SAN FRANCISCO – Dan Uggla has been out of the lineup six consecutive games, and it doesn't sound as though Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez plans to play the struggling second baseman much in the forseeable future.
Ramiro Pena and Tyler Pastornicky split the past six starts at second base, with Pastornicky making his third start in that span Tuesday night when the Braves faced a sixth consecutive right-handed starter, the Giants’ Ryan Vogelsong.
Left-hander Madison Bumgarner is scheduled to pitch Wednesday’s series finale, the first lefty starter the Braves will have faced since the Cardinals’ Lance Lyons on May 6.
Uggla’s last start was May 6, but Gonzalez indicated Tuesday that, for now, second base won’t be any sort of platoon with Uggla starting against lefties and Pastornicky and Pena starting against righties.
“I’m going to have (Pastornicky and Pena) play a little bit, maybe play Pastornicky a little bit more at second base,” Gonzalez said Tuesday. “Give him an opportunity. Say, here, go play, whether it’s a lefty, a righty, a sidearmer, just go out and play.”
After watching Pena start three of the previous five games at second base and go 0-for-9 with one walk in that span, Gonzalez is leaning again toward using Pena in the role that the Braves think he’s best suited and most valuable for them — as a utility player.
“Let Pena be what he’s been successful with,” Gonzalez said. “That’s playing once or twice a week, bat off the bench, let him go back to his normal role.”
Pastornicky has only 20 plate appearances all season and seven came in consecutive starts Saturday and Sunday against the Cubs. He went 0-for-7 in those games but laid down an important squeeze bunt and, in the view of Gonzalez, hit a couple of other balls as hard as anyone on the team during the weekend.
Pastornicky was 2-for-17 with a triple, two walks and five strikeouts before his start Wednesday, including 1-for-6 as a pinch-hitter. He was a more comfortable at the plate after getting some starts recently, particularly consecutive starts.
“Definitely,” Pastornicky said. “You get that feel. You get in the box and you get the timing, get used to seeing the spin of breaking pitches again. You can build upon that, work on things. It’s tough when you’re only getting at-bats every four or five days, it’s not easy to build upon what you’re working on. But when you’re getting four or five at-bats in a game, you can take that feeling and keep going with it.”
Gonzalez has not disclosed plans for Uggla, who appears to have played himself out of a job. He entered Tuesday with a .184 average, two homers and 31 strikeouts in 103 at-bats, with six walks and a .248 on-base percentage. Uggla was 9-for-58 with one extra-base hit (double), no RBIs, 19 strikeouts and four errors in his past 17 games.
The Braves would like to trade Uggla if they could find a team willing to pay something more than nominal portion of the approximate $23.5 million he’s still owed for the rest of this season and 2015, but so far no such team has emerged.
