The Braves thought winning six-of-seven and a change of scenery might be enough to distance them from the mess of a series they lost to the Mets in New York early this month.
Not quite.
Jose Reyes burrowed right back under the Braves’ skin, going 3-for-5 with two runs, two stolen bases and an RBI at Turner Field Tuesday night, after going 5-for-12 with a double and two triples in a three-game series in New York a week and a half ago. He jumped on Jair Jurrjens and the Braves for two runs in the first two innings to set the tone for a 4-3 win.
“I didn’t keep Reyes off base,” Jurrjens said. “When you have one of the best baserunners, one of the best stealers, and you don’t keep him off the bases, he’s going to make it really difficult to concentrate on the hitters.”
Jurrjens was off-kilter from the start, after Reyes helped manufacture the first run in the first inning off Jurrjens all year. He failed to make it six innings for the first time this season. He gave up a season-high four earned runs in 5 1/3 innings to watch his major league-leading ERA rise to 2.13, the first time it had been over 2.00 all year.
He walked a season-high five batters and lost for the second time in his past three starts, both to the Mets.
“It was just one of those games, you know what you’re doing wrong but you try to fix it and you just make it worse,” Jurrjens said.
A gimpy Braves lineup got even thinner when the Braves announced 40 minutes before the start of Tuesday’s game that first baseman Freddie Freeman had been scratched with a mild right oblique strain.
That and a scheduled day off for catcher Brian McCann left the Braves with only three regulars from Opening Day in their lineup. The Braves went without their entire starting outfield for the seventh straight game and unlike series wins over the Marlins and Astros, struggled to find a way around it.
David Ross drew the Braves within two runs 4-2 with an RBI double in the seventh inning and prompted manager Fredi Gonzalez to pinch hit McCann. But McCann struck out against left-handed reliever Tim Brydak as did Diory Hernandez behind him to end the threat.
The Braves scored another run in the eighth inning on Dan Uggla’s second home run in three games and would have tied it had Chipper Jones come up with a few more feet on his fly ball to the right field wall.
“We just came up a little short,” Uggla said. “Jair didn’t have his best stuff tonight but he still battled and gave us a chance. I felt like we hit the ball good tonight, just wasn’t our night.”
Until the seventh, Reyes had as many hits as the entire Braves lineup did through the first six innings – three.
Reyes reached on an infield hit, stole second and scored on a Carlos Beltran single before Jurrjens had recorded an out.
Reyes came up again in the third inning and started another rally with a leadoff single, followed by a Willie Harris base hit. Those two batters helped load the bases for Angel Pagan who singled in a run and Lucas Duda who drove in another on a sacrifice fly.
By the time Reyes came up again in the sixth, fans at Turner Field fans actually cheered when Jurrjens brushed him back with a pitch. Reyes promptly silenced them by singling to center to drive in a run on the next pitch from Jurrjens to make it 4-1.
About the only thing that seemed to bother Reyes Tuesday night was his footing on the infield. He slipped diving back to the bag at first base in the first inning, prompting umpires to call the Braves grounds crew out to tend to it. He later slipped trying to field an Alex Gonzalez grounder to shortstop which went for an infield hit in the seventh.
“It was a little wet,” Reyes told reporters afterward, and said he didn’t know if the Braves had wet the infield on purpose. “…It is what it is. We’re not at Citi Field. We’re playing in Atlanta so I don’t care.”
