ARLINGTON, Texas – It seemed there could be no further depths to which the Braves could sink after two wrenching defeats against the lowly Rangers, coughing up an eighth-inning lead Friday and giving up three unearned runs to blow a 2-0 lead in a 3-2 loss Saturday.
But they reached a new low Sunday by getting their doors blown off by the Rangers, who scored six runs on two-out hits in the fifth inning and hammered the Braves 10-3 to complete a three-game sweep, just the second series sweep of the season for Texas and its first since April.
“We’re not playing good baseball,” said manager Fredi Gonzalez, whose Braves stumbled through a 2-7 trip and fell to four games behind Pittsburgh (and 2 1/2 behind Milwaukee) for the second National League wild-card berth with only 13 games to play. “It’s a shame, we played 140-something games and then now in the last couple of weeks we’re not playing good baseball.”
It could certainly be argued that they’ve played not-very-good baseball for longer than that, and for other extended stretches throughout a wildly inconsistent season. But given the timing of this trip, and the fact of how it ended, this nine-game debacle was even worse than the Braves’ 0-8 trip in late July and early August.
Braves starter Mike Minor (6-11) got no help from his defense or bullpen on Sunday and was charged with eight hits, five runs and three walks in 4 2/3 innings, snapping his streak of six consecutive quality starts. He’s lost three starts in a row, and the Braves have scored zero runs while he was in those games.
They lost every series on the trip to Miami, Washington and Texas. Now the Braves have a 10-game homestand that starts Monday with three against the Nationals, whose magic number to clinch the NL East is down to four. Any combination of Nationals wins and Braves losses totaling four gives Washington the division title, after the Braves won it last season.
“We needed to win these last three games,” Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman said. “That’s what we had to do. We just put ourselves in a very, very tough spot. Now we have 13 games left and we’re four back, and we’ve got to go through one of the better teams in the National League here in the next three games.
“Luckily we get to play the team (Pittsburgh) that’s in the second-place wild card, hopefully we can still be in position to have a shot at them when we play them four games next week.”
The Braves play the Pirates in the final series of the 10-game homestand, after a three-game series with the Mets.
Before Sunday’s game, Braves third baseman Chris Johnson said they needed to win every remaining game. Then they played one of their worst games of the year against a team that had lost 92 games and 11 of its past 12 before the Braves arrived came to town.
The Braves, who started the day with a batting a majors-worst .194 in September, got five hits and one run in seven innings against Colby Lewis (10-13), who entered with 5.29 ERA. Lewis had been 1-8 with a 7.16 ERA in his previous 12 home starts.
The Rangers built a 10-0 lead before Ryan Doumit homered in the seventh inning for the Braves, who tacked on a couple more runs in the eighth against the Rangers bullpen after the outcome had long since become inevitable.
“It’s disappointing,” Minor said of the road trip, “but I still feel like we’re a good team, like we’re going to bounce back. There’s still some games left and we’re not out of it. I know everybody (on the team) thinks the same way. That we can come back from this. It just sucks that we just got swept.”
They got swept by an injury-riddled Texas team that’s using many players who’d be in Triple-A if not for the team’s overflowing disabled list.
Atlanta is 3-9 in September with 31 runs scored, including three runs or fewer in eight of 12 games.
“Not a real good feeling,” Gonzalez said of the trip. “It’s not the way we play baseball. You see one, two good at-bats here and there, but up and down the line we haven’t really put anything together. Our pitching staff – if we don’t pitch, we may not even win a game (on the trip). Today we didn’t pitch, but the last two nights we pitched and lost one-run games.”
For Minor, it was the first time the left-hander lasted fewer than six innings or allowed more than three runs in seven starts since making some adjustments after having his rotation turn skipped once in early August.
“I still think he pitched well,” Freeman said. “It’s tough to pitch well when you have to make a perfect pitch, when as an offense we’re not scoring any runs. It puts a lot of pressure on the pitchers, and that’s not something you want to do every single day. Our pitchers have to pitch a perfect game pretty much right now. Hopefully us going home, maybe we’ll get some energy and be able to score some runs at home.”
The Rangers’ only previous sweep was at Oakland April 21-23, back when the team had a lineup that featured Prince Fielder and Shin-Soo Choo, and a pitching staff led by Yu Darvish.
Those three were among the many Rangers to suffer season-ending injuries as the wheels fell off the team’s wagon, sending them into a spiral in which they posted a 19-57 record between June 17 and Thursday, before the Braves arrived.
They jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the second inning Sunday when Adam Rosales drew a one-out walk and No. 9 hitter Michael Choice got a two-out hit to left-center field that Justin Upton misplayed into what was ruled a triple. The ball bounced off Upton’s thigh caromed into center field.
The Rangers added a run on three hits in the fourth inning, then blew the game wide open in the fifth. After Minor retired the first two batters, he gave up a double, a broken-bat RBI single and a walk to the next three.
Reliever David Hale was brought in at that point and gave up hits to each of the first four batters he faced, including a two-run double by Choice and an RBI double for former Braves shortstop prospect Elvis Andrus.
“I just wasn’t really executing my pitches, I guess,” Hale said. “A couple of them I did, and they just put good swings on them. Strung together four straight hits. I mean, it’s going to happen. Unfortunately it happened then, because I would’ve liked to have gotten Mike out of that inning and kept the game close.
“I’ve avoided a bad one for a while, and unfortunately it came there.”
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