PITTSBURGH – The injury-riddled Braves came to Pittsburgh just looking for something to feel good about, not to mention trying to get through a day without adding anyone to the disabled list.
Check, and check, after Jair Jurrjens cured their ills with his best Greg Maddux imitation. He pounded the strike zone for 7 2/3 shutout innings in a 2-0 win over the Pirates.
The Braves won for only the second time in six games of this three-city road swing that ends Wednesday in the series finale with the Pirates.
They did it with some masterful control by Jurrjens, who missed the strike zone three times in the first three innings and didn’t hit double digits in balls until the sixth.
“He gives us quality start after quality start,” Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said, after watching Jurrjens give up two or fewer earned runs for the eighth consecutive start. “It’s nice to see the consistency.”
Jurrjens outdueled former Brave Charlie Morton, who’s on the first real roll of his career, and proved to be the better of the two pitchers who had 5-1 records entering Tuesday’s game. Jurrjens scattered six singles, walked one and struck out four, while throwing 71 of his 97 pitches for strikes.
“Charlie’s been having a really good season,” said Jurrjens, now 6-1 with a 1.56 ERA. “When you’re going against one of the best pitchers right now in the league, you’re just trying to keep that concentration up. I tried to make the fewest mistakes I could and be aggressive in the strike zone and let them hit the pitch I want them to hit.”
The Braves made one great defensive play after another behind Jurrjens, including a diving stab by Freddie Freeman to save two runs in the second inning.
The Braves, with struggling second baseman Dan Uggla on the bench as evidence of their issues on offense, didn’t exactly break out Tuesday night. They lost out on a run on a controversial play off the bat of Chipper Jones in the fifth. But the 2-0 lead they manufactured with runs in the second and third innings was their largest of the road trip and enough for Jurrjens to nail down his sixth win in eight starts this season.
“We haven’t been scoring a lot of runs lately,” said Freeman, who did his part with a hit-and-run single to set up the Braves’ first run on a sacrifice fly in the second. “But when you’ve got somebody pitching like that and our bullpen came in and shut it down. Two runs was enough tonight.”
Jurrjens was downright pinpoint. He missed the strike zone only three times in his first 29 pitches, through the first three innings. He had only nine balls through the first five innings. So it looked strange when he walked Garrett Jones on four consecutive pitches in the sixth to put runners first and second with nobody out.
But Jurrjens settled back in, retired Neil Walker on a pop-up and got out of the inning by coaxing a double-play ball back to the mound from Lyle Overbay. He left a base runner for Jonny Venters in the eighth, but he struck out former Brave Matt Diaz, and Craig Kimbrel pitched a perfect ninth for his 13th save.
The Braves took advantage of the jolt of speed they added to their lineup Tuesday. Jordan Schafer, called up to replace injured Nate McLouth (oblique) scored from first on a double down the third-base line by Martin Prado for a 2-0 lead.
The Braves were poised to take a 3-0 lead in the fifth inning on a double to the right-center field wall by Chipper Jones to score Prado, but a fan interfered trying to catch it with his hat. The umpires ruled it a double on fan interference, and sent Prado – who had been running with two outs in the inning – to third base, by rule, at their discretion.
The umpires reviewed the play on video to make sure the ball hadn’t cleared the fence when the fan caught it, but never changed their mind about Prado. He was stranded at third when Brian McCann grounded out. The fan was escorted from his seat by Pirates security, not that it was any consolation to the Braves.
“They felt when the guy caught the ball or interfered with the play, Prado was not far enough to third to score the run there,” Gonzalez said. “My argument was with two outs, he’s going on the ball hit.”
