ATLANTA -- Far from being the center of the sunny south, Atlanta has felt more like Seattle this summer with gloomy gray skies hanging low overhead and sporadic rains peppering the city every day for the last month.
For a while that appeared to be the perfect metaphor for the Braves on the weekend before the All Star Break. Wounded and weary with all three outfield starters -- Jason Heyward, B.J. Upton and Justin Upton -- sitting out with injuries along with Jordan Shafer (stress fracture to the ankle) and Evan Gattis (oblique strain), this looked like a team ready to limp into the All-Star break.
But the clouds parted on Saturday with the dark and foreboding stuff going around Turner Field without so much as a sprinkle. Brightness abounded as the Braves cobbled together five runs on 11 hits to beat the Reds 5-2.
Here are three cuts from the Braves home victory on Saturday afternoon.
1. Starting pitching is crucial for an injured team
One of the unassailable truths of baseball is that good pitching heals a lot of wounds. For a team as banged up as the Braves, solid work on the mound is a must.
Mike Minor looked shaky early. He gave up two runs on five hits in the first two innings and looked uncomfortable doing it. Minor pitched out of a spot of bother in the first -- giving up two hits and a walk to load the bases before striking out Jay Bruce and getting Todd Frazier out on a hard-hit ball right to Chris Johnson at third base.
But the troubles continued as Minor gave up a fly-ball triple to Zack Cozart in the second – one of those looping shots that Heyward or the Uptons would have likely fielded for an easy out. Four pitches later the Reds put the first run on the board when Corky Miller pushed a sacrifice grounder to second base to score Cozart.
One batter after that, Chris Heisey hit a shot to left that bounced off the wall for a ground-rule double, so close to a home run that Dusty Baker trotted onto the field to argue before the umpire crew took a second look at the video. It didn't matter. The next batter up, Shin-Soo Choo, laced a single to right center to score Heisey and make the score 2-0.
Minor threw 51 pitches through the first two innings and it appeared as though it might be a short afternoon of work. But after the second, he looked virtually unhittable. He gave up one hit from the top of the third inning to the bottom of the seventh and threw a total of 102 pitches, 67 of them strikes. His fastball moved up at the plate and his slider moved down, a perfect combination.
"I felt the good the whole time," Minor said afterward. "I felt like I was throwing good pitches and I didn’t really do anything different. I've been in that (bases-loaded) situation a lot this year and battled through it. This was just one of those times where I had to do it again."
Minor also came through on offense. After Brian McCann got the Braves on the board in the fourth inning with a solo home run to right field off Reds’ starter Homer Bailey -- McCann’s 12th homer of the year and his second in his many games -- Minor gave his team the lead in the fifth with a double over the third-base bag that scored Reed Johnson and Joey Terdoslavich.
"I always feel like I’m going to get a hit when I go up there," Minor said with a wry smile. Then he admitted, "No, I thought it was a fastball, but it was a slider."
Dan Uggla added an insurance home run in the seventh, a shot he said, "was about time," in coming. It was Uggla’s 17th homerun of the season even though he is batting only .199.
"Danny giving us a late home run to give us a three-run lead, man that was big," manager Fredi Gonzalez said. "Wow, what a great outing for us."
That summed up the feelings of every Braves fan in attendance.
2. You never know who is going to come through
No one would have guessed that the Braves outfield -- none of whom were regular starters and one of whom, Joey Terdoslavich, was making his first major league start ever -- would get seven hits off Reds pitchers.
That is what happened on Saturday with Terdoslavich and Reed Johnson going two for four and Jose Constanza going three for four with an RBI.
"Good things happen when you put the ball in play," Gonzalez said afterward. "Reed Johnson had some great at-bats, Terdo had some great at-bats ... and then it seems like every time we’ve brought (Constanza) up in certain situations in the last three or four years, he kind of energizes us. He's a guy that, when we needed a spark, he brought that to us."
While none of the injuries to Heyward or the Uptons are listed as serious, Gonzalez felt great about the production from the new guys.
"The old skipper (Bobby Cox) used to tell me you never know when you’re going to win a game or when you're going to lose," he said. "I think some guys in Vegas lost a lot of money today when they saw our lineup and the guys we ran out there.
"But you can’t handicap heart. Putting the ball in play is a good trait that these guys have."
It also speaks well of the Braves minor-league system, especially with players like Constanza and Terdoslavich stepping in and have an immediate impact.
"If you look at our roster for a very long time it seems like there have always been three or four of those guys that we bring up in the course of the year," Gonzalez said. "You go back to when (Brian) McCann broke in and (Jeff) Francoeur, they came up in the middle of the year and sparked us. Bobby (Cox) was not afraid to put them in, and we will keep that tradition going."
3. The All-Star Break couldn’t come at a better time
Even with the new outfield and the pitching staff coming through on Saturday, these Braves need to find a nice easy chair and curl up under an afghan. Not only are they injured -- if you walked into the clubhouse and said, "How was the flight from Durham?" four or five guys might answer -- many of them look tired.
Despite his home run Uggla looked exhausted after the game. "I felt like crap yesterday," he said. "Just happy to get a slider and make contact."
He and a good number of his teammates will be just as happy to have a few days of rest next week as they recharge for a run in the second half of the season.
