Playing to the level of your competition

The Braves spilt a double-header with the Pirates yesterday. They lost the first game 5-0. Jair Jurrjens pitched 5 innings and gave up 3 runs. He took the loss and his record is now 4-3. Chipper Jones had 3 hits, Jeff Francouer and Gregor Blanco each had two hits. In the second game, Tim Hudson threw 7 scoreless innings to pitch the Braves to a 8-1 victory. Francouer and Mark Kotsay each had 3 hits. Kelly Johnson and Yunel Escobar each had two hits. Kotsay and Brian McCann had 3 RBI each to lead the attack.

One of the Braves problems this year is that they are playing to the level of their competition. The Pirates are below .500 and the Braves are only 2-5 against them. In fact, the Braves are 8-5 against teams that are over .500 and 11-13 against teams that are not. Add that to the luck factor that I spoke about yesterday and it seems that this team is pretty good when they want to be, but who knows which team will show up on a certain day.

Ball State plays at Lousiville tonight to attempt to snap a 3-game losing streak. BSU is 26-20 and Louisville is 34-18. Brendan Stines is expected to start on the mound for Ball State. BSU finishes the regular season with a Thurs-Fri-Sat series at Toledo. The Cardinals need to take 2 of those three games to secure a spot in the MAC tournament.

The Brownsburg Bulldogs beat Harrison last night 5-4. Alex McGowan was the star of the day, he got the win on the mound and hit 2 home runs. The Dogs play Harrison again tonight still needing a win to stay with Noblesville in the conference race. BBurg is one game behind Noblesville, as they also won last night.