WASHINGTON – After it was over, after Jason Heyward homered for the second consecutive opening day and Derek Lowe and the bullpen pitched a shutout, there was a bottle of champagne and a message for new Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez.
“Congrats on the first of many Braves wins,” said the hand-written note attached to a bottle of Dom Perignon, 2002. It came from a Braves staffer who worked with Gonzalez when he managed the Triple-A Richmond Braves in 2002.
“You know he’s excited to kind of fill in for a legend and to give him his first win is nice,” Lowe said after the Braves’ 2-0 season-opening win against the Washington Nationals in the first game of the post-Bobby Cox era.
Lowe pitched 5-2/3 innings of three-hit ball to win his third consecutive opening-day start for the Braves, piling up 105 pitches and making good ones when he needed them.
Chipper Jones had two hits, including a key double in his first game since August knee surgery, and Heyward duplicated his first at-bat homer feat from last opening day as the Braves won on a frigid day at Nationals Park.
“I tell you what, from D-Lowe all the way to Craig [Kimbrel] at the end, we had a lot of good things happen,” said Gonzalez, who claimed his first win as Braves manager in the same city where he won his first game as a major league manager with Florida.
Jonny Venters and Kimbrel retired the Nationals in order in the eighth and ninth innings, with Kimbrel striking out the last two batters to notch the save in the rookie’s first appearance as closer.
Brian McCann also had two of the Braves’ five hits, including an RBI single in the first inning that scored Jones after he’d legged out a two-out double.
Gonzalez’s Florida team beat the Nationals on opening day 2007 at old RFK Stadium, opening the first of four seasons for Gonzalez with the Marlins before he was fired last June.
Hired in October to replace Cox after his mentor retired, Gonzalez never had a Marlins lineup quite as deep as the one he used Thursday. His No. 6 hitter, Heyward, crushed a leadoff homer off Livan Hernandez in the second inning for a 2-0 lead.
“We just wanted to help Fredi win his first game. It didn't matter how we did it,” said Heyward, the second player in major league history to homer on opening day in each of his first two seasons.
“Whether we won it in the last inning or jumped out early, it’s just great to help him win his first game. I congratulated him and I’m sure a lot of other players did, too.”
Heyward had homered in his first at-bat as a rookie in 2010, a mammoth first-inning shot off the Cubs’ Carlos Zambrano that sent sold-out Turner Field into a frenzy as the homegrown uber-prospect began his career in spectacular fashion.
This time he quieted most of a crowd of 39,055, although an excited fan in a Braves cap caught it in the second row of bleachers in right-center field. Heyward joined the Mets' Kaz Matsui (2004-2005) as the only players to homer on opening day in their first two seasons. Both also did it in their first at-bats each time.
“Maybe we need to trick him on Saturday, tell him it’s opening day again,” joked Gonzalez, whose Braves have Friday off before resuming the three-game series against the Nationals on Saturday. “He hit that ball a ton.”
Heyward tomahawked a 2-1 cut fastball from Hernandez, the veteran right-hander who proceeded to retire the next 15 batters in a row.
“I was commenting to Uggs [second baseman Dan Uggla] in batting practice, it’s these kind of conditions where whoever gets out in the lead after five or six innings usually has the upper hand,” Jones said. “Because it gets harder and harder to hit as you get colder and colder. You stand out there long enough and it’s hard to come up and try to time 90, 95 miles an hour.
“Our guys were awesome coming out of the bullpen. Everybody was outstanding.”
Lowe allowed consecutive groundball singles with one out in the first inning, then recorded 16 outs in the last 18 batters he faced. He got nifty defensive work behind him, particularly from shortstop Alex Gonzalez and rookie first baseman Freddie Freeman.
All that Lowe gave up the rest of the way was another ground ball single (second inning) and two walks. And one of those runners was erased when McCann threw out former Braves outfielder Rick Ankiel trying to steal after a two-out walk in the fourth.
After Lowe walked Ryan Zimmerman with two out in the sixth, reliever Eric O’Flaherty gave up an Adam LaRoche single before an inning-ending groundout.
The Nationals threatened again after Danny Espinosa’s two-out double off O’Flaherty in the eighth, but Peter Moylan struck out Laynce Nix to strand Espinosa at third.
