Braves fall in extra innings to Diamondbacks

A day after Craig Kimbrel broke the Atlanta Braves all-time saves record, the young flamethrower blew a save that ultimately led to the team’s 4-3 defeat by the hands of the Arizona Diamondbacks.

It’s not often that the Braves lose a late-game lead, and so it’s fairly jarring when it happens:

Kimbrel and Anthony Varvaro both blew saves after each of them let up a run in the ninth and tenth innings respectively and David Carpenter wound up with the L after giving up a run on two hits and a walk in the eleventh.

The good news is that the entire NL East lost games as well tonight and the Braves are still holding a game lead over the Marlins for first place.

Also, Jason Heyward is still crushing the baseball. He hit a monster home run to right field in the ninth inning that would normally be a game-winner, but the aforementioned bullpen struggles prevented that from happening. It’s never fun to lose a game like this (essentially twice), but it’s always good to have something positive to fall back on.

More positive news is that Dan Uggla likely played himself out of the starting lineup for a while now after an 0-4, two error performance. At the moment, Uggla is hitting .175/.252/.254 while striking out 27.6 percent of the time and playing terrible defense. There’s no reason at all that he should see the field with La Stella playing a solid second and hitting .423/.464/.423. Sure, those numbers are going to go down, but the entire baseball world would be shocked if they dropped as low as Uggla’s.