SEATTLE – Seldom has a game unraveled as quickly and completely as it did for the Braves in the fourth inning Tuesday night, when Tommy La Stella's dropped fly ball with two outs and the score tied allowed two runs to score and severely diminished the chances of beating Mariners ace Felix Hernandez.
Seattle added another run before the ugly inning was through, and “King” Felix and the Mariners cruised from there to a 4-2 win at Safeco Field. The loss dropped the reeling Braves to 0-7 on an eight-game nightmare of a West Coast trip that ends Wednesday, and at this point can’t end soon enough.
“I’ve got to make that play, every time,” La Stella said of his error in shallow right field, which led to three unearned runs in a four-run inning. “It sucks. Let your team down in a big situation, obviously you don’t want that. It’s unfortunate.
“Can’t pick and choose when you make errors. It’s part of the game just like anything else, and I’ve got to move on from it and come back ready tomorrow.”
If the four-run fourth wasn’t bad enough, the Braves watched Gold Glove shortstop Andrelton Simmons limp off the field after spraining his left ankle when he stepped awkwardly on the edge of the third-base bag while covering on Logan Morrison’s tying single in that inning.
Simmons will miss Wednesday’s game and could possibly require a stint on the 15-day disabled list if his ankle doesn’t respond to treatment in the next few days.
“Just one of those freak things,” Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said of the injury. “He’s covering third base on the throw to the plate and rolls it on the third base. We’re just calling it day-to-day. He’s probably going to be sore tomorrow, it’ll be a short turnaround, so maybe the off day on Thursday will give him plenty of time for this weekend.”
The Braves start what’s shaping up to be a critical 10-game homestand Friday against the first-place Nationals, who remain three games ahead of the Braves in the National League East, followed by series with the Dodgers and Athletics.
But first the Braves will send their ace Julio Teheran to the mound on Wednesday as they try to avoid the ignominy of going winless in an entire three-city trip that included getting swept by the Dodgers and Padres.
“It’s going to be huge,” veteran backup catcher Gerald Laird said of Wednesday’s game against the Mariners. “I mean, it’s not the best road trip we’ve ever been on, and we all understand that. But if we can just try to squeeze out a win and try to get something positive going to head home before the off day and a big stretch at home, I think it would help.
“We’ve got a guy on the mound that we want out there in Julio. He’s our guy and we have to come out and play a good game and hopefully jump on them early and give him some runs so Julio can go to work.”
Hernandez (12-3) did work Wednesday, limiting the Braves to four hits, one run and one walk with eight strikeouts in eight innings, and extending his major league record to 15 consecutive games with at least seven innings pitched and two or fewer runs allowed. That’s two more such games than Tom Seaver, who set the previous record in 1971.
He also equaled Gaylord Perry’s 1974 record of 15 consecutive games of at least seven innings pitched with two or fewer earned runs allowed.
The loss dropped the Braves to 6-12 since the All-Star break. Wood (7-9) was a hard-luck loser, charged with five hits and four runs (one earned) in six innings, with four walks, a hit batter and five strikeouts. He came down with flu-like symptoms during the weekend and as late as Monday the Braves weren’t sure if he’d be able to pitch.
“I’m sure he didn’t feel 100 percent, but he gave us a hell of an outing against one of the premier pitchers in major league baseball,” Gonzalez said. “We dropped the ball there (in the fourth inning). Just a physical error. Just one of those things, and it ended up costing us three runs. It’s just sometimes the way stuff’s going.
“We battled, scored first, and (Logan) Morrison gets an RBI single there, but Woody almost got out of the inning. I thought he pitched terrific, gave us every opportunity to win the ballgame, and we didn’t win it, because you give up two or three unearned runs against Felix, you’re up against it.”
After playing 17 consecutive days, it looked like Monday’s day off – La Stella was part of a Braves group that went fishing — had done them some good when the Braves jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the second inning. Justin Upton doubled and scored on Chris Johnson’s two-out single.
Wood worked around consecutive two-out walks in the second inning and a leadoff double in the third, with a big assist from center fielder Emilio Bonifacio. He raced over to the left-center gap to take a would-be extra-base hit and RBI away from Robinson Cano with an inning-ending catch to preserve the 1-0 lead.
But trouble arrived in the fourth. After Kendrys Morales grounded out to start the inning, Wood hit Kyle Seager with a pitch. Chris Denorfia followed with a single, then things really turned ugly.
Morrison singled to left field to drive in the tying run, and Upton threw over the cutoff man and also over the head of catcher Gerald Laird, allowing both runners to get into scoring position.
“We’ve got to hit the cutoff man there,” Gonzalez said. “There’s a play at the plate, and you get excited.”
After Wood struck out catcher Mike Zunino, No. 9 hitter Chris Taylor hit a pop fly to shallow right field. It was hard to tell if right fielder Jason Heyward said anything to La Stella, but the second baseman drifted back and got under the ball, only to have it bounce off his glove and roll away, allowing both runners to score for a 3-1 Mariners lead.
Gonzalez was asked if he thought it should have been Heyward’s ball.
“I didn’t think so,” he said. “I mean you’re talking about Jason coming a long ways there. And you know him, if he could get there you know he would have caught it, or he would have called him off.”
Austin Jackson followed with a single up the middle that pushed the lead to 4-1. Three of four runs in the inning were unearned.
At that point, the Braves faced severe odds: The Last time an opponent scored more than three runs in a game started by Hernandez was May 12, when he gave up four runs in 6 2/3 innings of a 12-5 loss to the Rays. He retired the next nine Braves before Heyward’s infield hit to start the seventh inning.
“That’s the tough part about this game, when you play a team like Seattle and they have their ace on the mound,” Laird said. “You’ve got play pretty much a flawless game and get some timely hitting. We threw the ball well, we just had that one hiccup. And once Felix got the lead, you saw him go to work.”
The Braves didn’t get a second run until the ninth inning, when La Stella hit a leadoff double against closer Fernando Rodney, advanced on a groundout, and scored on Upton’s groundout.
