The Atlanta Braves hope a disheartening loss and a flight to San Francisco will lead to the same type of result as last season when the struggling club opens a three-game road series against the Giants on Friday night.
Losers of four straight games and eight of their last 10, the Braves made the cross-country flight shortly after suffering their most disappointing defeat of the season on Thursday afternoon. Atlanta squandered a six-run lead at home in the ninth inning in an 11-10 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks.
“Horrible loss,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said. “And we have to sit on it for five hours on the airplane. We’re all going to be miserable. And we should. We didn’t execute, and we didn’t put the game away.
“It’s hard to flush one like this. There will be a whole plane full of guys sick to their stomach. And they should be. Because we win and lose as a team.”
Snitker noted two silver linings as the team prepared to begin a six-game trip that will conclude with a series in Milwaukee.
He recalled a similar loss last season — 9-8 at Colorado in an August game in which the Rockies scored seven runs in the eighth.
That game also was followed by a series in San Francisco, during which the Braves won three games in a row to ignite a 28-17 finish.
Snitker also expressed confidence in right-hander Spencer Schwellenbach (4-4, 3.13 ERA), who has allowed no earned runs in four of his 12 starts this season, including his most recent, a 5-0 home win over the Boston Red Sox last Saturday.
The second-year major-leaguer has yet to face the Giants in his career.
“We have a really good guy on the mound (Friday) night to put an end to this,” Snitker said. “Hopefully the offense, what we did today, carries over.
“That’s what you do in this game. You turn the page. You’re not happy about it. You don’t sleep good. But we’re going to play another game (Friday) and hopefully start a winning streak.”
The Braves will see a new-look Giants team that rallied to win two consecutive contests against the San Diego Padres after dropping the first two games of the set.
One day after Triple-A call-up Daniel Johnson contributed two hits and two runs to a 6-5 win, Dominic Smith launched a go-ahead, two-run double in Thursday’s 3-2 victory.
Johnson and Smith were playing for just the second time as Giants, while Andrew Knizner, who signed a minor league deal on May 21, made his San Francisco debut as Robbie Ray’s batterymate in Thursday’s win.
“These guys that we brought in have been impactful,” Giants manager Bob Melvin said. “It’s pretty good to see these guys come in and contribute right away. It makes them feel like a part of the team.”
The Giants are slated to begin the series with right-hander Hayden Birdsong (3-1, 2.37 ERA) on the mound.
Birdsong, 23, has won two of three decisions since being promoted to the rotation. He threw 5 1/3 innings of one-run ball in a 4-2 win at Miami last Sunday in his most recent outing.
Birdsong has faced the Braves once before, earning his first big-league win last July in Atlanta after allowing two runs in five innings in a 5-3 victory.
–Field Level Media
