Atlanta Braves news and links: Ryan Howard joins the Braves

BRAVES NEWS

Kemp homers twice, but Mets win comfortably

Matt Harvey completely shut down the Braves during his nearly seven innings of work for the Mets on Thursday night. New York ended up winning the game 6-2, but the two runs both came off of Harvey and they were also both two massive dingers from Matt Kemp.

Howard signs minor-league deal with the Braves

I dare any of you to say that you saw this one coming.

The obvious hope here is that Ryan Howard can serve as a solid bat off the bench and potentially a capable replacement in the doomsday scenario of a lengthy Freddie Freeman injury. The Braves are welcoming in their former Turner Field tormentor with open arms.

Freeman said he discussed the possibility of signing Howard with general manager John Coppolella during spring training and gave the move his full endorsement.

"If he has something left, we'll gladly take him, because we need him,'' Freeman said. "We have a lot of versatile guys on the bench. But he's a guy who can still change the game with one swing of the bat.''

Vice Sports previews the Braves

The season may be a few days old, but that doesn’t mean that previews aren’t rolling in. This time, we’ve got a review from Vice Sports. With that being said, the tone of the article should be familiar to you guys when you consider who the author was.

What’s the significance of the number 578 and Braves starting pitching?

If the number 578 means anything to you as a Braves fan, then that means that you have been paying a lot of attention to the Braves and the handedness of the starting pitchers that they’ve been sending to the mound. Friend of the site Braves Options Guy laid out the significance of the number for us in a post.

That date might not meant much to anyone who wasn’t born on Sept 6 or got married or had a child that day. It probably means very little to most Braves fans as well. But it should. That’s the last day the Braves had a left-handed pitcher start a game. It was Manny Banuelos and the Braves lost to the Nationals 8-4, their 12th straight loss.

When Jaime Garcia toes the rubber for the Braves at Citi Field tonight, he’ll be the first left-handed Braves starting pitcher in 578 days. That’s 19 months or 13,872 hours or 49.9 million seconds for those keeping track at home.

MLB NEWS

St. Louis loses after wild pitch gets stuck to Yadi’s chest protector

The Cubs and Cardinals played a weird game on Thursday, and there wasn’t a weirder moment than what happened in the seventh inning, which is when Matt Szczur reached base after a strikeout because the wild pitch got stuck to Yadier Molina’s chest protector.

This ended up being a big turning point in the game, because Kyle Schwarber ended up putting the Cubs ahead with a three-run dinger later in that inning and the Cubs won the game 6-4.

Lorenzen comes off the bench to smack pinch-hit dinger for Cincy

Madison Bumgarner may be the big-hitting pitcher on campus right now, but he’s got an upstart nipping at his heels in the form of Michael Lorenzen. The Reds decided to use the reliever as a pinch-hitter on Thursday against the Phillies, and Lorenzen repaid their faith in him as a hitter by launching a 420-foot moonshot to center field to put the Reds ahead of Philadelphia for good.