Atlanta Braves vs. Los Angeles Angels – Box Score – May 22, 2011 – ESPN.

When you’ve reached the stage where the other team takes a 2-1 lead and people immediately start typing, “Ballgame”, you have a problem with your offense. The Braves took a 1-0 lead in the second on a single by — who else — Joe “Franchise” Mather, but blew several chances to get more runs because once they get a runner on base the team gets even more hacktastic than usual. Derek Lowe couldn’t make the one run stand up.

In the fourth, Torii Hunter, Medieval Outfielder hit a two-run homer, prompting the “ballgame” comments. They were right. The single runs in the sixth and seventh were really just icing on the crap cake that was this game, and this roadtrip. After seven innings of making Tyler Chatwood, a mediocre-at-best pitcher, look like Roy Halladay, the Braves were shut down by Scott Downs in the eighth, then after a leadoff single from Eric Hinske in the ninth — just their second hit after the third inning — went out meekly, highlighted by yet another inneffectual bat ending in strikeout by Dan “Five Years, $62 Million” Uggla.

Chipper Jones did not start the game due to hamstring “tightness” and Jason Heyward is still on the shelf with rotator cuff “inflammation” (neither of these are diagnoses in any real sense of the word). And then Nate McLouth, in the leadoff spot again because Fredi was so impressed with his 1-7 last night, left the game with a strained oblique he contracted while standing there watching ball two and was replaced by Diory Hernandez, who not only provided his usual offense — none — but also threw a ball away playing third base leading to the Angels’ fourth run, though it was scored “earned” off of George Sherrill.