Today's Three Things: Braves Can't Overcome Early Hole & Bad Call in Opener vs Mets
The Atlanta Braves gave up five runs in the first inning after a series of umpiring mistakes erased an inning-ending double play
The Atlanta Braves dropped their opener to the New York Mets 8-5 in Truist Park on Monday night.
Here is Today’s Three Things from the contest.
The Turning Point
Believe it or not, it was the top of the first inning here.
The game started off weirdly with A.J. Ewing hitting a ground rule double to right field; it wasn’t called a ground rule double because it bounced over the fence, but rather because it slid under the protective padding.
New York challenged that the ball was actually stuck under the padding and after a lengthy review - bordering on ten minutes, with Bryce Elder throwing warmup pitches for most of it - the umpires decided that it wasn’t actually stuck under the padding. The successful challenge by New York meant that the runner was awarded…second base, where he was before the challenge was initiated.
And then somehow, the game got even weirder.
After that runner came around to score thanks to a Bo Bichette single, the inning was over thanks to a strike-em-out-throw-em-out double play…except the pitch was ruled ball four instead of strike three.
Pitch #6. THAT pitch was ruled a ball.
Catcher Sean Murphy didn’t challenge, as he was too busy throwing out the runner at second base, who was awarded the bag anyway since it was ball four. Bryce Elder did challenge, but the umpires apparently didn’t see it and both Elder and manager Walt Weiss said after the game that Elder needed to be more “demonstrative” in his call for an ABS challenge.
Here’s the video of the play from the broadcast angle:
And here’s the shot of Elder certainly challenging, but not being emphatic/insistent about it, almost like he was asking Murphy to challenge rather than doing it himself.
Nevertheless, the inning continued, and after a single and a strikeout, Brett Baty got a hanging slider and popped a grand slam, pushing what should have been a one-run inning on 14 pitches into a five-run inning on 34 (plus the warmup pitches during the initial replay review of the ground-rule double).
While the Braves battled back, they were never able to recover from the five-run deficit in this one. Elder finished with seven runs allowed in his five innings, on ten hits and three walks, but you’d be forgiven for treating the four additional runs in the first inning the same as unearned runs after an error that extends an inning. Elder didn’t execute on the slider that Bay hit, but Elder also shouldn’t have been in that position at all.
Today’s Player of the Game
Atlanta’s newest trade acquisition was called on after Elder’s five innings, covering three scoreless innings with just one hit allowed, walking one and striking out three. It was a 48-pitch outing, one that saw six balls put into play but just one hard-hit, and with an overall exit velocity allowed of just 82.9 mph.
But more importantly was the rest he gave the rest of the bullpen. Atlanta’s relief corps was in a rough spot despite the long starts from the rotation this weekend, given that two of the games went to extras and they were all one-run contests that required high-leverage pitching.
Suter pitched three of the final four innings, with Victor Mederos covering the final frame, allowing the Braves to essentially reset the leverage corps with a much-needed day off. While Atlanta can’t run them out there every day for the next week, knowing that there’s an off day on Thursday allows the Braves to deploy them strategically in the final two games of the series.
Also worth pointing out that Suter had his second pickoff in two outings with the Braves, this coming on a runner that was maybe a step and a half off of first base.
I thought Max Fried had the best lefty pickoff move in the league, and he leads active pitchers in pickoffs, but Suter’s right behind him despite roughly half the number of innings as Fried. Suter has 23 in 664.1 career innings, while Fried has 36 in 1,154.2 innings.
It’s a really good pickoff move.
What You’ll Be Talking About
Honestly, it’s probably either Elder or the offense, which went 4-for-16 with runners in scoring position and left ten on base, but I want to talk about the season series against the Mets.
Atlanta’s lost it, with the Mets currently 7-4 against the Braves this year, and even winning the final two games against New York won’t change that. It’s the first time that the Mets have won the season series since 2017.
By contrast, against non-Mets opponents, Atlanta is 67-41, a .620 winning percentage that translates to a 100-62 pace. The Braves have taken a series against the Brewers (beating Jacob Misiorowski to do it), the Dodgers (beating both Blake Snell and 2026 All-Star Justin Wrobleski), and the Phillies (beating MLB win leader Cristopher Sanchez), but the New York Mets have proven to be too much for Atlanta to handle.
Against teams with winning records, Atlanta is 31-19, easily the best record in the league versus teams ≥ .500.
But the 53-67 New York Mets are 7-4 versus Atlanta and have outscored the Braves by ten runs.
That’s baseball, Suzyn.
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?
The Braves are back at it on Tuesday night, with Martín Pérez (7-6, 3.14) squaring off with Nolan McLean (8-7, 3.51) at 7:15 PM ET.