Today's Three Things: A great pitching duel ends in frustrating loss

Ronald Acuña Jr's individual heroics weren't enough to lift the Braves to a win

The Atlanta Braves dropped game one of their weekend series to the San Diego Padres 2-1 in Truist Park on Friday night.

Here’s Today’s Three Things from the contest.

The Turning Point

The bottom of the 9th inning.

With Atlanta needing a single run to tie and two to win after a Manny Machado homer in the top of the inning (we’re getting to that), newly deposed leadoff hitter Alex Verdugo, now in the 5th spot of the order, singled to get on. The Braves immediately sent in Eli White, one of baseball’s fastest players and best baserunners, in as a pinch-runner.

After a Sean Murphy swinging bunt got White to second base, Ozzie Albies laced a line drive up the middle, dropping it just in front of centerfielder Jackson Merrill. White was running on the play, but somehow misinterpreted third base coach Matt Tuiasosopo’s “stop” sign as “go back and tag up” and he was promptly thrown out at second base.

Here’s a screengrab of the play in question.

That’s a perfectly normal stop sign given by Tui. Not sure what White was seeing there; the usual sign for getting back on a fly ball is to point at the preceding base with one hand, but White thought that was what he needed to do.

Michael Harris II, now with a runner on first and two outs instead of runners on the corners and one out, would valiantly fight off several 100 mph four-seamers from Robert Suarez but ultimately grounded out to shortstop to end the game.

Today’s Player of the Game

Ronald Acuña Jr. Who else would it have been?

‘La Bestia’ took the first pitch he saw deep, launching a 467 foot home run to left-center at 115.5 mph off the bat, both the hardest hit ball and the farthest homer of the season for the Atlanta Braves. After the game, he admitted to the media, including the AJC’s Justin Toscano, that he told his brothers he was likely going to homer on the first pitch of the game.

Ronald added another hit and an outfield assist in this one, showing that for all of our concerns about how Atlanta slow-played his return, he might truly be back to full health and ready to rampage through the National League.

Special credit goes to Chris Sale, who would normally be the POTG for seven innings on one-run ball, but not on ‘Ronald Acuña Jr.Returns’ Day.

What You’ll Be Talking About

Raisel Iglesias, again.

In a 1-1 game in the 9th inning, Iglesias threw an ugly slider to Manny Machado that the Padres third baseman absolutely launched to break the 1-1 tie and put San Diego on top. It’s one of two mistakes that Iglesias had with the slider, the other coming on a whiff to Gavin Sheets two batters later. Iglesias was eventually charged with the loss, his fourth of the year, and his ERA now sits at 5.75.

For the season, that’s now five home runs Iggy has allowed on the slider on just nine batted balls, leaving the pitch as one of the worst in Run Value on the entire roster. Manager Brian Snitker told the media, including The Athletic’s David O’Brien, that Atlanta wasn’t going to remove Iglesias from the closing role but admitted the team may ask him to stop or minimize throwing the slider for a while until the team can figure out what’s wrong with it.

What’s Next for the Braves?

The Braves don’t get a break here - they’re back at it tomorrow against Michael King (4-2, 2.59 ERA). Atlanta will counter with Grant Holmes (2-3, 4.01) tomorrow afternoon at 4:10 PM ET from Truist Park.