Day baseball in Chicago on a sunny Friday afternoon. Unfortunately, the Braves continue to make the Cubs’ rotation look like a collection of Cy Young candidates.
If there’s a silver lining to take from today’s Atlanta Braves loss to the Chicago Cubs, it’s that Mike Foltynewicz persevered into the seventh inning despite having difficulty with command, with the mound, and with the Cubs in general.
Unfortunately, the ‘critical omission’ for the Braves today was their failure to score. Atlanta just can’t seem to get much going on offense lately, it seems (save for the double-header against Philly). But against the Cubs, the power-outage is especially notable as their starters take on the look of Aces.
To wit…
- Jon Lester, July 17:Â 1 ER, 3 hits over 7 innings.
- John Lackey, July 18:Â 1 ER, 5 hits over 5 innings.
- Mike Montgomery, July 19:Â 1 ER, 2 hits over 6 innings.
- Kyle Hendricks, August 31:Â 1 ER (2 runs), 5 hits over 6.2 innings.
- John Lackey, Sept. 1:Â 0 Runs, 3 hits over 7 innings.
That’s a total of 31.2 innings and 4 earned runs. That translates to a 1.15 ERA. Brutal.
Lackey was every bit of that today – retiring the last 16 hitters he faced. He changed speeds, locations… everything to keep the Braves off balance.
Folty Fought Through It
There’s really no shame in going 6.1 innings while giving up just 2 runs. Foltynewicz only yielded 5 hits himself, but as evidenced by the 3 walks and 2 strikeouts, he wasn’t quite himself either.
Folty started strong with a 1-2-3 first inning, but early on in the second inning, he slipped on the mound – which was covered in diamond dry like icing on a cake. From that point onward, it was like Mike was simply out of sync. He was overthrowing, he was all around the plate (missing on all sides of the strike zone box) and his general efficiency was lacking as the pitch count rose rapidly.
Still, there was enough ‘stuff’ to keep the Cub hitters off balance for most of the day, and in the end, Folty clearly did enough to win.
If only the offense had done its part.
The wind was mercifully blowing in, but that didn’t matter too much for the Braves since they rarely either drove the ball or elevated it… much less doing both at the same time.
The newly returned Rio Ruiz, perhaps sensing that this is now his last, best chance to make an impression roped 2 hits – one off John Lackey, the other off of Pedro Stroup.
Ender Inciarte – stop me if you’ve heard this before – got another hit. Dansby Swanson did as well. That was it… two singles and a double.
The Scoring
The Cubs’ first run came in the 3rd inning on an infield swinging bunt from Kyle Schwarber that scored Javier Baez (seriously). A Braves’ challenge on the call at first base was heard to no avail. It wasn’t a misplay situation, but just good hustle from the Cubs on both ends.
In the 4th, a double by Anthony Rizzo was followed by an Ian Happ single to bring home run number 2.
A.J. Minter successfully extricated his team from the 7th inning, stranding a runner on third. The home half of the 8th inning was nearly a disaster as the bases were walked full by Jose Ramirez and Rex Brothers before Brothers rallied by striking out Alex Avila and Jason Heyward to end the threat.
Wade Davis pitched the 9th, getting his 28th consecutive save without blowing one. No drama once Ozzie Albies (walk) was erased on a double play grounder off Freddie Freeman‘s bat.
Atlanta gets 2 more cracks at the Cubs in the sunshine this weekend – we’ll see if they can figure out why the bats are malfunctioning.