The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Braves blow leads in ninth, 10th to Pirates
Marte’s walk-off homer ices ‘sloppy’ day for bullpen, defense.
PITTSBURGH — For most of Sunday afternoon, it looked as if the Braves would overcome another sloppy defensive effort against the Pirates with just enough offense.
Then they piled more bullpen troubles on top of yet more defensive blunders and suddenly the Pirates were on their way to the sweep with a 6-5 win.
The Braves blew a one-run lead in the ninth inning and then blew another in the 10th. The final blow was Starling Marte’s two-run, walk-off homer against reliever Jose Ramirez but plenty had gone wrong before that.
The Braves (1-5) allowed three unearned runs after they’d done the same in a 6-4 loss to the Pirates (3-2) on Saturday night.
“We had the game right there again,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said. “You can’t give away that many runs, that many extra outs and expect to win games. Simple as that.”
The Braves staked Julio Teheran to a 2-0 lead in the first inning before giving up two unearned runs in the fourth that tied the game. Home runs by first baseman Freddie Freeman in the fifth and seventh innings put the Braves ahead 4-2 before inept defense led to another unearned Pirates run in the eighth.
Even after all of that, the Braves gave the ball to closer Jim Johnson with a 4-3 lead in the ninth. Johnson immediately got into trouble when Gregory Polanco led off with a single and Josh Bell followed with a walk.
The Braves caught a break when Jordy Mercer popped out on a bunt attempt for the first out. But Johnson walked David Freese to load the bases for Francisco Cervelli, who hit a slow-rolling ground ball to the left side of the infield.
Third baseman Adonis Garcia scooped the ball and tossed to second baseman Brandon Phillips for the out. Polanco scored, though, when Freese broke up the potential double play. The Braves lost a challenge on the slide rule at second base.
“It wasn’t our best game, obviously, on a lot of different fronts,” Johnson said. “Obviously, I didn’t throw enough strikes (and) put us in a bad spot. We almost got out of it but when you get in those situations, you are trying to throw as many strikes as possible. If you look at the line, they only got one hit and scored a run. That’s kind of sloppy on my end.”
Johnson was far from the only culprit.
A day after the Braves had two errors and three passed balls, they committed two more errors and a passed ball.
The defensive problems started in the fourth inning after Marte led off with a flared single against Teheran. With Andrew McCutchen at bat, Marte wandered far off first base but catcher Tyler Flowers’ pick-off throw to Freeman was high and Marte scrambled back safely to the bag.
Later in McCutchen’s same at-bat, Teheran caught Marte far off the bag again. He threw to Freeman but the first baseman dropped the ball. Marte advanced to second on the error and scored when Josh Bell smacked a hard line drive off Freeman’s glove for a two-out double. Bell then scored on Mercer’s single.
The two unearned runs tied the game after the Pirates had done little against Teheran up to that point. Freeman’s 10th career multiple-homer game wasn’t enough to offset the poor defense and bullpen.
“We are giving them extra outs, starting with me,” Freeman said. “I needed to catch that ball. That’s a pickoff right there and they ended up scoring two runs that inning. We’re not catching the ball or fielding the ball right now and we need to start doing that.”
The Braves squandered another strong start by Teheran, who limited the Pirates to no earned runs over seven innings.
He held the Mets scoreless over six innings on opening day but the Braves didn’t score a run and the bullpen gave up six. Teheran remains 0-0 despite not allowing an earned run in his first two starts.