The Atlanta Braves took an 8-3 loss against the San Diego Padres in game two of their four-game midweek series.
After an RBI single from San Diego’s Ty France to drive Fernando Tatis Jr. in for the first run, the Braves answered back with an RBI triple from Jim Jarvis to bring in Mauricio Dubón and Brewer Hicklen. This gave the Braves a 2-1 lead.
The Padres wouldn’t let that lead go on for too much longer as they responded with five more of their own, and set the tone with a homerun from Manny Machado in the top of the sixth inning for a 6-2 lead.
Hoping to clinch a come-from-behind victory like they did the previous night, another run from Jarvis off a balk gave the Braves one more run to advance to three total. It was too late, however, as they couldn’t muster a surge of consecutive runs to end the night.
The Padres finished with a 474-foot two-run homer from Tatis Jr. in the top of the eighth inning to seal the deal with an 8-3 win.
The focus shifts a bit to pitching. In Reynaldo López’s 10th start and 23rd appearance of the season, his consistency has been one of his upsides. Tonight showed differently (4.1 IP/ 9 H/ 5 ER/ 3 BB/ 6 K/ 2 HR). It doesn’t help that his last start against the St. Louis Cardinals also resulted in a shaky stat line.
Jr Ritchie came in to relieve López, pitching through 3.2 innings, but gave up three runs of his own with four total strikeouts.
Though pitching was a major aspect in the loss, the blame can’t all be put on that area. The bats were not ready today, and only Jarvis was awake to knock in some runs for the night.
The Braves will have to pull through in tomorrow’s start to build the momentum back and avoid dropping the series as they did in June with a clean sweep to send Atlanta out of Petco Park.
The offense looked solid coming after the break. Now it’s just consistency with execution that’ll have to stay in place.
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