For all those wondering how the Braves could possibly fare in the postseason with their veteran starters struggling as they have, or if the Braves would even make the playoffs at all, Tim Hudson had an answer Saturday afternoon.
He pitched eight shutout innings in a 1-0 win over the Mets, striking out a season-high 10 batters. He combined with closer Craig Kimbrel to pitch the Braves’ fourth 1-0 shutout of the season, and it came on the day after Derek Lowe rattled nerves with yet another rocky outing.
“As a staff, the team has relied on us all year, and we’ve let some people down over the last couple weeks,” said Hudson, who reached 15 wins for the third time in seven years with the Braves. “It’s nice to go out there and remind them how good we can be. It was a big win of the year for us, probably the biggest win so far.”
The Braves have won three of their past four since losing four in a row to turn this into a wild-card race with two weeks left in the season. But on Saturday, the Cardinals had to watch the Braves go up 1-0 on Chipper Jones’ RBI single in the eighth before they went out to play the Phillies on Saturday night.
At worst, with a Cardinals victory the Braves would keep their wild-card lead at 3 1/2 games with 10 games left on their schedule. The Braves’ magic number to clinch is now eight, pending the outcome of the late Cardinals game.
“To put a win up on the scoreboard and let a certain team in Philadelphia marinate on it, put the pressure on them to keep pace — that’s what we want to do,” Jones said. “It’s been a tough go of it lately, but hopefully today will jump-start us.”
Some teams answer adversity with an offensive outburst. For the Braves, a 1-0 win did just fine, especially for Hudson, their likely Game 1 pitcher in the postseason, who had been struggling since he threw seven shutout innings against Arizona in the Braves’ last 1-0 win on Aug. 21.
Hudson gave up four or more earned runs over three of his next four outings, including six in six innings of his previous start in St. Louis. He said he made an adjustment in the last inning of that game and worked on carrying it over into Saturday, with both the placement of his heel on the rubber, and the angle of his wrist behind the ball.
The results were noticeable from the start — he was perfect the first two innings — when he got the ground ball working and showed the kind of command he could use to toy with hitters.
“It was like night and day,” Hudson said.
Hudson gave up only four singles, walked two, and reached double digits in strikeouts for the 12th time in his career and the first time since he struck out 13 Marlins on Aug. 28 of last year.
What impressed Jones was that Hudson would throw his breaking ball behind in the count 2-0, and throw it for strikes, to hitters such as David Wright and Jason Bay.
Hudson said he knew he couldn’t play it safe with Mets knuckleballer R.A. Dickey throwing a two-hit shutout of his own through the first seven innings.
“You can’t throw a 2-0 heater down the middle and hope they hit it to somebody,” Hudson said. “You have to make pitches and if you walk them so what, you get the next guy.”
And more simply put: “Losing wasn’t an option today.”
Hudson used a double play to get out of a third-inning jam and thought he had another one to get out of the seventh. But umpire Marvin Hudson said shortstop Alex Gonzalez missed the bag at second, which replays confirmed he did by the narrowest of margins. After a walk to Josh Thole, Hudson got Ruben Tejada to strike out after an eight-pitch showdown.
The Braves took back the momentum on that strikeout, and Jason Heyward drew a leadoff walk to start the eighth. Two outs and a walk later, Jones had runners at the corners and a chance to do damage to his favorite nemesis.
Facing a 2-2 count, Jones sent the fifth consecutive knuckleball of his at-bat against Dickey back up the middle for his 11th game-winning RBI of the season and his 15th RBI in 17 games against the Mets this season, the most of any opponent.
“I spent my go-deep swing on the second strike,” said Jones, who is now 3-for-7 with six RBIs for his career against Dickey. “I screwed myself into the ground. At that point, you’ve got to put the ball in play, find a hole. They could kick it, lot of good things could happen.”
