The Atlanta Braves rallied late to take down the Philadelphia Phillies 5-4 in Citizens Bank Park on Sunday afternoon, securing a split of this series and winning the season series. Atlanta’s NL East lead is now five games after the victory.
Here is Today’s Three Things from the contest.
The Turning Point
The top of the 8th inning.
The Braves were down 4-1, after Dylan Dodd gave up solo shots to Derek Hill (on a terribly located cutter) and Kyle Schwarber (on a great piece of hitting), but Atlanta rallied.
Mike Yastrzemski, who saw approximately 343 pitches from Aaron Nola today, hit a one-out single back up the middle. Drake Baldwin immediately drove him to third with a second-pitch liner back up the middle, setting the stage for Ronald Acuña Jr.
And Acuña did his job.
Knowing that Ronald’s struggled with four-seamers this year, velocity-blessed youngster Alex McFarlane and backup catcher Garrett Stubbs decided to throw Ronald seven consecutive fastballs, all but one of them being elevated. Acuña quickly got down 0-2 and then just…kept fouling them off, getting his timing a bit better every time.
And on the seventh one, Ronald did this:
The home run tied the game at four, and in light of Zack Wheeler’s comments after yesterday’s game, Acuña took his sweet time on the basepaths.
And then gave himself a curtain call.
I’m a bit surprised that neither McFarlane or Stubbs moved to vary things up a bit, throwing either a slider or a sweeper. Its possible that they stayed away from the breaking balls given the fact that McFarlane hung two to Baldwin, but I’m guessing they were more focused on the season trend of Acuña’s struggles with four-seamers and didn’t look at his recent success off of heaters.
Ozzie’s double in the 9th, with him being driven in by Austin Riley’s triple, ended up being the winning run for Atlanta.
Today’s Player of the Game
With over 95% of the vote on the Postcast - yes, I gave them the full four options, for fun - it was Ronald Acuña Jr.
Acuña’s been red hot in this series, going 7-12 with two homers, two doubles, and six RBI. And it’s clear that the struggles from earlier in the season are well in the rearview mirror - by virtually every time-based split, he’s had close to a month of near-Acuña-level production:
Honestly, my biggest concern as of now is a situation where teams actively work to neutralize Acuña by taking the bat out of his hands. I was a bit surprised that they didn’t intentionally walk him to face Matt Olson (0-4 today) in the 8th, but I’m guessing McFarlane’s velocity gave them a bit of comfort with facing Acuña. Don’t know how many more teams will make that decision down the stretch, so it’s important to get Olson and some of the team’s other hitters going between now and October.
What You’ll Be Talking About
Ronald Acuña Jr. is clearly the answer here, but we’ve discussed him plenty, so let’s talk about the pitching today.
Tyler Mahle was tagged for two runs in a 24-pitch first inning, but both were unearned after a Mauricio Dubón throwing error extended the inning and Philly capitalized. He finished with just those two runs across six innings, only striking out three but with one walk and just four hits. His 1.24 ERA for Atlanta continues to be the best of any starter traded at the deadline, by almost a full run.
Dylan Dodd’s two home runs, as I alluded to above, were a combination of bad locations and good hitting. The first, to a pinch-hitting Derek Hill, was back-to-back terrible locations on a cutter:
But the second, surrendered to Kyle Schwarber, was a great piece of hitting by a slugger who leads baseball in homers:
As retired pitcher Adam Ottavino pointed out on the broadcast, it’s hard to know what Dodd did wrong here - Schwarber’s just so locked in right now that once he decided to sit on that pitch, it didn’t matter what Dodd threw.
The bigger story here was Dylan Lee. Making his first appearance of the month (and since he confessed he thought he was tipping his pitches), he pitched a scoreless eighth with one strikeout. He got Harper to strike out on a four-seamer in the zone, fellow lefty Luis Arraez to weakly fly out on a slider that was (honestly) a little too high in the zone for my liking, and induced a groundout of Alec Bohm to preserve the tie and set up the offense for the winning runs in the top of the 9th.
Raisel Iglesias got his 31st save through a bit of adventure - Bryson Stott hit a leadoff single and advanced all the way to third with one out, but a filthy sinker and two fantastic changeups to Edmundo Sosa got the final strikeout of the day and stranded Kyle Schwarber on deck for the win.
Looking for more discussion about this game?
Here’s tonight’s Postcast, with me and Locked On Braves host Jake Mastroianni, as we went live to break down the contest.
What’s Next for the Braves?
Atlanta’s looking to win the series on Monday afternoon, with Grant Holmes (9-5, 3.62) taking on lefty Jesús Luzardo (13-5, 3.02) at 1:05 PM ET.
Best game of the year. To come back from 3 runs down, playing in Philly, late in the game with Nola having been so dominant was incredible. Acuna's hit was the key, clearly, but to see Riley finally drive the ball to right field and drive in a huge run was a real pleasant shocker.
It was also sweet to see Dylan Lee back in form and decrease the concern that he was hurt.
Just a reminder… Mattingly was the manger of the Marlins in August 2018. If we see a repeat of the targeting of Acuna tomorrow or next week, MLB needs to hand down big-time suspensions and fines to the pitcher(s) involved and to Mattingly. League officials should make some calls now to put Don on notice. That was contemptible behavior by Marttingly’s team and while he of course denied being involved, it happened more than once.