PHILADELPHIA – B.J. Upton returned from the disabled list Saturday and rejoined a Braves team that went 12-5 in his absence, and a lineup that sizzled during an eight-game winning streak through Friday, scoring five or more runs in an inning in each of the past five games.
“He said, ‘Fredi, I hope I don’t (mess) this up,’” Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said Saturday, smiling as he shared part of his morning conversation with the center fielder.
A little later, Upton said something similar while kidding around with teammate Jason Heyward, the right fielder who shifted over and did impressive work in center after the Braves lost Upton (adductor muscle strain) and then Reed Johnson (Achilles tendinitis) to injuries.
The Braves hit .330 with 11 homers and 57 runs in an eight-game hitting streak through Friday.
“Obviously you want to be out there, but the team’s been fun to watch,” said Upton, who saw some of Friday’s 6-4 win against Philadelphia after finishing his third and final injury-rehab game with Triple-A Gwinnett. “Just the way we’re swinging the bats, the way we’re pitching, definitely coming up with some timely hits.”
Upton hit a majors-worst .177 with 10 doubles, eight homers, 20 RBIs and 102 strikeouts in 277 at-bats, and had seven stolen bases and a .266 OBP in 84 games before he was hurt July 12 attempting a sliding catch three days before the All-Star break.
After flying to Philadelphia on Saturday morning, he described why he felt better about some things in his hitting approach following his rehab stint at Gwinnett. He did one-on-one work there with Braves special assistant Lee Elia, who was the Tampa Bay Rays hitting coach in 2003-2005, when Upton was a top Rays prospect.
Upton has said several times this season that he wanted to get back to being the hitter he was at the beginning of his career with the Rays, when he hit balls to every field and had a much higher batting average than he has in recent seasons after morphing into primarily a pull-hitting power guy, albeit a slender one.
“He was in Tampa with me, and he had seen me when he was on the other side coaching against me,” Upton said of Elia, who was on Seattle’s coaching staff in 2008, Upton’s second full season in the majors. “He just put some things in my mind that I used to do. That’s what we worked on for three days. I picked up on them fairly quickly, and I think him and Walk (Braves hitting coach Greg Walker) are on the same page.”
What did they work on?
“Just some things that I had gotten away from, like the fact that I was able to really drive the ball the other way” earlier in his career, Upton said. “That’s something that I had been looking to do all year. A lot of times this year when I hit the ball that way (to right field) it was kind of soft or it’s a lazy pop fly. I was able to get some backspin on some balls to the opposite field (at Gwinnett). That’s what I wanted to accomplish all year.
“I feel pretty comfortable with that. It’s just a matter of going out there and letting it happen.”
In his first full season with Tampa Bay in 2007, Upton hit .300 with 24 homers and a .386 OBP. In 2008, he hit .273 with 37 doubles, nine homers, 44 stolen bases and a .383 OBP.
“Early in my career I hit the ball the other way so well that I had to learn how to pull,” he said. “I think over the years I learned how to pull and I lost what got me here. So I think now that I’ve learned how to pull and I’m starting to get back to hitting the ball the other way, it can only be better for me.”
Upton is also realistic about his statistics this season. With more than two-thirds of the season completed, he is almost certainly going to end up having the worst year of his career regardless of how he does in August and September.
“At this point, the numbers don’t matter,” he said. “We’re in a pretty good position right now. Our goal is to make it to the postseason. From here on out, anything I can do to make us better and to help us get there and keep winning ballgames, that’s what I’m going to do. That’s the main focus. The numbers mean nothing. The main thing is to win.”
Laird to 15-day DL: To open a spot for Upton, the Braves placed catcher Gerald Laird on the 15-day disabled list. He had a procedure Wednesday to remove a kidney stone and would not have been able to play for several more days anyway. The DL designation is retroactive to July 26, the day after Laird last played.
Gonzalez said Laird was scheduled to see the doctor again Monday and would join the team in Washington at some point during the three-day series against the Nationals that begins Monday. He won’t be eligible to play until Aug. 10.
Lineup shuffle: After starting all eight games during the winning streak before Saturday, Heyward was out of the lineup with Upton center field Saturday. Justin Upton started in right field and rookie Joey Terdoslavich in left.
Gonzalez said he wanted to give Heyward and catcher Brian McCann a rest, and that both would play Sunday in the series finale against Phillies lefty Cliff Lee. He also planned to play B.J. Upton again Sunday.
Heyward hit .344 with three homers in the past eight games, and was 10-for-25 with 11 runs and eight RBIs during a six-game hitting streak before Saturday.
McCann had started seven of the past eight games and had three homers and nine RBIs in his last four games before Saturday. He had batted .349 with eight doubles, nine homers and 27 RBIs in his past 29 games.
The Phillies started lefty John Lannan on Saturday, against whom Heyward was 1-for-11 and McCann 8-for-33.
C.J.'s in elite company: Chris Johnson entered Saturday with an 11-game hitting streak, including an eight-game streak of multi-hit games that matched the longest such streak in franchise history (since 1921) and was the longest by a Brave since the team moved to Atlanta in 1966.
Three other Braves had eight consecutive multi-hit games including Hank Aaron with the 1959 Milwaukee Braves, the last to do it before Johnson.
Johnson (.347) had also pushed his lead in the NL batting race to 17 points over the DL’d Yadier Molina (.330) before Saturday. In his past 28 games, Johnson hit .395 (45-for-114) with 10 extra-base hits (two homers), 17 RBIs and a .518 slugging percentage.
In his eight-game multi-hit streak he was 18-for-33 (.545) with three doubles, one homer and seven RBIs. It coincided with Braves’ eight-game winning streak before Saturday.
