Today's Three Things: Atlanta Leaves the Losses in June with 5-1 Win Over Cardinals
New month, new team as the Braves take down St. Louis to even up the series
The Atlanta Braves took down the St. Louis Cardinals 5-1 in Truist Park on Wednesday night, evening the series at one game each.
Here is Today’s Three Things from the contest.
The Turning Point
Atlanta’s bottom of the 8th inning.
Holding a narrow 2-1 lead and with only three hits on the day, the top of the Braves order got to work against reliever Justin Bruhl. Drake Baldwin drew a leadoff walk, advancing to second when Ozzie Albies induced an error on a groundball to third baseman Blaze Jordan.
Matt Olson, who didn’t have a hit tonight, had a productive out with a ball deep enough to right field that it allowed Baldwin to advance to third. Michael Harris II then lined a ball back up the middle, with Baldwin easily scoring and Albies going first-to-third.
This prompted St. Louis to change relievers, asking Gordon Graceffo to enter the game to face Mauricio Dubón. But taking advantage of a defense playing him straight, Dubón and Albies executed a safety squeeze, with Albies getting in ahead of a surprisingly close play thanks to Alec Burleson’s fantastic barehanded grab and throw. Dom Smith then tried to single Harris home from second, but Jordan Walker uncorked a laser from right to gun down Harris at the plate. With Mauricio Dubón advancing to third on Walker’s throw home, though, he easily scored when Austin Riley’s groundball got through the left side.
Final tally here in the inning was five batted balls on the first three pitches of the at-bat, including two line drives, a walk, and a safety squeeze to generate three runs. After nearly an entire month where the offense couldn’t manufacture anything, seeing the Braves both get some quality contact, some BABIP luck, and a clutch bunt was a sight for sore eyes.
Today’s Player of the Game
With 47% of the vote, it’s Ozzie Albies.
In a rough month of June, Ozzie was one of the team’s most consistent performers, hitting .274/.309/.429 with a team-leading 17 RBI. Albies continued to carry that load tonight.
Atlanta’s first run scored in the bottom of the first, thanks to an Albies double to right field. With Drake Baldwin attempting to come all the way around from first, Albies took off for third, causing St. Louis to cut the throw home and redirect to get him out, allowing Baldwin to score.
(no audio, as this is an alternate angle from MLB’s research tool)
Albies added a solo home run in the third, one of his characteristic pull-side shots - only 97.7 mph off the bat, but with just enough on it to land in the front row of The Chop House.
Ozzie finished the game with two hits, a homer and a double, plus two runs and two RBI. It’s his third player of the game award of the season. He also showed that, despite the recent losses, he was still having plenty of fun out there.
What You’ll Be Talking About
After acknowledging how the offense seemed to come out of their funk tonight, somewhat, let’s talk about the pitching.
Reynaldo López made his second start since being reinserted into the rotation and it went better than could have reasonably been expected - five innings with just one run allowed on two hits, walking one and striking out six. López sat 95.1 on his four-seamer, a full one mph over his season average, and touched 97.1 with six whiffs on 18 swings. But the slider was the real star of the show: six whiffs in nine swings, a Chris Sale-esque 67% whiff rate, and only two batted balls off of it (average EV: 71.5 mph).
It might be the best López has looked since his shoulder injury. He needed only 69 pitches for his five innings and allowed an average EV of just 82.7 mph on his eleven batted balls.
After López’s night was done, Atlanta got perhaps the most dominant bullpen outing of the season. Dylan Dodd, Didier Fuentes, Dylan Lee, and Raisel Iglesias combined for four scoreless and hitless innings with no walks and five strikeouts. The quartet allowed only seven balls to even be put int play, with just two of them being hard-hit.
The bullpen “Tree of Trust” is starting to have a weighty crown, with Dodd, Tyler Kinley, and even James Karinchak having earned a level of trust that puts them just below the backend guys that the Braves have leaned on all season.
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?
Manager Walt Weiss confirmed after the game that Hurston Waldrep would start tomorrow, getting the ball at 7:15 opposite Dustin May (5-6, 4.30).