-hander allowing just four hits over 7 2/3 innings of a 3-0 Arizona win that assured the Braves of a series loss heading into the All-Star break.
They’ll try to avoid a sweep in Sunday’s finale, but the Braves have lost eight of 10. The slide began after the high point of their season, a sweep of the Cardinals at St. Louis followed by a series-opening win at Yankee Stadium that moved them to a season-high 15 games over .500 (49-34).
“You’re going to go through this,” said manager Brian Snitker, whose second-place Braves remained 1 ½ games behind the Phillies and five ahead of the Nationals after all three of the National League East’s top teams lost. “We went a long time without experiencing it. We’re in a rut here, but you look up and we’re still right in the thick of this thing, man. We’re still close.
“I see real good baseball on the other side of this.”
The Braves are drawing big crowds these days and not sending them home happy. Saturday was their ninth sellout and second in a row, and the defeat assured their third series loss in the past four at home. They split the other.
Newcomb was pulled after giving up a two-out solo homer to Ketel Marte in the sixth inning that extended the Diamondbacks’ lead to 3-0. The big left-hander gave up four hits, three runs and three walks in 5 2/3 innings and matched his season low with two strikeouts.
That represented major improvement over his past two starts for Newcomb, who lasted a total of 6 1/3 innings in those games and gave up 10 hits, 10 runs and nine walks.
“I’ve just got to not think about that first inning,” he said of his rebound Saturday from an opening inning that saw him walk three of the first four and appear destined for another early exit. “I just got caught out there feeling (for the right grip) too much, trying to be too fine. From the second on I was able to attack, they didn’t get too many hits or anything, I kept them off the bases. So I’ve just got to build off that.”
After walking three of the first four batters, he walked none the rest of his outing.
“For me it’s just like trying to be aggressive,” Newcomb said. “Trying not to think about being sweaty and worrying about the grip or anything. I was maybe feeling too much, trying to be fine on the edges, that kind of thing. The second (inning) on I just kind of gripped it and ripped it.”
He got out of the bases-loaded, one-out jam in the first inning allowing just one run and pitched well the rest of the way. He threw 102 pitches, 37 coming in the first inning.
The Diamondbacks had a plan against Newcomb, whose command has waned in recent starts. They swung and missed only two of his 102 pitches. Yes, just two swinging strikes in his 64 total strikes.
The slumping Braves couldn’t have picked a worst time to face Greinke, who had the Braves under his thumb from the outset. Greinke (10-5) limited the Braves to four hits with no walks and seven strikeouts in 7 2/3 innings, improving to 4-0 with a 1.14 ERA in his past five starts. He has 29 strikeouts and only four walks in that torrid stretch.
“The change-up is just something else,” Snitker said. “The slider. I mean, he can spot up everything. He’s really, really tough right now.”
Newcomb is 1-4 with a 5.45 ERA and eight homers allowed in his past seven starts, after going 7-1 with a 2.49 ERA and three homers allowed in his first 12 starts.
He had no margin for error Saturday as Braves bats remained in a deep freeze. After hitting .275 with a .778 OPS and five multi-homer games in a 13-game stretch through July 3, the Braves have hit .236 with a .653 OPS and 28 runs in their past nine games, and gone without a homer in seven of the past eight.
After going 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position in Friday’s series opener, the Braves only had four at-bats with a runner in scoring position Saturday and went hitless in those. They have a puny .185 average (15-for-81) with runners in scoring position during their 10-game slide.
“In order for this thing to get better we’ve just got to handle it,” Snitker said. “Keep working, keep grinding, because eventually it’ll turn. We’re too good a team for it not to. It’s hard to get through, hard to grind through, but I’ll keep saying, It’s one of those things in the game that you have to handle. Because if you don’t, nothing good will come from it. But if you do, there’s always good in these things on the other end of them.”
Considering the fact that Newcomb walked three of the first four batters he faced and threw 36 pitches with only 17 strikes in the first inning, things could have been a lot worse and spiraled early for the young lefty. But after giving up a Steven Sousa bases-loaded single to drive in one run, he induced a pop-up from Marte and struck out Chris Owings to get out of the first inning without further damage.
Newcomb retired 10 consecutive batters between Sousa’s first-inning single and Owings’ two-out single in the fourth, but Jeff Mathis followed Owings with an RBI double off the left-field wall. Newcomb retired the next six including four ground-outs before Marte hit one in the air to the monkey grass above the left-field fence for a 3-0 lead.
