6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog: NLDS: Braves 7, Astros 1

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Thursday, October 06, 2005

NLDS: Braves 7, Astros 1

Bottom 2nd: For all the griping that a lot of the saber-guys have done about Francoeur, he works a clutch walk against Roger Clemens with Andruw Jones on second. Catcher Brian McCann -- the Braves' third straight rookie, batting eighth, blasts one into the bullpen. Gee, Mr. Tracy, how come their team's rookies can get runs off a future Hall-of-Famer in a playoff game -- and the Dodgers can't? Jes' askin'. 3-1 Braves.

Bottom 3rd: Clemens is leaving a bunch of stuff up in the zone, but despite it gets the first two outs easily. A two-out walk to Chipper Jones and a single to Willy Tavares puts men on the corners. Adam LaRoche, brother of Dodgers prospect Andy LaRoche, belts a double past a diving Orlando Palmiero to clean up the bases. Francoeur strikes out, but the damage is done, 5-1 Braves.

Top 9th: Go away and all the good stuff happens. Atlanta picks up a couple more in the bottom of the 7th; it looked pretty bad at first, as Chad Qualls threw a Rafael Furcal ground ball into right field, but then Furcal got big eyes, Jason Lane threw a bullet to third, and out he went. And then Marcus Giles got aboard on a single, and to second on a Chipper Jones ground out, with Andruw Jones knocking him in, then Jeff Francoeur knocking him home, with Francoeur ending the inning on a rundown. Silly rabbit! 7-1 Braves.

And that's where she ends. Smoltz gets five K's over seven innings of work, completely shutting down the Astros, who only yesterday were on fire.

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// posted by Rob @ 6:04 PM link // 1 comments