Braves lose in unbelievable fashion.

Usually when your pitcher is pitching amazing, setting career highs in strikeouts and seemingly unhitable, you win. Well not last night, the Atlanta Braves fell to the Florida Marlins, 4-3, despite a Cy-Young type performance from Tim Hudson. Hudson was dealing through eight innings with no troubles from the Marlins sluggers, his sinker was fantastic, he was hitting all of his spots and he didn’t throw a ball above the knees of the batters from majority of the game. He had 12 strikeouts(a career high) and walked no one. But all that unraveled as soon as he stepped foot on the diamond in the ninth inning. He started off by giving up a single up the middle to Miguel Cabrera, the a single by Cody Ross to shortstop, that if Renteria hadn’t had the range of a dead penguin, he would have gotten it or at least stop it and still have time to make a throw to first, then yet another single, this one by Aaron Boone to load the bases.

“We got dominated for absolutely two hours, and then win in the last 15 or 20 minutes.” said Marlin’s 1st baseman, Aaron Boone.

At that point, Bobby Cox had seen enough and decided to go to our closer, Bob Wickman. Wickman had only blown one save as a Brave. Wickman inherited a pretty bad situation, bases loaded with no outs, but I had faith in our “beer-chugging, meat-eating, Superstar”. But like most things I believe in (I’ll marry Jessica Alba, or at least a drunken mistake, beggars can’t be choosers) but back to the game. On his first pitch, Miguel Olivo hit a 2-run double scoring both Cabrera and Ross. The Joe Borchard was intentionally walked and Josh Willingham hit for Henry Owens and he struck out after drawing a full count. Next up was the speedy centerfielder, Alfredo Amezaga, and Amezaga hit a blooper, maybe 80 feet, but it was deep enough to score Aaron Boone. So just like that, our 3-0 lead was depleted and we were no tied, with just one out. And Wickman’s very next pitch ended the game, it was a wild pitch that got past Brian McCann and scored Miguel Olivo, who started the scoring parade with his double.

“All I had to do was get three outs before they scored three runs,” Wickman said. “For me, it’s the most disappointing loss of the season for us,” Hudson said. “I felt as good as I have all year. But it stings that we didn’t win the ballgame.”

So we lost a game that appeared to be an easy win, Kelly Johnson led off the game with a homerun, then Chipper followed with his seventh of the season and then in the second inning Matt Diaz finally broke out of his slump with a solo homer and then take into count the amazing pitching by Hudson, we should’ve won this game, but alas we didn’t and we are still a half of a game behind the hated Mets.

WP: Henry Owens(1-0)
LP: Bob Wickman(1-1)

HR: ATL- Kelly Johnson(5), Chipper Jones(7) and Matt Diaz(2)

The Braves next game is against the Colorado Rockies on Friday at 9:05 PM ET. The Braves have

Yep, Redman still sucks but the Braves pull out the win.

It was a known fact that the out come to Tuesday night’s game between the Atlanta Braves and the Florida Marlins partly, well no, all because of the pitching match-up. The Marlins had Rick Vanden Hurk, a 21-year old rookie who has never pitched above single A before having to come up due to injuries and the Braves had Mark Redman, a shitty pitcher that makes Tim Wakefield look like Joel “103″ Zumaya. We would be better off using a tee as our 5th starter, we’d probably give up less runs. Vanden Hurk failed to get out of the 2nd inning and Redman was finally pulled in the 4th, and at the time the score was 6-6.

The offense started early for both teams, the Braves jumped out to a 4-0 lead thanks to an Andruw Jones RBI single that scored Kelly Johnson, a Jeff Francoeur RBI double and a Scott Thorman 2-run single. Later in the second inning, Brian McCann walked in a run and then Francoeur chipped in with an RBI single. Our other runs came in the 6th inning when Brian McCann hit a sacrifice fly that scored Johnson and in the ninth when Pete Orr of all people knocked in two runs on a single, Kelly Johnson and Edgar Renteria also chipped in with back-to-back RBI singles. For the Marlins almost all of their offense came from their resident “Brave Killer”, the commander, Cody Ross. Ross hit a three-run homerun in the first inning and later in the third inning he hit a 2-run double off the top of the wall. Ross accounted for 5 of the Marlins 6 runs.

