Morning Chop: Atlanta Braves News 4/10/14
Good Morning Braves Fans!
Here’s the boxscore from last night’s 4-3 win over the visiting New York Mets, where Ervin Santana made his regular season team debut, and pitched an absolute gem! As you can see, the bats also came alive, which was something the Braves desperately needed. Enjoy the news!
| Batting | AB | R | H | RBI | BB | SO | BA | OPS | Pit | Str | A | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jason Heyward RF | 4 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | .188 | .653 | 24 | 17 | 0 | HR |
| Andrelton Simmons SS | 4 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .321 | .680 | 12 | 8 | 4 | |
| Freddie Freeman 1B | 4 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 | .407 | 1.219 | 19 | 10 | 3 | |
| Chris Johnson 3B | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .258 | .724 | 13 | 9 | 0 | |
| Justin Upton LF | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | .200 | .473 | 15 | 10 | 0 | |
| Dan Uggla 2B | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | .194 | .446 | 17 | 12 | 0 | |
| Evan Gattis C | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | .211 | .632 | 8 | 8 | 0 | 2B |
| Jordan Schafer CF | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | .000 | .000 | 15 | 9 | 0 | |
| Ervin Santana P | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | .333 | .667 | 8 | 7 | 3 | |
| Jordan Walden P | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |||||
| Craig Kimbrel P | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |||||
| Team Totals | 33 | 4 | 9 | 4 | 0 | 8 | .273 | .667 | 131 | 90 | 10 |
| Pitching | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | HR | ERA | BF | Pit | Str | Ctct | StS | StL | GB | FB | LD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ervin Santana, W (1-0) | 8 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 0.00 | 27 | 88 | 65 | 38 | 8 | 19 | 12 | 9 | 7 |
| Jordan Walden | 0.1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 9.00 | 3 | 17 | 10 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Craig Kimbrel, S (4) | 0.2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 2.45 | 5 | 17 | 11 | 6 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Team Totals | 9 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 9 | 0 | 3.00 | 35 | 122 | 86 | 49 | 13 | 24 | 13 | 11 | 9 |
via Miami Herald
Braves get a Santana lift in victory
BY CARROLL ROGERS
THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION
ATLANTA — Ervin Santana may have missed pitching the Braves home-opener by one day, but as far as introductions go, Wednesday night’s was hard to beat.
The former All-Star pitcher for the Angels who signed a one-year $14.1 million contract to rescue the Braves from a rash of elbow injuries pitched eight shutout innings to in a 4-3 win over the Mets. How do you do?
He was dominant for 88 pitches before handing the ball to the Braves bullpen in the ninth, when things got interesting.
Jordan Walden walked the leadoff batter Eric Young and gave up a one-out single, turning matters over to closer Craig Kimbrel. Kimbrel walked Curtis Granderson on five pitches to load the bases. Then after striking out Lucas, Kimbrel gave up back-to-back run scoring singles – first to Juan Lagares and then to Travis d’Arnaud, to allow the Mets to pull within 4-3.
Kimbrel restored a little order by striking out Ruben Tejada for his fourth save in four chances this season.
A more, let’s say, intimate crowd of 19,608 at Turner Field got the better show Wednesday night, the night after the Hank Aaron pre-game pageantry. Santana and Jason Heyward were competing to see could make the best entrance. For a while there, it was a close call.
Santana threw his first 20 pitches in an Atlanta Braves uniform for strikes, taking “pounding the zone” to new heights, after Heyward snapped an 0-for-22 streak with a leadoff home run to give his new teammate a 1-0 lead.
Painting the Black
(B.J.) Upton No Good
The Braves and Nationals played a three-game series over the weekend, and obscured by the obvious storyline—the two best teams in the National League East meeting for the first time this season—was a subplot for sadists: Just how many strikeouts would B.J. Upton, who entered the series with a 44 percent whiff rate, tally against a Nationals staff that fanned 39 batters in its first 28 innings? The answer, it turned out, was five times in 13 tries; an improvement over Upton’s first series, when he struck out in half his 12 plate appearances. He then started the next series with this sequence:
Ervin Santana: Sleeper Cy Young candidate
The Atlanta Braves might have signed Ervin Santana out of dire straits when Kris Medlenand Brandon Beachy both went down in spring training with season-ending Tommy John surgeries, but this wasn’t a typical desperate act of digging around in cemeteries to find some retread veteran who had been good four or five years previous.
No, this was a guy who ranked ninth in the American League with his 3.24 ERA with the Royals in 2013. Santana has been inconsistent throughout his career, with three seasons where his ERA was over 5.00, three seasons where he pitched over 200 innings with an ERA under 3.50, and some other seasons in between. That pattern, plus the fact that a team would lose a draft pick for signing him, led to lukewarm interest in Santana’s free agency this winter. He didn’t sign until March 12 and had to settle for a one-year, $14.1 million contract; Atlanta also forfeited its first-round pick in the June draft.