Today's Three Things: Braves Bats Bash Bryce Elder to a Win

The Braves got both a quality start and a multi-run homer in the same game? In THIS economy?

The Atlanta Braves took down the Washington Nationals 6-2 in Truist Park on Friday night for a commanding 2-0 lead in the four-game series.

Here is Today’s Three Things from the contest.

The Turning Point

The bottom of the 6th.

Atlanta was holding a narrow 2-1 lead after trying (and failing) to cash in most of their run-scoring chances against Washington starter Foster Griffin. Matt Olson was tired of that, clearly, leading off the 6th with a 1st-pitch double over the head of right fielder James Wood and off the wall. Ozzie Albies did the same thing, jumping on a first-pitch cutter and shooting it through the right side for a single.

And then Michael Harris II came to the plate. He, too, was seeing Griffin well on the third time through the order and jumped on a first-pitch sweeper over the plate, launching it to The Chop House at 112.8 off the bat and pushing the lead to 5-1.

But the Braves still weren’t done. Mauricio Dubón singled in a five-pitch at-bat, with Griffin picking up a strikeout while the bullpen finished getting ready. Trevor Williams followed Griffin with a walk of Joey Bart before Jim Jarvis shot a 2-2 changeup off the plate back up the middle, scoring Dubón from second and pushing the lead to 5-2. While Drake Baldwin ended the inning with a bases-loaded double play (one of THREE the Braves hit into tonight), Atlanta was able to put in Elieser Hernandez and cruise to a win.

Today’s Player of the Game

With a commanding 61% of the vote, it’s Bryce Elder with his 10th POTG award (2nd-highest total on the team, behind only Chris Sale).

The Braves have been plagued by a loss of length from their starters of late. Chris Sale and Elder have been the only to buck that trend, combining for 13 quality starts. The rest of the roster combined has just 11.

One of those 13 Sale/Elder quality starts came tonight, in an outing where Elder eschewed trying to induce whiffs and get strikeouts for ground ball contact. In an outing where the most optimistic scenario had just three relievers available, Elder finished six innings with just one run allowed on four hits, walking three and striking out three more. He finished with just six whiffs and a 22% CSW, but also got eight groundball outs against just two in the air. While Elder got hit hard, with ten of eighteen batted balls being hard-hit and an average exit velocity allowed of 91.3 mph, most of those were on the ground other than a solo homer to Brady House and two flyballs from Brady House (one of which fell for a double and one flyout).

While it’s still not a profile that you want to send out there in October, it’s absolutely what the Braves needed both tonight and every five days going forward.

What You’ll Be Talking About

Outside of the dominance from the middle of the order, where the #3-#6 hitters went 8-16 with two homers, six runs, and four RBI, it’s the contributions from the roster bubble guys tonight.

With the trade deadline looming next Monday and two pending injury returns in shortstop Ha-Seong Kim (Sunday morning) and Sean Murphy (likely by next weekend), Jim Jarvis and Joey Bart made their presence felt tonight.

Jarvis finished with three hits and two RBI, getting on base all four times he came to the plate thanks to a 5th-inning walk. He also flashed the glove with his usual steady defense, taking away groundballs in the hole to preserve Elder’s line.

Bart finished with no hits but made his presence felt in other ways. He worked an impressive eleven-pitch walk in Atlanta’s four-run sixth inning, as well as flashing why he was a highly regarded draft prospect behind the plate. Bart had a 90th percentile pop time of 1.82 seconds AND 95th percentile arm strength of 83.1 mph on an attempted caught stealing in the first inning, with only a Nationals review erasing the out call thanks to a swim move by Dylan Crews.

With the Braves potentially adding up to three position players in the next few days, Jarvis and Bart couldn’t have found a better time to state their cases to keep a roster spot.

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 for an early series win on Saturday evening. Reynaldo López (4-3, 3.64) takes on Miles Mikolas (3-7, 5.65) at 7:15 PM ET on BravesVision. (It’s likely that the Nationals use an opener for Mikolas.)