ATLANTA _ Of John Gant's seven major league starts, the one Friday night against the Nationals was his worst and briefest.
That didn't bode well for the Braves, who found themselves down 5-0 against Nationals ace Max Scherzer before even coming to bat in the second inning.
Ryan Weber and a few other Braves relievers did good work after Gant was knocked out of the game in the second, but the damage was done and Nationals cruised to a 7-2 win to continue their unmitigated recent domination of the Braves.
Washington has won 15 of 17 games against the Braves this season. The Braves are 7-29 against them since the beginning of the 2015 season.
Gant (1-4) had as many runs allowed as outs recorded, giving up six hits, five runs and three walks with no strikeouts in 12/3 innings. Two of hits against him were by new Braves nemesis Trea Turner, who had a leadoff single and scored in the two-run first inning and hit a two-run homer off Gant with two out in the second inning.
Turner had four hits _ his eighth multi-hit game in 11 starts against the Braves this season _ to make him 28-for-64 (.438) with 11 extra-base hits (six homers) in his career against the Braves, including 24-for-52 (.462) with 10 extra-base hits, 14 RBIs and an OPS over 1.200 in 11 games this season.
Gant would face three more batters in that second inning and surrender a single, Daniel Murphy RBI double and intentional walk to Bryce Harper before giving way to Weber, who hit a batter to load the bases and then retired eight in a row.
Weber gave up only two hits and one run in 42/3 innings and had five consecutive strikeouts beginning with the third out of the third inning. The undersized rookie struck out Turner, Jayson Werth and Murphy in order in the fourth.
The Braves have come back from plenty of big deficits recently, but that's a difficult task against Scherzer (17-7) when the veteran is on his game. He was on it Friday, limiting the Braves to seven hits, two runs and two walks with eight strikeouts in seven innings, with two hits coming in his last inning.
Scherzer improved to 9-2 with a 2.00 ERA over his past 15 starts and has 121 strikeouts and 22 walks in 1031/3 innings over that span. He's 4-0 in five starts this season against the Braves.
The Braves got three doubles against him, but two of those came with two outs and nobody on, and he retired the next batter in each case. Their two runs came in the only two innings when the Braves' first batter reached base: Matt Kemp led off the second inning with a double _ the 1,500th hit of his career _ and scored on Tyler Flowers' single, and Nick Markakis led off the sixth with a walk, advanced on a Kemp single and scored on Flowers' sacrifice fly.
The Braves hit .301 with 10 homers and 48 runs in their past nine games before Friday, but went 2-7 in that stretch due in large part to a 6.11 ERA. They allowed at least five earned runs in eight of those nine games including seven or more earned runs in five games.
They did that again Friday, giving up five earned runs before the end of the second inning, and this time they were facing Scherzer. Not a good proposition for a comeback.
