Stephen Strasburg had a bloated 6.55 ERA in 10 starts before he went on the disabled list May 30 with neck tightness, so the Braves hardly seemed like an ideal opponent for the Nationals’ erstwhile ace to face in his first game back Tuesday.
Then again, Strasburg had not faced them yet this season. And with the run support that other Nationals pitchers have enjoyed against the Braves in 2015, perhaps it was the right time for him to face the team that’s given him fits like no other throughout his career.
Atlanta starter Alex Wood gave up three runs in the first four innings, and Strasburg pitched five scoreless innings before the Washington bullpen bent but didn’t break in a 3-1 win to open a series at Nationals Park — the sixth straight Nationals win over the Braves.
There was a rain delay of 2 hours, 12 minutes, before the first pitch, and the game ended after midnight.
The Braves loaded the bases in the ninth against Drew Storen on singles by Andrelton Simmons and Kelly Johnson and a two-out walk by Jace Peterson. That brought up Cameron Maybin, who had homered in the eighth inning. He nearly poked a bases-loaded, checked-swing hit down the first-base line — it went foul — before popping out to end the game.
Wood settled down and went seven innings for the Braves despite allowing 10 hits.
“He didn’t get a chance to get a ‘W’ but he gave us seven innings, saved the bullpen – lot of good things,” said manager Fredi Gonzalez, whose third-place Braves slipped to three games behind the NL East-leading Nationals. “And we got a home run in the eighth inning to get us within two runs; the bullpen did a nice job keeping it there.
“That checked swing (by Maybin), maybe three or four feet from being fair and here we go,” Gonzalez said. “We’d still be playing. But we battled. We battled good, like we always do. We just didn’t get anything going early in the game.”
The Braves won the first game between the teams this season, but the Nationals have won the past six. Tuesday was the first time the Nationals scored fewer than four runs against the Braves this season, and they’ve averaged nearly eight runs against them.
“You come in here with first place in the division on the line, and we battled from start to finish,” Wood said. “Strasburg was probably the best he’s been since I’ve been here — 2 1/3, three years — the best he’s probably been against us ever.”
Maybin’s two-out homer in the eighth prevented the shutout for the Braves, and Nick Markakis and A.J. Pierzynski followed with singles to bring the potential go-ahead run to the plate in the form of veteran Juan Uribe.
The Nationals brought in former Braves reliever David Carpenter to face Uribe, recreating the matchup from Game 4 of the 2013 division series, when Uribe hit a two-run homer off Carpenter – with Craig Kimbrel warmed and watching from the Braves bullpen – to erase Atlanta’s one-run lead and lift the Dodgers to a series-clinching win.
This time, it was Uribe in a Braves uniform, and his routine fly-out to right field ended the inning.
Until that inning, the only Brave to reach second base had been Eury Perez, who doubled with one out in the fifth. Wood followed by working a walk, but Strasburg struck out Peterson — his third K of the game — and got Maybin on an inning-ending groundout.
In Strasburg’s 17 career starts against the Braves before Tuesday, he was 4-7 with a 4.24 ERA and 11 homers allowed in 87 innings.
But the big right-hander limited the Braves to five hits in seven scoreless innings in on Sept. 15, and he’s now 2-0 in his past two starts against them with nine hits, one walk and 13 strikeouts in 12 scoreless innings. He hadn’t faced them this season until Tuesday.
“He looked terrific tonight,” Wood said. “You’ve just got to tip your cap. We did a good job battling and getting him out of there after five. We do what we do, man. We just keep battling, keep grinding every day. We’ve got a great ground of guys. Just got to continue to plug away.”
Wood is 3-4 in his past nine starts despite a solid 3.16 ERA in that span. In three of those four losses, the Braves scored one or not runs while he was in the game.
After going 4-0 with a 2.15 ERA in his first seven road starts this season, Wood has lost his past two, allowing 16 hits and seven earned runs in 13 1/3 innings in those two games at New York and Washington. In three starts against the Nationals this season, he’s 0-2 with a 5.30 ERA.
Anthony Rendon went 4-for-4 against him Tuesday to make Rendon 12-for-17 in his career against the left-hander.
About the Author
