Familiar problems strike Atlanta in season opening loss to Padres

The Atlanta Braves bullpen blew a late lead, but the offense isn't exactly blameless either

Things might look a little bit different this season over here at Braves Today.

We’ve published takeaways for every single game in the past two seasons, but I’m not sure about the fate of those - the publishing schedule of those may be impacted given my new role as postgame host for Locked On Sports Atlanta. (I just don’t know if I’ll be able to get them written and posted at the same time as prepping to go live as soon as the game ends - it might be a late at-night publish or even a first thing in the morning publish time.)

I’ll still be focusing on the interesting and undercovered aspects of the game, like how Grant Holmes didn’t use his new kick change once in his inning of relief on Thursday or how Jurickson Profar and Drake Baldwin saw a total of 53 pitches in their first six combined at-bats.

But for now, I have some thoughts on how that season opening game went. Let’s talk about it.

First, some kudos

On the preview podcast and newsletter on Thursday, I discussed how Austin Riley and a fully healthy Ozzie Albies could potentially lead the Braves to more success against Padres starter Michael King than Atlanta had in game one of the NL Wild Card.

*brushes shoulder off*

The duo each hit homers and totaled 4 RBI in this one, with Riley’s sole out registered by King coming off the bat at 111.4.¹

Kudos here also go to Drake Baldwin and Jurickson Profar for successful debuts - despite totaling one hit and one walk combined, they saw 73 pitches in their nine at-bats. A fantastic development, especially considering that so many at-bats last season felt like they ended in the first few pitches.

We saw an example of the lack of patience in this one early - Ozzie’s 1st inning at-bat. Despite Michael King coming off of two consecutive walks, Ozzie swung at three pitches in his five-pitch at-bat, all of them coming outside of the zone. Rather than walking in a run, he instead hit into a double play that was thankfully overturned on review, allowing the run to score.

The bullpen decisions continue to confound

One of the pivotal moments in the game came in the seventh inning. Let’s back up, though.

After a long first inning that took 29 pitches across six Padres batters, Braves starter Chris Sale was done after only five innings. Atlanta then went to Dylan Lee for the 6th, who got through the inning on just nine pitches (groundout, popout, flyout).

And then Brian Snitker changed course, going to Héctor Neris for the 7th.

There’s a legitimate question about the decision to not throw Lee a 2nd inning, given his low pitch count. But given that the Padres had three consecutive righties due up, Snit went to Neris, who was coming off of just three innings in spring (plus backfield and live BP work) after signing partway through camp.

It didn’t go well.

Neris allowed a leadoff homer to Gavin Sheets and after Elias Díaz and Fernando Tatis Jr. singled, Neris left the game without a single out recorded.

Let me be clear - I’m not blaming him for the homer. It was a well-executed pitch, put where Baldwin asked for it to be.

Nothing inside on a lefty power hitter, everything away, and that 93.5 mph fastball (pitch #7) is arguably a dot…but Sheets got to it anyway. Could it have been slightly farther outside, given that you got a called strike on a heater farther off the plate than that? Sure, but that’s a quibble.

But I’m asking why he was in the game in the first place. If part of the argument behind not sealing the deal for a big-money reliever to replace A.J. Minter (free agency) and Joe Jiménez (knee injury) was that you had faith in Daysbel Hérnandez and Pierce Johnson to both step up into larger roles, then why weren’t one of them in there?

I know it’s the 7th, not the 8th, but Lee could have stayed out there or Daysbel could have come in rather than going with the NRI veteran who signed a minor league deal.

But let’s be clear, that wasn’t the only reason the Braves lost this game.

Surprising offensive anemia

The Braves raked early in this one, putting up seven hits and four runs on starter Michael King and reliever Alek Jacob.

But Atlanta had no hits and only two walks the entire rest of the game.

The Braves sent only two batters more than the minimum to the plate over the final 5.2 innings. They went down in order in the 5th, 6th, and 8th innings, stranded a leadoff walk at first base in the 7th, and then had the tying run up twice in the 9th and had a strike out and ground out.

Was the batted ball luck against them in this one? Sure - the Braves had 11 of the 19 hard-hit balls in this game and came out of that with only four hits² - but they still didn’t do their job. Atlanta finished 0-7 with RISP and stranded ten on base. That’ll regress to the mean over the course of the season, but it hurt tonight.

What’s next for the Braves?

Reynaldo López takes the mound opposite Dylan Cease. Here’s how each guy did against the other team last year:

López: 0-1, 3.65 ERA in two starts. 16H, 5ER in 12.1 IP w/ 1BB to 6Ks
Cease: 1-0, 4.50 ERA in two starts. 10H, 5ER in 10 IP w/ 6BB to 16 Ks

For Cease, we need to discuss these two starts, because they were polar opposites. The first outing, to open a Truist Park doubleheader on May 20th, was a disaster: five runs on nine hits in just four innings, walking three with five strikeouts. He rebounded more than sufficiently in the rematch, coming in Petco Park in July, with six scoreless innings with just one hit allowed, striking out eleven while walking three.³

First pitch is scheduled for 9:40 PM ET, and the broadcast can be found on FanDuel Sports South.

1. And had an expected batting average of .820 but was an out, so we’re back on that bullshit).

2. Hard-hit balls (95 mph or harder), in 2024, had a batting average of .490 and it’s consistently hovered around .500-.530 for the entire Statcast era. With a normal distribution, Atlanta would have had five or six of their eleven hard-hit balls fall for hits.

3. Conveniently, San Diego won both of these games