Wild night ends with a victory

Eight-run fifth spurs Braves to their 7th win in past 10 games.

Jaime Garcia had his second bad start in a row Thursday night, but by 12:30 a.m. it had become a footnote, overshadowed by a fifth-inning avalanche of Braves offense and some Braves defense and bullpen work as the Braves nearly blew all of a six-run lead.

They hung on for a 12-11 home win against the San Francisco Giants, who are a shadow of that franchise’s recent World Series championship teams, giving the Braves a 7-3 record in their past 10 games and three consecutive series wins.

Nick Markakis had four hits, including a home run, and the Braves also got home runs from Brandon Phillips and two from Adams — one apiece from Matt Adams and Lane Adams, his first in the majors — in the finale of a soggy four-game series at SunTrust Park.

The Braves overcame an early 5-2 deficit, took a 12-6 lead with an eight-run fifth inning, then gave up five runs in the last two innings before closer Jim Johnson got Hunter Pence to ground out with two on to end the game. Whew.

“Oh my God, you talk about a roller coaster of emotions,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said. “That’s baseball. It just happens. You don’t know why . ... Teams aren’t going to lay down. We came roaring back, they came roaring back. I thought J.J. ( Johnson) did a great job that inning staying focused and in control. A couple of mis-hit base hits and then we screw up a ground ball and put a lot of pressure on him.

“But the guys hung in there. Hung in there and had the big (fifth) inning. It’s a good win.”

Phillips (groin tightness) and Matt Kemp (hamstring tightness) left the game for precautionary reasons.

The Braves captured a season series against the Giants for the first time since 2011, winning four of seven games. The Giants have lost 18 of 23, including seven of eight on the trip they ended Thursday.

The Braves trailed 6-4 before a nine-hit outburst in the fifth inning that included a leadoff homer from Phillips followed by five consecutive singles, a sacrifice fly and a three-run pinch-hit homer from Lane Adams, a 27-year-old rookie whose only major league experience before this season was three plate appearances with the Royals in 2014.

“Looking back at it, it’s probably better than I ever thought,” said Adams, who launched a no-doubt-about it shot to the second seating deck in left field. “I mean, I imagined it’d be a great feeling, but once it happens it’s even better than you imagined.”

Making it all the more special, he said, was having his mother, Shelley, and two nieces in attendance after they drove from Oklahoma on Wednesday. It was the first time his nieces saw him play in the majors.

The Braves gave up two unearned runs in a three-run eighth after a Lane Adams error in left field, and two runs in a sloppy ninth that saw Danny Santana a potential double play into a no-out play when he waited too long to throw to first after initially trying to tag a runner between first and second.

“It feels good just to see the team go in there swinging the bat the way we did today,” Phillips said.