PITTSBURGH -- After a day to clear his head, the struggling Dan Uggla didn't find much different at the plate, going 0-for-5 with three strikeouts in his return to the lineup Wednesday against the Pirates.
Uggla finished this three-city trip 2-for-26 to magnify an already troubling start to his season. His average fell to .180.
Heading into Wednesday’s game after sitting out the previous one, Uggla admitted that perhaps the pressure of signing a five-year, $62 million extension with a new team this winter has caught up.
“It kind of comes with the territory,” Uggla said. “You’re paid a lot of money to do a job and you want to do it; you want to fulfill it.”
Uggla said it's something he and Brian McCann have talked about. McCann experienced some of the same pressures after signing a six-year extension worth $26.8 million with the Braves in 2007. Yet McCann stayed with a team that already knew him well.
“Mac was telling me after he signed his deal, everybody was saying now you can just relax and go play, which you can,” Uggla said. “But there are two sides of it and there’s added pressure. [It’s] not the team or anybody else on the outside, but you take it upon yourself because you want to live up to everything, do the things you’ve done in the past to help with ballgames.”
Uggla isn’t looking for sympathy or using it as an excuse, just acknowledging the pressures when asked about it.
“You can say all the things you want to say; it’s part of the game,” Uggla said. “It’s an adjustment I’ll have to make, when it comes down to it.”
Prado gets rest day
Martin Prado was out of the lineup for the first time all season Wednesday for what he characterized as a day off to rest his body. Prado fouled a ball off his foot on Tuesday night but said there was no specific injury bothering him.
“Some days you don’t feel well, [like] my body is not responding,” Prado said. “But I’m still playing and doing my best. But players sometimes get mentally get tired. It’s not just physical.”
Prado and Uggla were the last of the Braves regulars to start every game before those streaks ended this series.
Diaz finds Venters nasty
Former Braves outfielder Matt Diaz watched from a locker or two away last year as his friend Jonny Venters put together one of the best seasons of any National League reliever last year. He found out for himself Tuesday night exactly what the hubbub is about.
Diaz struck out in the eighth inning as a pinch-hitter against Venters in the Pirates 2-0 loss, the night after he'd gone out for dinner with Venters, fellow Pirates and former Braves players Chris Resop, and their wives.
“He tried to talk me into the fact that he can’t throw strikes,” Diaz said of their dinner conversation. “And he throws a nasty slider first pitch on the black. I’m like, ‘Oh gosh.’ He’s good, he’s really good. He obviously has unbelievable stuff, and it looks like he’s starting to harness it.”
After Tuesday night, Venters led all major league relievers with a .100 opponents’ batting average. His 0.63 ERA was second among all major league relievers.
If there’s a better left-handed reliever in the league right now, Diaz, who has come off the bench to face left-handers for the better part of five years, is hard-pressed to name one.
How about Hong-Chih Kuo, who made the All-Star game with the Dodgers' last year? "He doesn't have the movement Venters does," Diaz said.
Or J.C. Romero in his heyday setting up for Brad Lidge? "Jonny probably won't be as controversial in the offseason," Diaz said, referring to Romero's 50-game suspension in 2009 for testing positive for a banned substance.
“A lot of left-handed relievers are designed to get lefties out, but standing in there as a righty last night you get why righties don’t hit him very well either,” Diaz said. “He’s just nasty. The fastball I swung on and hit in their dugout somehow felt like it moved up and away. And no one has that pitch, and then his slider disappears down and in on a righty.”
Roster watch
The Braves optioned reliever Jairo Asencio to Triple-A Gwinnett to make room for Mike Minor on the roster. Minor is expected to make at least one start for the Braves in place of the injured Brandon Beachy, on Tuesday against the Padres.
