Magic Millwood

Filling for Maddux, Braves' starter helps even series

Mark DeRosa greets Vinny Castilla after the third baseman belted a second-inning home run. AP

ATLANTA (AP) -- Kevin Millwood is back, and so are the Atlanta Braves.

Millwood allowed only three hits in six innings and the Braves evened their NL Division Series with San Francisco at one game apiece, beating the Giants 7-3 Thursday night.

Filling in for Greg Maddux, Millwood earned his first postseason win since 1999 with a dominating performance, which neatly summed up his recovery from two dismal seasons.

"I was real fired up," he said. "I knew this was a big game for us. We definitely didn't want to go to San Francisco down two games. That was probably as excited or pumped as I've been all year."

Millwood, who threw only 72 pitches, was replaced by a pinch-hitter shortly after he hit the ground on a fielding play at first base. The Braves initially said he wasn't hurt, but Millwood conceded his groin was sore.

"It's nothing that would really affect anything," he said. "I don't think it would bother me for a Game 5."

SI's Albert Chen He had been in this very position before, but for Kevin Millwood, it feels like a lifetime ago. In Game 2, Kevin Millwood once again emphatically put his Braves back on track, tossing six innings, giving up two runs on three hits and striking out seven. CNNSI.com's Jacob Luft Recall the search party. Cancel that APB. The Braves finally may have found what they needed -- the next Mark Lemke, a come-out-of-nowhere playoff hero who will bring back the tradition of annual trips to the World Series.

Barry Bonds went 1-for-4, hitting a massive, meaningless homer off John Smoltz in the ninth. It was only the second postseason homer for Bonds, the other coming off Atlanta's Tom Glavine in the 1992 NL Championship Series.

"I was able to have the luxury of messing with Barry," Smoltz said. "In that situation, he couldn't hurt me."

The Braves wasted no time bouncing back from an 8-5 loss in Game 1. Chipper Jones had an RBI single in the first, and Atlanta went ahead for good when Javy Lopez and Vinny Castilla led off the second with back-to-back homers off Kirk Rueter.

Mark DeRosa, making his first postseason start, doubled his first time up and came in to score on Rafael Furcal's bloop single, capping a three-run second.

DeRosa drove in two runs of his own in the fourth, slicing a triple into the right-field corner. He trotted home to make it 6-1 on Benito Santiago's passed ball, the All-Star catcher's second defensive miscue of the series.

Rueter lasted only three-plus innings, allowing seven hits and six earned runs. In his two previous postseason appearances, he gave up one earned run in 11 1/3 innings.

"Kirk got some balls up," Giants manager Dusty Baker said. "His ball was not sinking as much as usual. He was throwing about 77, 78 [mph], which is almost too hard for the ball to sink."

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Millwood's only major mistakes wound up in the seats. J.T. Snow hit an opposite-field homer in the second, and Rich Aurilia went deep in the sixth. Santiago had the other hit off Millwood, a leadoff single in the fifth.

The Atlanta starter threw just 18 balls, struck out seven and walked none. His most trying play came in the sixth, when first baseman Julio Franco let a grounder by Kenny Lofton skip off his glove. Franco recovered and flipped to Millwood, who stretched far enough to get Lofton before tumbling to the dirt.

On the very next pitch, Aurilia homered into the left-field seats. Jeff Kent grounded out to end the inning, and Millwood was done for the night with the Braves holding a five-run cushion.

"He was so fired up he just about wore himself out," manager Bobby Cox said. "He was absolutely done after the last out he got."

Millwood was originally scheduled to pitch Game 3, but the Braves moved him up because they were worried about a blister on Maddux's pitching hand.

That turned out to be a huge break for Atlanta, which avoided falling behind 0-2 in the best-of-5 series before it shifted to San Francisco.

Maddux is set to go against Jason Schmidt in Game 3 Saturday.

Bonds, who heard derisive chants of "Barry! Barry!" from the near-sellout crowd of 47,167, took a called third strike from Millwood leading off the second. He got a bit of redemption in the ninth, nearly reaching the club level down the right-field line when Smoltz challenged him with a big lead.

Still, Bonds is hitting just .200 in the postseason for his career.

"They have pitched to him," Baker said of the Braves. "They've thrown him quite a few fastballs inside and up. I'm glad to see Barry catch up with one."

Millwood had 35 wins in his first two full seasons in the major leagues, and he was a key player for the Braves in the 1999 postseason.

He pitched only the fifth one-hitter in postseason history against Houston in the division series, then came back to save the next game.

Millwood also beat the New York Mets in a classic NL championship series before getting blown out by the Yankees in his only World Series start.

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The last two years, he had nothing but misery.

An NL Cy Young Award contender coming into 2000, Millwood slumped to 10-13 and took the loss in St. Louis' clinching victory in the opening round of the playoffs.

Last season, Millwood spent more than two months on the DL with a sore shoulder and finished 7-7. His only postseason appearance was a one-inning mopup job.

This year, Millwood reclaimed his place as a top starter. After going 18-8 in the regular season, he came through in the biggest game of the year thus far for Atlanta.

"I'm getting back to where I was," he said. "Being hurt changed my mechanics. I was trying to figure out a way to throw where it didn't hurt."

The Braves made the most of their eight hits. Lopez and Castilla, who had terrible seasons but swung better the past few weeks, became only the second duo in Atlanta history to hit consecutive postseason homers.

It was the bottom half of the order that did most of the damage for the Braves. The 6-7-8 hitters -- Lopez, Castilla and DeRosa -- went 5-for-9 with four RBIs and six runs.

Lopez homered in the first two games of the series after batting only .233 with 11 homers in the regular season.

Notes: The only other Atlanta tandem to hit back-to-back homers in the postseason were Ryan Klesko and Brian Jordan in Game 4 of the 1999 NLCS. ... With two runners on in the seventh, San Francisco's David Bell fouled off four straight 3-2 offerings from Mike Remlinger before striking out on the 10th pitch. ... Snow's homer was the first by the Giants in the postseason since Game 2 of the 2000 Division Series against the Mets. ... The crowd was more than 5,000 larger than the Game 1 turnout of 41,903. ... The Braves had only one hit after the fourth inning against three San Francisco relievers.

 

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