Braves 10, Diamondbacks 1: The Miley Meltdown

Record: 21-18; Pace: 87-75; Change on 2012: +4

Wade Miley had been cruising right along through the first four innings of tonight's ballgame, giving up just two singles, and one of those was erased on a double-play. The game was cruising right along until the fifth inning. Evan Gattis reached base on an error to lead off the inning, and Brian McCann walked on a borderline ball-four call. Wade was clearly rattled, and both runners advanced on a wild pitch. That meant Gattis scored on Dan Uggla's sac fly to tie the game up. The wild pitch mattered a lot less when former Diamondback Chris Johnson homered to the left field bleachers. That's three runs on only one hit in the inning.

The Braves were only up 3-1 at this point so the game wasn't out of reach. Until the next inning, when it was put way, way out of reach. Miley made one mistake pitch after another. First, Miley hit B.J. Upton in the shoulder, and Justin Upton didn't take that very well and he mashed a hanging breaking ball way over everybody's heads and into the row of the center field bleacher/arcade seats. While a home run from Upton was bad, it got worse. Freddie Freeman doubled and advanced on another wild pitch, Gattis walked, and McCann singled home Freeman. With nobody out and three runs in, finally Josh Collmenter was brought in. He gave up a double to Chris Johnson that scored Gattis, but he got out of the inning otherwise unscathed. Final line for Miley: 5.0+ IP, 6H, 7R/6ER, 2BB, 1K, 2HR. It was his worst outing since allowing eight runs to the Milwaukee Brewers in 3.2 IP in June of last year.

While Justin Upton (4-for-5, 2 RBI, 1 HR) and Chris Johnson (3-for-4, 3 RBI, 1 HR) were making fans green with envy, the Arizona Diamondbacks offense was not helping their case at all. Paul Goldschmidt homered in the first inning to put the team ahead 1-0, and while that was enough to make sure the Diamondbacks remain the only team who has yet to be shut out, it certainly wasn't enough offense tonight. And it's not like they didn't have chances against Braves starter Mike Minor and the bullpen: there were baserunners in every inning. Gerardo Parra and Josh Wilson reached in the second, Goldschmidt doubled in the third, and Martin Prado and Parra were at the corners with nobody out in the fourth! (That was bad; you don't want to know what happened.) Didi Gregorius singled in the fifth; Cody Ross and Prado reached in the sixth, Wil Nieves singled in the seventh, and Gregorius walked and Ross doubled in the eighth. Even in the ninth inning, Josh Wilson singled with two outs. But TOOTBLANing was a contagious disease tonight, and despite 10 hits, the Diamondbacks would only score on that first inning home run by Goldy.

The Arizona bullpen couldn't even limit the damage to seven runs. Tony Sipp gave up a run in the eighth inning and Will Harris allowed two in the ninth.

The Braves may have won this battle, but the war is far from over.....

Source: FanGraphs

Second Star to the Right: P Goldschmidt, +11.2%
Smee: C Ross, -3.1%
Captain Hook: W Miley, -30.5%

I wasn't in the gameday thread tonight, so I don't know the mood, but I imagine most of those 404 comments came before the seventh inning, because I can't see many people hanging around after that. Clefo was your leader this evening. All present were: AJV19, AzRattler, Baseballdad, Clefo, Diamondhacks, GuruB, Jim McLennan, Majabe, Marc Fournier, PatrickPetersonAZ, Rockkstarr12, TolkienBard, TylerO, Zavada's Moustache, asteroid, benhat, blank_38, coldblueAZ, hotclaws, imstillhungry95, luckycc, mebravesfan, onedotfive, porty99, rd33, and soco.

ZM had tonight's runaway Comment of the Night:

Did people clap for CJ?

If not, it totally means we’re a bad sports town.

Paul Goldschmidt looks at Tim Lincecum and says "We are going to foxtrot, and I will always lead."
-Clefo

by Zavada's Moustache on May 13, 2013 | 7:17 PM reply rec (9) flag actions

That's it for tonight, see you back here tomorrow, same time same place.