ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – It’s not as if the Braves are a bad team at home, it’s just that their engines have hummed at a different level on the road during the first quarter of the season.
They did it again Friday, mounting a two-out, two-run rally in the fifth inning of a 5-3 win against Tampa Bay in an interleague series opener at Tropicana Field, the Braves’ 10th win in their past 12 road games.
Tommy Hanson (5-3) pitched seven strong innings, and Martin Prado homered and doubled for the first-place Braves, who lead Washington by 1 1/2 games after the Nationals’ loss in their interleague game against Baltimore.
After the Rays scored an unearned run off Jonny Venters in the eighth inning, Craig Kimbrel pitched a perfect ninth for his 12th save.
The Braves can only hope the win wasn’t a costly one, as third baseman Chipper Jones left the game with a left calf contusion and is listed as day-to-day. He was was hit by a one-hop liner off the bat of B.J. Upton in the third inning and stayed in the game until the eighth inning.
Hanson improved to 4-1 with a 3.11 ERA in his past six starts after allowing six hits, two runs and two walks in seven innings. He recorded 14 outs in his past 15 batters.
The score was tied at 2-all before the Braves scored a pair of two-out runs in the fifth inning on two walks, and run-scoring hits by Freddie Freeman (double) and Brian McCann (single).
Prado’s seventh inning homer increased the lead to 5-3. Prado has hit .476 (20-for-42) with nine extra-base hits during a 10-game hitting streak.
The Braves lead the majors with 15 road wins and lead the National League with a .652 road winning percentage (15-8). They have a 10-7 home record.
They’ve gone 15-4 on the road since starting 0-4 on the season-opening trip that included a sweep at the hands of the Mets in New York and a loss at Houston. Jones was activated before the fifth game of the season and hit a two-run homer in his second at-bat to spark the Braves to a win against the Astros.
They’ve been a different team since that night.
Jones, 40, is playing his last scheduled series in Tampa Bay. The Florida native, who is retiring after the season, got a standing ovation when he came to bat leading off the second inning, then singled on the first pitch he saw from Rays starter James Shields (6-2). Jones scored on a two-out wild pitch, and one inning later was struck in the left calf.
He went to one knee and was attended to by a Braves trainer before shaking off the discomfort and staying in the game for four more innings.
Prado extended his hitting streak to 10 games with a first-inning double, then scored when Freeman followed with a single to center that put the Braves up 1-0 before Shields had recorded his second out. They pushed the lead to 2-0 in the second after Jones slid at home plate to score on a close play on Shields’ wild pitch.
The Rays answered with a run in the second on Elliot Johnson’s one-out bunt single to the first-base side with runners on corners. They tied the score in the third inning, after loading the bases on Upton’s one-out single off Jones’ leg followed immediately by a pair of walks.
Luke Scott’s sacrifice fly brought in the tying run, with right fielder Jason Heyward making a nice running catch the play to prevent potentially worse damage.
Heyward’s catch began a string of nine consecutive batters retired by Hanson before Scott’s one-out single in the sixth. Hanson induced a double-play grounder by the next batter to make it 11 outs in a stretch of 11 batters, including a 14-pitch, nine-foul-ball strikeout of Carlos Pena before the Scott single.
