After a one-game lull, the Braves went back Friday to the basic ingredients that have been part of each of their early-season wins: a first-inning lead, a Justin Upton homer, a few other key hits and superb pitching when needed most.
Mike Minor pitched 7 1/3 strong innings, and Upton homered for the third time in four games as the Braves defeated the Chicago Cubs 4-1 in a series opener Friday night at Turner Field.
Upton had a first-inning homer and two RBIs and Evan Gattis had three hits — half of the Braves’ total — in his second major league game. But the biggest hit was Juan Francisco’s bases-loaded, two-out single in the fifth, which drove in two runs after the Cubs cut the lead to 2-1 in the top of the inning.
“That was the at-bat of the game,” said manager Fredi Gonzalez, whose Braves are 3-1 after starting out 0-4 last season. “He gets bases loaded, 3-2 count, and he battles and battles, flares one in there and gives us a little wiggle room just in case something happens.”
Craig Kimbrel pitched a perfect ninth inning with one strikeout for his second save.
“We can feel it in the clubhouse that we’re going to have a lot of fun this year,” Kimbrel said. “We know we have a good team. We know we have a chance to do things. But it’s not going to happen if we don’t play one game at a time and focus on one game at a time, and not get too far ahead of ourselves. It’s been fun so far.”
Minor allowed five hits, one run and no walks with seven strikeouts in 7 1/3 innings, picking up where he left off last season and making his spring-training struggles irrelevant.
“With spring training not going as well, I still had that confidence (from the second half of the 2012 season),” said the left-hander, who went 7-4 with a 2.21 ERA in his last 15 starts in 2012, after going 4-6 with a 6.20 ERA in his first 15.
This spring he had a 6.26 ERA in six Grapefruit League starts and gave up 10 runs and 16 hits in nine innings over his last two while working on a sinkerball that he’s since shelved. Minor said late in spring training and again Thursday that he wasn’t concerned about those results. He showed why Friday in a game that counted.
“I was telling the truth — I was working on stuff” in spring training, Minor said. “I wasn’t really throwing the pitches that I would in normal counts and working batters like I would during the season. I’m not going to say I’m going to have a game like this every time, but I had the confidence going into the season that I was going to attack the hitters like I did last year and throw more breaking balls, and I didn’t throw any two-seamers (sinkers) tonight.
“(The sinker) is kind of a work in progress. Maybe throw in it bullpens and kind of work on it, and then bring it out if I need to.”
Minor improved to 5-0 with a 3.56 ERA in five starts against the Cubs, with 37 strikeouts and four walks in 30 1/3 innings.
After Scott Hairston led off the Cubs’ fifth inning with a home run and Wellington Castillo followed with a single, Minor induced a double-play grounder by ex-Brave Brent Lillibridge and an inning-ending groundout by Alberto Gonzalez.
“You saw him give up that solo homer, and he never even wavered after that,” Gonzalez said. “He came right back at it and got out of the inning. He did a nice job. Fantastic job, really.”
Upton hit a first-inning solo homer — his National League-leading third — and added a third-inning sacrifice fly, after Andrelton Simmons walked, stole second base and went to third on a wild pitch. Upton left without talking to reporters after the game, to get out ahead of the crowd that stuck around for postgame fireworks.
The Braves got a stolen base apiece from Simmons, Jason Heyward and B.J. Upton.
“That’s one thing that’s real exciting about this ballclub, it’s athletic,” Gonzalez said. “We’ve got three guys who’ve stolen 20 bases in the major leagues, those guys in the outfield. And Simmons can do it also. So it’s nice to have that in your back pocket in case you run into a situation where you can’t hit balls out of the ballpark. You can create it with your legs a little bit.”
Upton has homered in each of the Braves’ wins and has five homers and 10 RBIs in his past 10 regular-season games. That stretch began with consecutive games against the Cubs on Sept. 28-29, when he had two hits and a homer in each for Arizona. The Diamondbacks traded him to the Braves in January.
The big blow in the fifth came on an eight-pitch at-bat by Francisco, who fouled back a pair of two-strike pitches from Cubs starter Scott Feldman before taking a ball in the dirt for a full count. He hit a fastball for an opposite-field single to left, scoring Heyward and B.J. Upton for a three-run lead.
Heyward led off the inning with a walk, stole second and went to third on a groundout. Upton was hit in the left arm by a pitch with two out. After Upton stole second base, Dan Uggla walked to bring up Francisco, who is splitting third-base duties with Chris Johnson in the first season since Chipper Jones retired.
“I think it was just an at-bat where he was trying to put the ball in play and not hit one over the scoreboard,” Gonzalez said. “Now he’s gotten an opportunity to play a little more, so maybe he’s maturing as a hitter. This guy, he really hasn’t gotten a lot of at-bats at the major league level, and he’s getting some opportunities now.”
It’s easy to forget Francisco had a productive four-month stretch last season while pinch-hitting and backing up Jones. He hit .275 with eight homers, 28 RBIs and a .514 slugging percentage in 142 at-bats from April 14-Aug. 17, but Francisco went 5-for-40 the rest of the season and was banished to the bench for most of the playoff race.
He restored Gonzalez’s confidence with a good season of winter ball in the Dominican Republic and a strong performance in spring training, when he and Johnson both played so well that Gonzalez decided to play them both to start the season.
