MIAMI _ Their offense ranks among the majors' best since Matt Kemp arrived Aug. 2, and the Braves haven't lost since veteran pitcher Josh Collmenter made his Atlanta debut six days ago. These are not your April-May Braves, folks.
The Marlins felt the brunt of both of Atlanta's recent trade acquisitions Thursday, when Kemp hit two home runs and Collmenter pitched seven sharp innings in a 6-3 win at Marlins Park that extended the Braves' winning streak to six games, matching their season high.
The six wins have come against the National League East's top three teams _ two against the first-place Nationals, a three-game road sweep of the second-place Mets (who led the wild-card race before facing Atlanta), and Thursday's opener of a four-game series against the Marlins, whose wild-card hopes have faded the past couple of weeks.
Freddie Freeman's two-out, two-run single in the third inning pushed Atlanta's lead to 3-0 while extending his hitting streak to 26 games and his on-base streak to 42 games, and Kemp followed two pitches later with a long home run to left field that gave the Braves a five-run margin on their way to their 18th win in 30 games.
Collmenter spent much of the season in Arizona's bullpen and only got stretched out to start again recently with four late-season starts for the Cubs' Triple-A affiliate. The Braves needed an emergency starter and got him in a minor trade, and Collmenter proceeded to limit the Nationals to four hits, two runs and three walks with eight strikeouts.
He was better Thursday against Miami, allowing five hits, two runs and two walks with four strikeouts in seven innings.
The Braves have their second six-game winning streak in a span of 3 { weeks. This from a team that won five games in April and was 9-28 when Fredi Gonzalez was fired May 16.
They are 53-63 under interim manager Brian Snitker and 25-23 since Kemp joined the lineup, despite an ERA that hovered at 5.00 during the Kemp era before Thursday. That's a testament to dramatic offensive improvement.
The Braves went from a .237 batting average and majors-worst 3.4 runs per game before the All-Star break to a .279 average and 4.7 runs since the break (before Thursday), the second-best average and fifth-best scoring in the majors since the break. They've scored just over 5.2 runs per game since Kemp arrived.
Kemp had a two-run homer in a four-run third inning and a solo homer in the sixth, his 10th career multi-homer game, third this season and first as a Brave. His 33 homezrs and 104 RBIs are the second-best totals of his career, behind the league-leading totals of 39 and 126 he had in 2011 when he was the National League MVP runner-up.
The big man has 10 homers and 35 RBIs in 48 games since being traded to the Braves from San Diego for Hector Olivera, and Kemp's hit .368 with five doubles, seven homers and 19 RBIs in his past 21 games.
Ender Inciarte drove in the winning run and made a spectacular game-saving and game-ending catch in Wednesday's 4-3 win at New York to complete a sweep of the Mets, and he kept it coming Thursday when he led off the game with a triple that center fielder Christian Yelich couldn't handle on the warning track.
Adonis Garcia followed with a run-scoring ground out and the Braves had a 1-0 lead against young Marlins starter Jose Urena (4-8), who lasted three innings and gave up four hits and five runs. Urena has a 15.75 ERA and .444 opponents' average in five games (two starts) against the Braves over two seasons.
Both Freeman streaks are career-bests and the longest active streaks in the majors, and the on-base streak is the third-longest in Atlanta franchise history behind Gary Sheffield's 52-game streak in 2002 and Dale Murphy's 48-gamer in 1987. Freeman had been tied with Chipper Jones' 41-game streak in 2008.
The 26-game hit streak tied Freeman with Boston's Xander Bogaerts for the second-longest in the majors this season behind a 29-game streak by Bogaerts' teammate Jackie Bradley. It's the fifth-longest in Atlanta franchise history and the longest since Dan Uggla's Atlanta-record 33-gamer in 2011.
While Freeman kept streaking, the Braves saw their run of games with eight or more hits snapped at 21, the longest such single-season mark in Atlanta history and the longest in the majors since the Mariners' 23-game streak in 2007. The Braves also had a 22-game streak with eight or more hits that spanned parts of the 1969 and 1970 seasons.
