ATLANTA _ Lucas Sims won at mile-high altitude last week and won Tuesday on the other side of the northern Atlanta suburbs from his hometown of Lawrenceville, Ga.
Sims pitched six scoreless innings of three-hit ball and Nick Markakis homered and drove in two runs to lead the Braves in a 4-0 interleague win against the Mariners at SunTrust Park.
Sims (2-3) had two walks and four strikeouts and worked out of trouble in four consecutive innings for his first home win in the 23-year-old prospect's fifth major league start, and the Braves scored a run in each of the fourth through seventh innings on their way to evening the three-game series at one apiece.
The Braves avoided going to a season-high 14 games under .500 with just their second win in their past seven home games, while the Mariners' sloppy defense hardly looked like that of a team that came in just one game behind the American League wild-card leaders.
Sims, a first-round draft pick in 2012 who made his major league debut on Aug. 1, recorded his first major league win Thursday at Colorado when he limited the Rockies to two runs while allowing five hits and three walks in five innings. He worked out of jams in three of his five innings at Colorado and did similarly impressive pitching in tight spots Thursday.
Opposing hitters are 0-for-11 with runners in scoring position and two outs in his first five starts.
After going 0-3 with a 5.71 ERA and getting a total of four offensive support runs in his first three starts, Sims is 2-0 with a 1.64 ERA in his past two starts and the Braves scored seven runs while he was in those games.
For a while Tuesday it looked like the Braves were inclined to fritter away scoring chances of their own, something they did all too frequently while losing 23 of their previous 33 games. After Freddie Freeman extended his hitting streak to 11 games with a two-out single in the first inning, Matt Kemp followed with a single before Markakis struck out against Mariners left-hander Marco Gonzalez to strand two runners.
An apparent baserunning blunder in the second cost the Braves a potential run in a then-scoreless game. After Ender Inciarte was caught stealing with Freeman batting in the ninth inning of a one-run loss Monday, Tyler Flowers was caught trying to steal third base for the second out of the second inning Tuesday with Dansby Swanson batting.
Swanson immediately followed with a single up the middle that proved harmless with no one on base and Sims on deck (the rookie pitcher struck out).
The Braves also failed to score after getting a runner to second base with less than two out in the third inning, after Brandon Phillips hit a one-out single and stole second with a creative, athletic slide to avoid the tag. Freeman then struck out and Kemp grounded out to end the inning.
But Markakis took matters into his own hand in the fourth when he hit a leadoff homer on a full-count pitch from Gonzalez.
One inning later, Markakis came through with an RBI single with runners on the corners and two out. His hit scored Freeman, who had walked with two out, while Kemp was thrown out trying to go from first to third on the play to end the inning with the Braves ahead, 2-0.
Markakis has hit .333 (30-for-90) with eight doubles, three homers, 16 RBIs and an OPS well over .900 in his past 25 games.
The Braves added a run in the sixth when Ozzie Albies drew a walk, Lane Adams had a two-out pinch-hit single and Ender Inciarte had a ground-balls single that saw Albies round third and be dead to rights in a rundown. But the Mariners third baseman Kyle Seager dropped a throw as Albies retreated to third base, and the speedy rookie turned and dashed home when the ball bounced away from Seager.
Freeman's RBI single in the seventh drove in another unearned run after Phillips hustled to second base for a two-base error on center fielder Mitch Haniger on a dropped fly ball.
Sims, meanwhile, looked unusually comfortable and composed in tight spots again. The Mariners had at least one runner on base with less than two outs in the second, third, fourth and fifth innings, and each time Sims worked around the traffic and came out unscathed. He gave up a one-out single in the second inning, a leadoff walk in the third, a leadoff double in the fourth and a one-out single and two-out walk in the fifth.
The Mariners got zilch out of all those chances. Sims retired each of the next three batters after the leadoff hitter reached in the third and fourth innings and induced an inning-ending ground-out from Yonder Alonso to end the fifth, after Alonso drove in three runs with three hits including two doubles in Monday's 6-5 Mariners win in the series opener.
