The general manager sat in a Turner Field dugout on Memorial Day and spoke of a team that won nearly 100 games last season but has seen its offense collapse. The GM’s team entered Monday’s game ranked 13th in its league in runs and batting average, stirring consternation among its constituency.
“We have a lot of guys not performing to expectations,” the GM said.
Speaking of the player who entered Monday’s game hitting .197, the GM offered this: “He can help the team with his defense. He’s our everyday center fielder and we’re going to support him.”
Then: “I don’t think you can single out one player – it’s across the board. It’s the organization, the staff; it’s everything.”
This GM – pause for effect – wasn’t the Braves’ Frank Wren, who’d faced similar questions while seated in a dugout a week earlier. The executive doing this round of explaining was Boston’s Ben Cherington, who’d assembled the 2013 World Series champion. Like the Braves, the Red Sox have spent the first quarter of the new season not hitting. Like the Braves, Boston has seen its center fielder – Jackie Bradley Jr., as opposed to B.J. Upton – hover near the Mendoza Line.
Here, however, was the difference: Wren’s Braves lead their division; Cherington’s Sox arrived in Atlanta the losers of 10 in a row and the occupant of last place in the American Least East. The Braves would have traded places with Boston last October; they wouldn’t today.
Even as we around here do our annual hand-wringing over the Braves’ offense, we hold out hope for brighter tomorrows. (OK, except in the case of Dan Uggla.) Even three World Series titles in nine seasons haven’t rid New Englanders of their fatalism. Atlanta angst is nothing alongside the Boston version, nor is the scrutiny. Wren’s state-of-the-offense address was delivered to one correspondent. Cherington’s impromptu briefing – those who cover the Sox were surprised to see him in town – was made in the presence of 15 media types.
“We have the core of a winning team,” Cherington said, “and we’re going to win.”
Who knew it was that easy? GM shows up, meets with the manager, rallies the men … and his offensively challenged team snaps a double-digit losing skid by overriding a five-run deficit against the best pitching staff in baseball.
It was the first time this season the Braves had scored six runs and lost. (Earlier this month, they had three consecutive series where they mustered seven, three and six runs.) Given that Sox starter Clay Buchholz needed 88 pitches to retire nine men while walking Jason Heyward and Freddie Freeman three times each, the Braves should have won laughing. But only six of the 14 baserunners they generated in the first four innings scored. The door was left open, if barely.
While better than Buchholz on Monday, the Ervin Santana of recent vintage hasn’t been nearly as deft as the one who yielded two earned runs over his first three starts with the Braves. He’d been touched for 11 runs in his past two turns, and this time he ceded a fat lead in the time it takes to pahk one’s cahr in the Hahvahd yahd.
Santana retired the first two Sox in the fifth, whereupon he walked pinch-hitter Daniel Nava. Soon the bases were loaded for the only remaining Sox hitter who scares anybody. The pestiferous Dustin Pedroia smacked a single to make it 6-3, and now the Braves had a choice: To let Santana, who’d thrown 90 pitches, face the dreadnought David Ortiz?
“You try to give a guy an opportunity to win a game,” manager Fredi Gonzalez said, invoking the thinnest of reasons. A better course would have been to let Santana work to Ortiz but offer nothing over the plate. That might well have been the Braves’ intent — a walk to Ortiz still leaves the Braves ahead by three — but the execution wasn’t forthcoming.
Ortiz drove a Santana slider over the wall in left-center. It wasn’t as bad as the slider Milwaukee’s Mark Reynolds hit for a grand slam last week, but it was bad enough. Tie game.
The Red Sox undressed the Braves’ bullpen in the seventh, Ortiz driving home the go-ahead run; the Atlanta hitters did little after the fourth. A winnable game became the season’s most galling loss. But here we step back to note: Bad as it was, it was only one game. And you’d still rather be the Braves, as of May 27, than the reigning titlist.
At the end of his remarks, Cherington nodded toward reporters and said, “Suggestions?” Albeit unsolicited, we offer this to the Braves: Don’t pitch to Big Papi with the game on the line.
