Three Cuts: Emotions run high as Braves jump on slumping Nationals
ATLANTA -- What's a rivalry without some heat?
Andrelton Simmons slid into third base, where Yunel Escobar waited to apply the tag. But the Braves shortstop came in high, his foot hitting Escobar's glove hand and knocking the ball out.
The Nationals would get their retribution in the seventh inning Monday night as Rafael Martin hit Simmons with an 89-mph two-seam fastball. Atlanta's Jonny Gomes stood on the dirt outside the dugout, waiting for things to escalate.
It didn't -- though leaving the dugout did get Gomes ejected -- as the Braves added to their lead in dumping Washington 8-4 and dealing it a sixth straight loss. But keep in mind, these National League East rivals still have two more games to play at Turner Field in their first clashes of 2015.
"I kind of expecting it coming," Simmons said of the seventh-inning incident. "It didn't bother me that much. Just glad things didn't get out of hand and we kept playing baseball and we ended up winning the game."
Like the benches in this meeting, you've been warned.
From Freddie Freeman's productive and short night to Eric Stults' first win as a Brave and a Dan Uggla sighting, taking three cuts from Atlanta's win:
His night ended with Freeman standing along the first base line, the All-Star's hands on his head after he bounced his batting helmet off the ground. From across the diamond, third base umpire John Hirschbeck ejected him.
Freeman said afterward he told Hirschbeck the call wasn't right, but stressed he didn't make it personal.
"I was just walking toward first base and I just told him ... I didn't say 'You're bad,' I said 'That's bad' a few times and (Hirschbeck) started pointing at me," Freeman said. "I kind of looked in the dugout and I heard him say 'Shut your f'n mouth.' So that's when I kind of looked at him and just (waved him off). Once I raised my hands is when he kicked me out."
Freeman said he had never heard an umpire say anything like that to a play before and made a point to stress there were young fans in the crowd.
"There's some kids in the stands and that's just not nice what he said," Freeman said.
But before that fifth-inning exit, Freeman was back to his old dominance against Nationals pitching, going 2-for-3 with singles in the first and third innings.
Considering Freeman's success against Washington, against whom he has a .323/.376/.500 slash line in 73 career games -- his best average of any team he's faced more than 24 times -- and the fact that he's hit .333 against Doug Fister in six at-bats, none of Monday's success should come as any surprise.
Still, the first baseman's recent play didn't set the tone for him to have his way with the Nationals.
Freeman hit .136 in the last six games, going 3 for 22, and two of those hits came in Sunday's loss to the Phillies. But clearly, history outweighs anything that's happened in the last week.
As for another bit of history, that was Freeman's first ejection since Sept. 15, 2014. After a strkeout. Against the Nationals.
Clearly, Freeman believes he earned that one more than this early exit.
After giving up four eared runs in five innings to the Marlins on April 15, manager Fredi Gonzalez remarked "I don't think we've seen the Stults that we want to see."
He got it against the Nationals.
Stults yielded two runs and four hits in 6 1/3 innings with three strikes and three walks. After the third inning, in which he gave up a ground-rule double to Danny Espinosa and an RBI double by Ryan Zimmerman three batters later, Stults allowed just two of the next 15 Nationals to reach safely (both on walks).
"I thought Stultsy pitched a great baseball game today," said manager Fredi Gonzalez. "That's what he can do for us, a guy who's done it a lot of times and we start there and usually a good pitching performance gets rewarded."
Unlike the last time out, when Stults gave up one run and four hits over five innings against the Mets, the bullpen backed up his effort and gave him his first victory since Sept. 22.
Stults (1-1) has said it takes him three to four starts to get his stamina up, and after throwing 103 pitches against the Mets, he tossed 96 against the Nationals. In his first two outings, against New York on April 10 he threw 58 pitches over five innings and was at 85 over five innings vs. the Marlins on April 15.
"I just think for me it's going out and throwing strikes and trying to keep guys off balance," Stults said of the change. "That's something I feel like I've been able to do a little better, is keep guys off balance and keep them in between pitches, where the first two starts, they were jumping on fastball because I was throwing a lot more fastballs."
Dan Uggla spent four seasons in a Braves uniform, making an All-Star Game and setting a franchise record with a 33-game hitting streak.
But he also struck out 356 times, including 168 times in 2012 and 171, which was an Atlanta record that has since been broken.
Be it an end to his run in Atlanta that didn't go as planned, that he reemerged at Turner Field as a National or that the Braves are still paying him $12.692 million this season, Uggla was met with boos as he trotted out to second base in the bottom of the fifth inning.
Taking the place of Danny Espinosa, who was moving to third after Escobar injured in hand after the meeting with Simmons' foot, Uggla again manned a spot he played for 479 games.
It was his sixth-inning at-bat, though, that may have generated the biggest cheers of the night.
After taking a first-pitch curveball from Stults for a ball, Uggla fouled off a two-seam fastball, then swung through an 89-mph four-seamer to fall behind 1-2. He evened the count at 2-2, but then watched a slider that was called for a third strike.
To be fair, Uggla followed with an RBI triple in his next at-bat in the eighth inning, then scored on a passed ball. That was his first triple since June 28, 2013 when he was, of course, wearing a Braves uniform.
Uggla got some redemption, but it's been another trying year for the three-time All-Star, who is hitting .135 with two RBI and three extra-base hits. He's also struck out 11 times, a 27.5 rate, which is below the MLB average of 20.0, but he had a 38 percent rate in his 48 games with the Braves last season.
Follow Cory McCartney on Twitter @coryjmccartney
