Braves offense falters in loss to the Mets
Atlanta Braves starting pitcher Tim Hudson looked good over seven innings, but the New York Mets took advantage of what he gave them and beat the Braves 4-2 on Thursday.
The Mets knew they would need to get ahead of Hudson early and did just that with four hits and a little help in the form of an error by Omar Infante to go up 2-0 after the first inning.
“You have to get to that guy early if you’re going to get to him at all,” Mets' third base man David Wright said. “When he settles down, he gets stronger and stronger.”
Brian McCann hit home run No. 20 and third in four days in the second inning to close the gap to 2-1, but otherwise the Braves offense was relatively quiet on the day. Melky Cabrera managed to get to second base in the fifth inning, but otherwise the Braves did not get a runner into scoring position until the eighth inning when they scored one run to close the gap to 4-2
“Spotting them two in the first wasn’t really the way we wanted to get things going,” Hudson said. “That’s not what you want to do against a front-line starter (Johan Santana).”
Hudson went seven innings giving up eight hits, one walk, and four runs (three earned), while striking out four to earn his first loss in nine starts. Earlier in the day he was named the NL Pitcher of the Month for August. He had beaten the Mets the last four times he had faced them.
Santana only allowed three hits and one earned run, the home run by Brian McCann, while striking out three and walking one in five innings of work. He was pulled after five innings even though he had only thrown 63 pitches due to a strained pectoral muscle.
With the loss the Braves record fell to 78-56 on the season. Their lead on the Philadelphia Phillies dropped to two games with the Phillies winning on Thursday over the Colorado Rockies.
Atlanta will start a six game road trip on Friday with the first game of a three game series with the Florida Marlins. Scheduled to take the mound Friday for the Braves is Kenshin Kawakami; Andrew Miller is set to start for the Marlins.
Kawakami is 1-9 on the season and 1-4 with a 5.55 ERA in five games against the Marlins. Miller has spent most of the season in the minors, but was recently called up in August.
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