PITTSBURGH — Pitching on a healthy left hamstring, Wandy Rodriguez hamstrung the Atlanta Braves.
Jumping back into the fray after having to skip one turn due to a strain of his left hamstring muscle, Rodriguez utterly silenced the team with the Majors’ best record and most home runs, holding them to one hit through seven innings of the Pirates’ 6-0 victory at PNC Park.
In becoming the second Pirates starter in three days to hurl seven innings of one-hit ball — allowing only a fourth-inning single by Jason Heyward to echo A.J. Burnett’s mastery on Wednesday — Rodriguez faced the minimum of 21 batters. He struck out five without a walk.
The lefty’s pitching and some lusty hitting spoiled Tim Hudson’s first go at career win No. 200.
So, both things to which Pirates manager Clint Hurdle had looked forward came up rosy.
In one pregame breath, Hurdle had said, “I’m looking forward to seeing Wandy pitch,” and in the other had said, “It will be an exciting opportunity for us not to let [Hudson] get to 200.”
Rodriguez’s one-hit night of pitching lacked the suspense of Burnett’s earlier gem. Burnett sustained a no-hitter against the Cardinals until two outs in the seventh when Carlos Beltran doubled. Heyward filled the Braves’ hit column with a one-out single in the fourth. Justin Upton followed with an inning-ending double play to keep Rodriguez’s workload at a minimum.
When Rodriguez felt the hamstring strain 11 days ago in Chase Field, he tried to loosen the tightness by going through gyrations that Hurdle likened to “some kind of a Lamaze class.”
Rodriguez took the Braves to a different sort of class Friday night.
Hudson’s 200th win began to elude him early, with an extra-base barrage in the second inning. Neil Walker tripled, Pedro Alvarez yanked his second homer in as many games over the right-field stands, Russell Martin doubled and another double by Jose Tabata scored him for a 3-0 lead.
Three innings later, Garrett Jones’ two-run single chased Hudson on a 5-0 hook. The opposite-field liner continued an impressive spree by Jones, who has hit .428 (12-for-28) in his last nine games, raising his overall average from .167 to .326.
By that point, the only remaining intrigue concerned Rodriguez’s ability to perpetuate a rather odd Braves trend: Through 15 games, when they scored, they won, their only two losses, coming in 2-0 and 1-0 shutouts by Philadelphia and Kansas City, respectively.
Rodriguez did his part, then relievers Mark Melancon and Vin Mazzaro did theirs to let the Braves keep that weird distinction.
