— It is hard to explain the Rome Braves’ woes while playing at State Mutual Stadium, and Saturday proved to be another puzzling result in a tough start to the season.
Rome experienced a familiar, yet unfortunate, feeling as it lost to the Augusta GreenJackets 3-0 due mostly to stout Augusta pitching, led by starter Michael Connolly.
The Braves are now 2-7 in their last nine home games and 6-15 overall.
“Yeah, it certainly is just baseball,” Rome manager Randy Ingle said. “It doesn’t matter where you’re at. We have played good at home sometimes, and we have played good on the road. It’s just worked out we have won more on the road. But tonight, it was about not generating runs.”
Rome is 16-26 for the season and sits 10½ games out of first in the South Atlantic League’s Southern Division.
It doesn’t seem to be any aspect of State Mutual that has caused the .285 winning percentage at home, but, as Ingle said, its just a string of bad games. This time the team only registered four hits, with half of them coming from outfielder Ray-Patrick Didder.
The lack of scoring in Saturday’s game may be more puzzling for Braves fans than the home losses. Not only had Rome won four of its previous six games coming into Saturday, but the team also had scored five runs or more in six of its last seven games.
It was Connolly’s first win of the season, going six innings with four hits allowed, two walks and three strikeouts. His arsenal of different pitches kept most Rome players off-balance and led to many groundouts and fly outs.
“My approach at the plate was not to try and do too much, because he’s got some good off-speed pitches and a good fastball,” Didder said. “Just had to try and put the ball in play.”
The lack of run support killed a great outing from Touki Toussaint, who went six innings with only three runs and five hits allowed. Ingle said he has improved greatly since coming to Rome last season and has “big-league stuff” once he gets going.
Augusta got its first three runs the way Ingle wishes his team would — with two outs. In the third, Lucius Fox got a single with none on and two outs, stole a base and was brought home on a Jalen Miller single.
The sixth inning was even more troubling, beginning with a seemingly harmless Dylan Davis walk with two outs. Miguel Gomez brought that run in on a double down the right field line and then he scored after a single and wild pitch.
“They got the two-out hits they needed for runs and we didn’t get them,” Ingle said. “We hit some balls hard, but they seemed to go right at them. Just one of those games where we couldn’t generate anything.”
The GreenJackets added on one more score in the top of the eighth when Davis hit a homerun to right field. After Connolly, the Braves did not fare better against reliever Tyler Cyr, who retired all nine batters he faced to end the game.
Rome will get a chance to split the four-game series today when it plays the GreenJackets at 2 p.m.
Simmons rehabs
Pitcher Shae Simmons, who only 14 months ago was preparing for a season with the Braves’ major league club in Atlanta, threw a scoreless first inning as part of a rehab assignment. Simmons underwent Tommy John surgery last year and pitched with AAA Gwinnett last week. He allowed no hits and struck out one on Saturday.
“He just went in and threw strikes. He got an easy inning of work,” Ingle said. “He threw the ball well tonight, so that’s a great sign for the Atlanta Braves organization.”
The 25-year-old is expected to pitch for Rome again this afternoon in the series finale with Augusta.