It’s been 23 starts and more than four months since Braves pitcher Shelby Miller got a win, and there’s a good chance we’ll never again see anything quite like the season he’s been through.
From making the All-Star team to leading the National League in losses and a franchise-record winless stretch, all the while ranking among the league ERA leaders but having far and away the worst run support of any major league starter.
That’s been the Shelby Miller Experience, which saw another quality start wasted Monday night in a 4-0 loss to the New York Mets to open a three-game series at Citi Field.
Miller (5-16) allowed seven hits, two runs and four walks in six innings and the Mets led from the first inning on, snapping Atlanta’s three-game winning streak as the Braves began their final road trip of a season that went down the tubes after a 42-42 start. They are 18-49 since then, and including 4-28 on the road.
“Obviously I’ve had some ups and downs,” said Miller, who is 0-15 with a 3.65 ERA in his past 23 starts, “but at the same time you learn from those things, and you take the positives and develop yourself into a better pitcher and person and teammate and player. And at the end of the day, as bad as my streak’s been, we’re still playing hard baseball, and that’s all that matters to me.
“It’d be a lot different if things were kind of going this way and it didn’t seem like anybody was trying or something like that. But all that matters to me is this team shows up every day ready to go. That’s all that matters.”
The Braves won six of their past 13 games before Monday, but five of those wins came against the Phillies, the only team in the majors with a worse record than theirs. The offensively anemic Braves swept three from the Phillies at home over the weekend, all by 2-1 scores.
Mets left-hander Jonathon Niese (9-10) allowed three hits and two walks in six innings, after entering with an 8.77 ERA and .362 opponents’ average in his previous five starts.
“We had some opportunities,” said manager Fredi Gonzalez, whose Braves have lost 11 of their past 15 games against the Mets, including five in a row. “They wiggled out of it. We didn’t score runs. It’s hard to win when you don’t score any runs. We won three games (against the Phillies) back home just scoring six runs in three games. But against this team you’ve got to score runs.”
The Braves went 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position, including Freddie Freeman’s flyout with bases loaded to end the third inning and Nick Swisher’s double-play grounder with two on and none out in the fourth.
“Offensively we had some opportunities,” Swisher said. “We had the bases loaded there one time. With runners on first and second and nobody out, I grounded into a double play. We’re getting the opportunities, we’re just not taking advantage. We’re just not driving those runs in when we need them.”
It was the 13th time in his 23-start winless streak that Miller allowed two earned runs or fewer, and 17th time in those 23 games that the Braves scored one or no runs while he was in. The Braves have scored no runs while he’s been in the game in 14 starts this season, the most times that’s happened to any major league starter in more than a decade.
The Braves have lost in 20 of his past 22 starts, after winning eight of the first nine. Miller has taken the loss in seven consecutive starts.
His team has scored a total of 15 runs while Miller was in the game in his past 18 starts, including no runs while he was in 11 of them. The Braves have totaled 22 runs while he’s been in the game during his entire 23-start streak.
The drought surpassed the Atlanta record of 22 consecutive winless starts that Miller briefly shared with Carl Morton, whose drought spanned parts of two seasons (1975-1976). Miller will likely get just two more starts before the season ends.
Miller was one of the brightest spots of the early season for the Braves, going 5-1 with a 1.33 ERA and .156 opponents’ average in his first eight starts, and receiving an average of 4.5 offensive runs per nine innings pitched in that span. He’s 0-15 with a 3.65 ERA in 23 starts since, and the Braves have averaged less than 1.5 runs per nine innings he’s pitched.
“I haven’t been here all year,” Swisher said, “but I do know that Shelby, you know, that W has been right there at his fingertips, just haven’t been able to really grasp it. I think we’ve got to come out here and we’ve just got to keep playing. We’re getting those opportunities, and they’re going to fall for us soon. We’ve got a lot of faith in each other. This is a new team, but we’re going to keep grinding. We’re going to keep going out there and giving it everything we’ve got every day.”
Miller remained a dominant pitcher most nights during the bulk of the winless stretch, losing primarily because of a lack of run support. But lately his performance had slipped, and he was 0-6 with a 5.56 ERA and .304 opponents’ average in his past six starts before Monday.
The Mets scored a run apiece in the first and second innings, and soon after Yoenis Cespedes led off the third with a double, there was activity in the Braves’ bullpen and it looked like Miller might have his third pre-fifth inning exit in his past four starts.
He rallied, retired the final three batters in the third inning and eight in a row before Cespedes lined a double off the left-center wall in the fifth. Miller got out of that inning unscathed, too, but was replaced after throwing 113 pitches in six innings, the Braves trailing 2-0.
“He got better,” said Gonzalez, who was concerned during the 35-pitch second inning, the reason he had a reliever warming in the third after the double. “His strength was there all the way through, that’s why we let him back out there in the sixth inning. It was good for him to bounce back after that first couple of innings.”
Miller said, “After the first couple of innings I felt like I did a better job of getting hitters out quicker, there’s no doubt about that. We had some key double plays that were huge and kind of saved the day for me a little bit. Really played good defense, and just couldn’t get a win tonight. But at the end of the day we’re out here battling, and that’s all that matters.”
The Mets added two runs against rookie lefty Andrew McKirahan without him recording an out in the seventh, with Daniel Murphy’s two-run double extending the lead to 4-0. McKirahan was pulled after allowing hits to all three batters faced.
A bright spot for the Braves: right-hander Dan Winkler pitched two-thirds of an inning in his major league debut and allowed one walk with two strikeouts, fifteen months after having Tommy John elbow surgery as a Colorado Rockies prospect. The Braves selected him in the Rule 5 draft at the Winter Meetings in December.
