NEW YORK – The Braves have proven that almost no early deficit is too large to overcome, and Tuesday night against the Yankees they tested their comeback capacity again.
On a sweaty, steamy night in the Bronx not ideal for humans tossing baseballs, conditions seemed to have particularly adverse effects on Sean Newcomb, the Braves left-hander from Massachusetts.
He gave up five runs and didn’t make it out of the third inning, issuing five walks and allowing two homers to put his team in a substantial deficit.
They nearly overcame it, using three homers to reduce a six-run deficit to a single run before Giancarlo Stanton’s homer in the Yankee eighth quashed the rally and handed the Braves an 8-5 loss. It snapped a four-game winning streak.
Stanton’s two-run homer came against Evan Phillips in his major league debut, after Phillips recorded the final out of the sixth inning and retired the side in order in the seventh. He walked Brett Gardner to start the eighth and gave up Stanton’s 20th home run two batters later, a towering fly that cleared the wall in the corner near the 314 (feet) sign.
Trailing 6-0 after four innings, the Braves got back-to-back homers from Ender Inciarte and Ozzie Albies in a three-run fifth inning and a two-run homer from Nick Markakis in the seventh to get within a run, 6-5.
Credit: Frank Franklin II
Credit: Frank Franklin II
But three runners left on base in the fifth inning proved costly for the National League East leaders. The Braves, after sweeping three games at St. Louis over the weekend, are 4-1 midway through a 10-game trip and still can take the three-game series against the Yankees by winning the finale Wednesday afternoon before heading to Milwaukee.
Newcomb, sweating heavily, appeared to have trouble gripping the ball as he issued a season-high five walks in a career-low 2 2/3 innings, one out fewer than he recorded May 26 at Boston. He also matched season-highs of five earned runs and two homers allowed and threw just 35 strikes in 70 pitches.
After Markakis hit his 10th home run in the seventh inning, on a full-count slider that was the ninth pitch of his at-bat against reliever Adam Warren, the Braves came within a foot of tying it when Kurt Suzuki followed with a fly ball to nearly the same spot in right field. But that ball was caught by 6-foot-5 Stanton just in front of the top of the right-field wall, and Ronald Acuna followed with a long fly caught on the center-field warning track to end the inning.
The Braves’ first batter reached in four of the first five innings against Yankees starter Domingo German, but they only made him pay in one of those instances, in his fifth and final frame.
Following Johan Camargo’s leadoff walk in the fifth – the second consecutive inning German walked the leadoff hitter – Inciarte followed with a homer on an 0-2 breaking ball, his sixth of the season. Albies drove the next pitch to the right-field bleachers, as he’s wont to do, even though it was a breaking ball rather than the first-pitch fastballs Albies typically feasts upon. His 18th home run was the seventh first-pitch homer of the season for Albies and reduced the deficit to 6-3.
The Braves had a chance to do more damage in the inning after three of the next four batters reached on singles to load the bases, the first two of those hits by Freddie Freeman and Markakis coming against German and the bases-loading hit from Acuna coming against reliever A.J. Cole.
Tyler Flowers, who struck out looking in each of his two plate appearances against German, struck out swinging against Cole on an eight-pitch at-bat that ended the inning. The Braves batted around and scored three runs in the inning but left the bases loaded.
Flowers also struck out to start the eighth inning before consecutive singles from Camargo and Swanson put the potential tying and winning runs on base. The Yankees brought in lefty Chasen Shreve, once a Braves farmhand, who struck out Inciarte and induced an inning-ending grounder from Albies to preserve the 6-5 lead.
About the Author
