Today's Three Things: Atlanta's Pitching Falters in Series Finale Loss

The Braves were one out away from a series win...but ended up settling for a series split after getting beat in extras

The Atlanta Braves dropped Monday night’s matchup versus the New York Mets 7-6 in ten innings at Truist Park, finishing with a series split at two games each.

Here is Today’s Three Things from the contest.

The Turning Point

The top of the 9th.

Atlanta’s bullpen bent, but didn’t break for most of regulation - Didier Fuentes allowed one run on four hits in the 6th, while Dylan Lee walked two and Tyler Kinley walked one in his frame of work.

But even on a shaky night for the relief corps, you had to feel good about Raisel Iglesias in a save situation, right? The newly-minted All-Star had a streak of 35 straight converted saves.

About that; the streak is over.

Francisco Alvarez started the inning with a single, with pinch runner Tyrone Taylor advancing to second on a one-out single from Ronny Mauricio. Iggy then rebounded to get A.J. Ewing to fly out to right, putting Atlanta one out from winning the series.

That is, if they could get past Juan Soto.

Spoiler alert: they could not.

Someone - Iglesias, catcher Drake Baldwin, pitching coach Jeremy Hefner, or even manager Walt Weiss - decided not to intentionally walk Soto. He had drawn three walks in the game already, with no Braves pitchers really wanting to challenge baseball’s highest-paid player, and already had five hits and a homer across the first three games of the series. But with two runners on base and facing the specter of loading the bases for contact merchant Bo Bichette, they went after Soto.

It didn’t work.

With Iglesias down 3-1, he threw a well-located fastball on the black inside, looking for a whiff. Soto didn’t miss it.

The three-run homer staked New York to a 5-3 lead, sucking the oxygen out of Truist Park. While the Braves would end up tying the game in the bottom of the 9th and sending it to extras, they came away with only a series split.

Today’s Player of the Game

With all due respect to Atlanta’s defense tonight (which was FANTASTIC), let’s talk about Matt Olson.

The slugger opened the bottom of the third with a towering home run into the upper deck of The Chop House, coming off of perhaps the worst changeup location imaginable from Mets starter Freddy Peralta.

If I didn’t know better, I’d classify the look on Olson’s face when he hit that pitch as disgust.

After Atlanta entered the bottom of the ninth inning down 5-3, Olson came to the plate as the game-tying run and made sure that they got to play more baseball today.

Olson got a 3-1 fastball up and away from Mets closer Devin Williams, just touching the zone, and got a good swing on it. He popped it into the visiting bullpen in left field, barely clearing the field of play at 379 feet, to tie the game at five and ensure that the Braves would either walk it off or live to fight another inning in extras.

Unfortunately, Olson wasn’t given an opportunity for a three-peat; with a runner on in the 10th inning, New York intentionally walked the first baseman to get to utilityman Jorge Mateo. In Mateo’s first at-bat of the game - he entered in the 9th to run for Drake Baldwin - he walked to load the bases, but Mauricio Dubón grounded out to end the game.

What You’ll Be Talking About

Atlanta’s pitching-related strategic decisions tonight.

We’ve already mentioned the refusal to intentionally walk Soto in the 9th. While I don’t know if outright walking Soto would have been the right move there - Bo Bichette’s much more protection for Soto there than Mateo was for Olson an inning later - throwing a pitch remotely near the zone is certainly a choice, and one that Atlanta ended up regretting.

But the interesting decisions continued. Having used the four top leverage arms for the 6th through 9th innings, Atlanta needed to bring in someone fresh for the 10th inning. And with both Dylan Dodd and Danny Young unavailable after two outings in three days (and for Dodd, three outings in five days), the Braves went to Owen Murphy for the 10th inning.

A rookie, making his MLB debut, was asked to face a divisional rival in a tied game in extra innings. Oh, and to do it with a makeshift defense behind him, with Joey Bart behind the plate, Mauricio Dubón having moved down to third, and Jorge Mateo getting his first outfield action of 2026.

While the youngster looked impressive, he allowed a two-run double to backup catcher Luis Torrens and was officially charged with the loss.

But it’s worth asking - why was the starting pitcher prospect, one who has never worked out of the bullpen in his entire professional career, the one that was made available for relief work tonight? Atlanta gave the start to reliever-turned-starter Reynaldo López, who has both started and worked in relief in his career, and are letting reliever-turned-starter Grant Holmes start on Wednesday in Pittsburgh.

Wouldn’t it have made more sense to let starting pitching prospect Owen Murphy make his MLB debut in a traditional start after completing his usual pre-start routine, rather than in extra innings of a tied game against a division rival?

And this is coming from the person who literally asked Alex Anthopoulos last winter why he wasn’t “breaking in” starting-pitching prospects in the bullpen.

Atlanta’s handling of their pitching staff has felt… suboptimal for the last month or so, and despite having more options now than earlier in the year, their management of those options has led to more mistakes and missteps.

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 already heading to the airport for a trip to Pittsburgh to take on the Pirates. Here are the pitching matchups for the series:

Tue: Hurston Waldrep (0-0, 3.68) vs Paul Skenes (6-8, 3.62)
Wed: Grant Holmes (5-4, 3.83) vs Jared Jones (1-1, 5.28)
Thu: Bryce Elder (5-6, 4.01) vs Mitch Keller (6-6, 5.02)