“I turned to [umpire] Tim McClelland and said, `This could be 36-36 after nine innings,”‘ Francoeur said.

The big story of this game was the Braves’ bullpen. The Bullpen went a total of 6 innings, giving up just 2 hits and no runs. They also walked just one batter while striking out seven. In fact, Tyler “Kali” Yates needed just 9 pitches to finish off a scoreless 7th inning. The “Thunder from Down Under”, Peter Moylan, was great. His submarine pitching style was good enough to hold the Marlins to three scoreless innings, three strike outs, just one walk and only one hit. Moylan also lowered his ERA to a respectable 3.86 while getting his first career Major League win.

“The ‘pen has been excellent all year long,” manager Bobby Cox said. “We’re going through too many pitchers right now, so I’ve got to piece the game together and still try to win.”

The next Braves’ game is tonight at 7:05 PM ET against the Florida Marlins. We have our Ace going, Tim Hudson and the Marlins have one of their many talented youngsters, Scott Olsen, going. I like our odds.

WP: Peter Moylan(1-0)
LP: Matt Lindstrom(0-1)

HR: FLA- Cody Ross(3)

Braves can’t complete the comeback, fall to the Marlins

The Florida Marlin’s ace, Dontrelle Willis, was in a hurry to finish the game because he was about to become a father for the first time. Willis wasn’t completely on his game like he usually is, for obvious reasons, but he was still good enough to beat, at the time, the NL East leading Atlanta Braves. Willis went 6 2/3 innings, 3 K’s, 3 BB’s and gave up 5 runs(all earned), he also went 2-4 from the plate including a triple. Brave’s starter, Kyle Davies completely fell apart in the 5th inning, first giving up a 3-run homer to Miguel Olivo and then a 2-run shot by Dan Uggla, who has now hit 3 in the past two games.

“Even in the heat of battle, they understand the situation,” Willis said. “They were like, ‘Man, you’re a tough guy to be out here tonight.’ I was like, ‘Nah, just stupid.’”

This was probably Davies worst outings of the season, as he was barely able to even throw a strike. He finished with throwing 90 pitches, 46 of which were balls. He also was only able to go 4 innings, 3 K’s, 6 BB’s and he gave up 5 runs(all earned). The Braves were quickly down 8-2, they had had to go to the bullpen early, and we started Chris Woodward. So things were not looking too good. But Peter Moylan and Mike Gonzalez both had scoreless outings and we made a comeback, a comeback that wasn’t quite enough. In the 6th inning, Jeff Francoeur knocked Willis out of the game when he took him deep for his 4th homerun of the season. Frenchy had a huge game by the way, he went 4-5 with 4 RBI’s and that solo HR off of Willis.

“It’s good to know we kept fighting back,” Francoeur said. “If we had one more inning, I think we would have won the ballgame.”

In the 7th inning, Andruw Jones’ sacrifice fly scored Woodward and cut the lead to four and then the lead was cut to just three when Jeff Francoeur singled and scored Edgar Renteria. In the 9th inning, Chipper Jones went deep for the 6th time this season and followed behind him were back-to-back doubles by Andruw and Frenchy cut the lead to one. Brian McCann pinched hit next, he didn’t play to rest his bruised hand, he’s expected to play tonight though, but he struck out on a 3-2 count to young lefty, Renyel Pinto, who picked up his second career save. The Met’s sadly won last night and regained the top spot in NL East, but no worries, they’ll lose tonight against the Rockies, hopefully.

WP: Dontrelle Willis(4-1)
LP: Kyle Davies(0-1)
SV: Renyel Pinto(1)

HR: ATL- Chipper Jones(6), Jeff Francoeur(4) FLA- Miguel Olivo(1), Dan Uggla(4)