Spot & Stripe: Dueling Bullpen Implosions leads to Braves loss

Tommy Glavine posted a quality start giving up just one earned run in five innings but the bullpen once again wasted the effort of a Braves starting pitcher. This is a disturbing trend and one that hopefully will not be a season-long problem. The Braves were sloppy all around committing 3 errors. Perhaps the Doc Brown reference from this morning's post was not the best way to preview tonight's game. It appears Doc set his time machine to 1985 instead of 1995. I'm not going to get into the details of how bad the bullpen actually was because it makes my head hurt. Suffice it to say that Phil Neikro (even at age 68) would have been a welcome sight as even he could have limited the Bucs better than the ATL bullpen. Shout out to the Hall of Famer as tomorrow is his 69th birthday.

The Pirates bullpen was equally as poor as they walked four of the first 5 batters in the 9th inning and gave up five total runs. As bad as the Pirates bullpen was in the 9th it was the outfield debacle that took place between Jason Bay and Nate McClouth that allowed the Braves to tie the score. Bay has got to at least acknowledge that he has lost the ball because McClouth (as he showed with his catch to end the 9th) could have made an easy play to end the game.

Kudos to Chipper Jones for springing the 270 feet from 1B to home plate on what should have been a routine pop up.

There are a great number of players in the majors who would have trotted around the bases after seeing the weakly hit pop up. Were it not for the effort of Jones the Braves would not have tied the game.

The ATL bullpen once again squandered an opportunity as Blayne Boyer did his best Peter Moylan impersonation giving up a 3 run HR to Xavier Nady in the 12th. Despite a formidable rally by the Braves in the bottom half of the inning the Pirates closed out the win by inducing rally killing Corky Miller to fly out to center field.

Fantasy Baseball notes -
Brian McCann hit the ball hard for a second consecutive night. After just missing a HR in the season opener McCann led off the fourth inning with his first HR of the year.

Yunel Escobar is exactly what everyone thought he would be. He hits the ball well to all fields (including a two run triple on Monday night) but also turned what should have been an easy 6-3 putout into a run scoring error when he threw the ball about two feet short of Tex at 1B.

Bobby Cox shuffled the lineup tonight flipping Frenchy and McCann. McCann batted 5th and Frenchy 6th. If this is the norm it might help Mac's value a touch as he will get to the plate with runners on more often.

Also of note - Kelly Johnson left the game with what is being described as a knee strain. More on the injury as details are available. Unfortunately this might be the type of nagging injury that sticks with him all year.