LOS ANGELES – Dodgers veteran Josh Beckett needed 81 pitches to get through the first three innings Tuesday night against the Braves, a hard slog of an outing that demanded some context.
In light of former Braves Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine being inducted in the Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday, consider: Maddux threw a 78-pitch, nine-inning complete game against the Cubs in 1997, and Tom Glavine fired a 79-pitch, nine-inning complete game against the Mets in 1993.
Here’s the problem: The Braves didn’t make Beckett pay much for missing so often in his 4 1/3 innings of work, and Braves starter Aaron Harang also wasn’t a model of efficiency. After Harang gave up four runs in six innings, the Dodgers teed off on reliever Anthony Varvaro for three runs in the seventh in an an 8-4 series-opening win at Dodger Stadium.
“I tell you what, that’s about as close to an American League lineup as we’ve faced in a long time, and they’re clicking pretty good right now,” said manager Fredi Gonzalez, whose Braves remained a half-game behind National League East leader Washington after the Nationals were shut out 3-0 by the Marlins.
“I think Harang did a nice job just giving up four runs in six innings. He navigated himself through some of the tough guys in that lineup, but (Yasiel) Puig’s swinging it right now, and some of the other guys too,” Gonzalez said.
One of those others is Matt Kemp, whose second two-run homer of the night came in the seventh off Varvaro, who allowed two groundball singles to start the inning and the go-ahead run on Carl Crawford’s ground out. That gave the Dodgers a 5-4 lead, and Kemp’s homer made it a three-run margin and spiked the decibel level from a crowd of 49,630.
Puig went 4-for-5 with a double and a triple to continue his torrid hitting against the Braves, while Kemp had three hits and has a .400 average in 10 games since the All-Star break.
Harang allowed nine hits and four runs in six innings. He threw 112 pitches and recorded three strikeouts with one walk.
“They have the veteran hitters over there all throughout that lineup, guys that can be game-changers,” Harang said. “They have guys that can definitely make things happen and get key hits when they need to.”
Beckett also gave up nine hits and four runs, and the right-hander had four walks with two strikeouts while piling up 105 pitches before leaving with one out in the fifth. Neither starter factored in the decision.
The Braves had leads of 1-0 after one inning, 3-2 after Freddie Freeman’s two-run homer in the third inning, and 4-2 after 4 ½ innings, but Braves pitchers kept making mistakes and the Dodgers kept hitting them.
The Dodgers kept their momentum after reclaiming first place in the NL West with a weekend sweep of the rival Giants.
“Matt (Kemp) did a good job hitting that curveball,” Harang said of the 2-2 hanging pitch that Kempt hit in the second inning. “That’s the Matt Kemp I remember from 2012, the first half that season it was unbelievable the way he was hitting the ball. And when he hit the home run off Varvaro later in the game, too.
“If you get him hot and keep the other guys going at a pretty good pace, they’re going to be a definite tough team to reckon with the rest of the season.”
Puig has an astounding .526 average (20-for-38) with six extra-base hits and seven RBIs in nine career games against the Braves, including the Dodgers’ four-game division series win last year.
The night got off to a promising start for the Braves when B.J. Upton reached on an infield single off Beckett’s glove to start the first inning. Tommy La Stella, the rising rookie who had another three-hit game, followed Upton with a walk in the first inning. One out later Upton stole third and scored on a sacrifice fly by his brother, Justin Upton.
The Dodgers moved ahead on Kemp’s homer in the second inning, snapping his string of 104 homerless plate appearances. Harang paid a price for walking Crawford to start the inning. Kemp’s homer was a fence-scraper to right field, where Ryan Doumit waited at the edge of the warning track to play it off a carom that never came.
Doumit filled in for Jason Heyward, out with a sore back Tuesday. The tall (6-foot-5) and athletic Heyward, a Gold Glove winner two years ago, might’ve had a shot at catching the ball. Doumit did not.
Freeman answered with a two-run homer in the third after La Stella’s leadoff single. Freeman is from Orange, south of Los Angeles, and had family and friends at the game. His .362 average (17-for-46) in 11 games at Dodger Stadium his second-highest average at any ballpark where he’s played more than three games (.400 in 12 games at Arizona’s Chase Field).
The Braves pushed the lead to 4-2 in the fifth when Chris Johnson hit a leadoff single and scored on Andrelton Simmons’ double to the right-center gap. Harang and B.J. Upton struck out consecutively with Simmons at second, the second of three strikeouts in the game for Upton.
“We were just trying to get good pitches to hit,” Justin Upton said of the patience they showed against Beckett. “Early on he wasn’t throwing the ball over the plate as much as he’d like to do, so we were able to wait him out and get his pitch count up.”
Harang worked out of several tight spots, but not in the fifth inning. After Puig scorched a one-out triple to the right-center gap, Adrian Gonzalez followed with a double. One out later, Crawford’s single drove in the tying run.
“We did a nice job being patient with (Beckett),” Gonzalez said, “and Harang leaves with the game tied 4-4, pitches six strong innings. Anthony’s been nails for the whole year, and it just happened today that he was facing a pretty good hitting lineup that’s clicking on all cylinders.”
The Braves also had scoring opportunities in the seventh, when Simmons grounded into an inning-ending double play with two on, and the eighth, when Justin Upton flied out with two on to end the inning.
