Oh, how the Braves would love to return the favor during tonight’s twin bill at Lake Olmstead Stadium in Augusta.
By doing so, the Braves would clinch the Southern Division’s first-half pennant and would nail down the team’s first playoff berth since 2003.
In order for that to happen, though, the Braves will need to play with much more energy than they displayed during Tuesday’s 6-0 loss to Augusta in the belated opener of the four-game series.
The defeat, the Braves’ eighth in the past 11 games, trimmed Rome’s division lead over second-place Augusta to four games with six games left in the first half.
Tonight, Rome ace Jo-Jo Reyes (7-1) will pitch the first game of the doubleheader, and Carlos Rivas (0-0) will work the back half.
Rome and Augusta then play the series finale on Thursday night before the Braves return home Friday to open a three-game series against Columbus. That series closes out the first half and is followed by the three-day all-star break.
So far, the trip to Augusta hasn’t exactly been a thrill-a-minute for the Braves. They endured a 2½ hour rain delay on Monday before the game eventually was postponed, then got shut out in Tuesday morning’s game, which started at 10:35 a.m.
Jairo Cuevas took the loss, allowing six runs on six hits (including two homers) in seven innings. Cuevas, last year’s pitcher of the year in the Appalachian League, is now 3-5 with a 5.00 ERA.
The Braves finished with six hits, all singles, while being shut out by Augusta for the third time in the span on less than a week.
The GreenJackets held Rome scoreless in both ends of last Wednesday’s doubleheader, winning each game by the identical score of 4-0.
Eric Campbell and Jordan Schafer had two hits each during Tuesday’s defeat, which came before a crowd of 3,694 on a drizzly day in the home of The Masters.
The defeat continued a troublesome stretch for the Braves, who aren’t exactly sprinting to the yellow tape in the race for the first-half title. They’ve gone just 10-14 in their past 24 games, and are 5-8 in June.
Rome has won only one of their past six series (losing three and splitting two), which is not an encouraging trend for a team that didn’t lose its first series of the season until mid-May. (The Braves were 6-4-0 in the first ten series before the recent swoon).
Still, the good news for the Braves is that they’ve won enough games to stay comfortably ahead of the pack. Their lead in the division hasn’t dipped under four games since May 11, when it was at 3½
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