CINCINNATI — Most baseball players and managers agree that losing by one run is harder to take than getting blown out, particularly if the one-run loss comes in a game your team knows it should have won. For instance, the Braves' 3-2 loss at Pittsburgh on Wednesday, when they led 2-0 until the eighth inning.
Alex Wood issued a leadoff walk in the eighth and hung an a 0-2 breaking ball that turned into a double; Jordan Walden threw a wild pitch on a breaking ball in the dirt to let in a run; Justin Upton botched a fly ball in left field for a two-base error … and the next thing you know the Braves had squandered a would-be sweep and had their five-game winning streak snapped.
They also lost another game in the standings to the red-hot Nationals, who had a nine-game winning streak since losing two of three in Atlanta last week. They had a season-high seven-game lead over the Braves after their fourth walk-off win in five days Wednesday.
The defeat at Pittsburgh was the Braves’ 20th one-run loss of the season, matching their total from 2013. They were 21-20 in one-run games before Thursday’s series opener against the Reds, after going 27-20 last season and a robust 25-13 in one-run games in 2012.
“I think my first year here (2012) was probably the easiest year I’ve ever had,” Braves hitting coach Greg Walker said a few days ago in Pittsburgh, when this reporter asked him how tough this maddeningly inconsistent season had been for him.
“Even the year we won the World Series in Chicago (Walker was hitting coach for the 2005 White Sox), we won a lot of one-run games. Last year we had a great one-run record; that’s probably one area where we’re not as good this year. We haven’t gotten the big hit. That’s kind of what we’ve missed this year as a team, for me.
“Getting the big hit, getting the big out. Making the big play. And in the last two weeks we’ve faced some really good pitching. But when you looked at the schedule and saw that stretch, you knew we were going to.”
The two-week period Walker referred to included the Braves’ 0-8 road trip that ended Aug. 6 at Seattle, during which they faced the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke and Seattle’s Felix Hernandez, among others. The Braves lost four one-run games on that trip to extend their streak to 0-9 in games decided by one run during a 9-18 stretch of games from July 6 through Aug. 6.
“I really think we’re back in the fight now,” Walker said in Pittsburgh, speaking in general terms about the Braves’ rebound from their slump. “We got kind of knocked on our heels and we didn’t play good baseball for about two weeks. But other than that….”
They went 4-0 in one-run games in an 8-4 stretch after the losing skid, which got the Braves’ record back at .500 in one-run games before Wednesday’s 3-2 loss.
The Nationals’ nine-game winning streak included six one-run wins before Thursday.
One-run games. They can be painful or exhilarating, depending which side of the outcome you’re on. They can also be crucial difference-makers in a season for teams in a playoff race.
The Braves entered Thursday looking at a seven-game deficit in the East standings with 35 games to play. They were 1 ½ games behind San Francisco for the second wild-card spot, with the Pirates only a game behind the Braves and the Marlins still hanging around 2 ½ games behind Atlanta before Thursday.
“It was definitely tough,” said Braves reliever David Carpenter, who got the loss Wednesday after giving up the game-winning run on a sacrifice fly after the Upton error put runners at second and third. “Even more disappointing, it’s a game we should have had. Woody (Alex Wood) pitched his (rear) off. You can’t ask for anything more.
“We just needed a few things to kind of go our way there, and they didn’t. That’s the game. We’ve still got to look at it as a positive. We took five straight. We took the series; that’s what it’s all about. If we can win series, we have a real good shot at this. You’ve just got to look at it from that perspective. You can’t let one game stop the momentum we built up.”
