Today's Three Things: Braves rally late to take down Cardinals in series opener
The Atlanta Braves got a hustle single to start a rally before a homer broke it wide open
The Atlanta Braves rallied in the 8th inning against the St. Louis Cardinals to win the series opener 7-6 in Truist Park on Monday night.
Here’s Today’s Three Things from the contest.
The Turning Point
The St. Louis bullpen had a bad day on Monday.
With the Cardinals leading 3-2 into the bottom of the 8th, St. Louis made some changes. They opted to replace the big arm of rightfielder Jordan Walker with an extra fleet of foot defender, putting defensive specialist Michael Siani in centerfield and kicking Victor Scott to Walker’s corner.
They also went to reliever Phil Maton, who had yet to allow an earned run in a MLB-high twelve appearances, to lock down the bottom of the 8th and get the game to last year’s saves leader, Ryan Helsley.
About that.
After a leadoff strikeout by Alex Verdugo, Riley beat out an infield grounder to short to start a rally (more on that below). The Braves then went walk and RBI single to tie the game at three.
JoJo Romero replaced Maton, looking to keep the game close.
About that.
Romero allowed a first-pitch sacrifice fly to Michael Harris II before Sean Murphy ambushed a first-pitch changeup for a three-run homer that broke the game wide open.
It’s a theme we’ve seen in a lot of Braves wins so far this season - even when they’re not able to meaningfully get to the starter (which we’re getting to in the next segment), they continue to have good at-bats and put the pressure on the pitcher and the defense to play perfectly.
Today’s Player of the Game
For the Braves, it has to be Austin Riley. Against a pitcher they’ve absolutely destroyed in his career in Erick Fedde (I talked about it on social media earlier today, potentially jinxing Atlanta in this one), the Braves struggled to make quality contact. Fedde held the Braves to just five hits on eighteen balls in play, and only two of those batted balls were hard-hit. Both were Riley’s - a two-run homer in the third that came off the bat at 107 and a flyout at 101.4 in the fifth.
Riley then scored from second base on a ground ball to right field in the bottom of the 8th to tie the game at three. Riley’s sneaky fast - his 27.5 ft/sec sprint speed this season is 61st percentile in the entire sport and probably one of the highest in MLB for dudes that weigh 225 pounds or more. He used all that speed to even get on, getting a hustle single that was so safe it took a replay review to award him first base.
What You’ll Be Talking About
Outside of the offensive rally, the convo’s going to be about Braves pitching.
Spencer Schwellenbach finished with ten hard-hit balls, including seven over 100 mph, while picking up only nine whiffs and a 22% CSW. I’d grade this as a solid B performance - it was a quality start, after all, with seven innings of three-run (two earned) ball. At the same time, he also overperformed the inputs a bit and if you play this one ten times with that exact same batted ball profile for St. Louis, they score more than three runs off of Schwelly more than half the time. Those were very good at-bats against Schwellenbach and even though he executed some pitches, they were aggressive (56 swings on 92 pitches) and put a lot of them into play (22 fouls, 25 balls in play).
At the same time, Raisel Iglesias allowed three runs in the ninth inning on three hits (including a homer). While he gets a bit of a pass today due to being overused - he got hot yesterday and then came into the game today, making it four straight games of getting up to pitch, it’s starting to become a trend that Iglesias is missing with his locations.
Both doubles in the Cardinals’ ninth inning came off of changeups that caught too much of the zone, while the Willson Contreras homer was a thigh-high slider on the inner third. And after the homer, the Brendan Donovan walk featured two zoned fastballs and four egregiously missed balls.
After finishing last season with a 1.95 ERA, Iglesias is now sitting at a 6.00 ERA this year. The Braves’ veteran arms of Iglesias and Chris Sale (newsletter coming tomorrow morning on that) need to get right for this team to hit its ceiling.
What’s Next for the Braves?
The Braves look to win the series early against St. Louis, but without a key member of their rotation - Spencer Strider, who strained a hamstring playing catch this afternoon and went on the injured list. The Braves announced after the game that they’d send an opener to the mound for a bullpen game opposite Cardinals righty Andre Pallante at 7:15 PM ET.