Today's Three Things: Braves defeat Twins on Sunday to sweep series

We're expanding our game coverage, but need your input

I want to try something new.

When I first created Braves Today two seasons ago, we resolved to write about every single game. Sports Illustrated and Athlon Sports, believe it or not, didn’t care about covering every single game, but it was important to me so we did it.

Now, we didn’t write gamers, as anyone can get a rundown of what happened on demand - MLB uploads ten-minute recaps to YouTube within a few hours or so of the game ending - but we did takeaways. The idea was a “Here’s what you need to know about what happened in this one” article, focusing on pivotal moments, how the starter did, etc.

The problem with following that structure now is that I’m not able to properly multitask - I do a live postgame show for Locked On Sports Atlanta within five minutes of the game ending, so it’s hard to both prep that show to go on the air and have takeaways ready for publication. (And on certain days of the week, I wrap the postgame show and head straight in pre-production for MLB Game Night, so I just don’t have time to get 1000 words out and to you until probably the next morning.)

So instead, here’s what I’m proposing. For each game, I want to give you Today’s Three Things, focusing on these areas:

• The Turning Point of today’s game

• Today’s Player of the Game

• What you’ll be talking about tomorrow

What I need help with is this:

Do you want this emailed to you, or do you want to come to the site to find it?

Some people don’t want to be overwhelmed with emails from us - I actually unsubscribed from a Substack recently because they published five or so stories a day and it was just getting to be too many notifications. But some people want every single piece of content in their inbox.

(On that note, I was told to start emailing out the podcast as an additional newsletter every day and I decided that no, I wasn’t going to do that. I did make a tab for it on the website that redirects to YouTube, though. I know not everyone who reads also watches the pod, and vice versa.)

So let me hear from you:

That being said, here is Today’s Three Things after the Braves beat the Twins 6-2 on Sunday afternoon in Truist Park.

The Turning Point

Grant Holmes battled in this one.

Needing to give the Braves pen length after they used a lot of the studs in back-to-back games, Holmes twice got into trouble and fought through it both times.

In the third inning, Holmes had runners on 2nd and 3rd but struck out Byron Buxton to end it. After setting him up with fastballs up, Holmes got him to chase sliders below the zone for the punch out to end the threat.

Buxton came back up in the fourth and got the better of Holmes, taking a slider low and then doubling on an in-zone cutter to put runners on 2nd and 3rd. After Ty France walked to load the bases (sending Aaron Bummer to the bullpen mound for warm-up tosses), Holmes rallied with a strikeout of Trevor Larnach and inducing a groundout by Carlos Correa to get out of it.

On a day when the Braves needed depth from their starter, Holmes gave them exactly that with 5.2 quality innings - one run on four hits, striking out seven while walking four.

Today’s Player of the Game

It’s gotta be Holmes for me. Of his seven strikeouts, six were looking. That’s the most backwards Ks for a Braves starter since both Julio Teheran and Dallas Keuchel did it in 2019.

He picked up 10 whiffs and a 26% CSW, which doesn’t seem that impressive (MLB average CSW usually sits around 30-31%), but he was able to pick up three or more whiffs on each of the fastball, slider, and curveball. He threw nine cutters and no kick-changes, though, so I’m not sure if he’s not confident in the breaking pitch or would rather use pitches he sees as better than the new kick change.

(Of note: I posed the ‘Player of the Game’ question to the live chat on YouTube during the Postcast and it was about 50% Holmes, 40% Baldwin, and 10% said Alex Verdugo deserves it every single time until he actually loses a game as a member of the Atlanta Braves. Fair enough.)

What You’ll Be Talking About

The Braves offense might be back? It’s been a good weekend for Atlanta at the plate, and today’s runs were notable for how they did it. The first five runs of the game all came with two outs and while home runs were a large part of it, there was some small ball as well.

Matt Olson went deep in the first for two runs in the first, while Drake Baldwin poked one to the opposite field in the 3rd for his first Truist Park longball, scoring two more. But between that, Atlanta used back-to-back-to-back singles from Jarred Kelenic, Alex Verdugo, and Austin Riley to manufacture a run in the 2nd inning. Marcell Ozuna then completed the scoring with a solo shot in the 5th.

For the game, the Braves tagged Joe Ryan with six runs on eight hits in his five innings, raising his season ERA from 2.45 to 4.00 in one outing.

What’s Next for the Braves?

The Braves start a three-game series with the St. Louis Cardinals at Truist Park tomorrow afternoon. Here’s the pitching matchups:

Monday (7:15 PM): Spencer Schwellenbach vs Erick Fedde
Tuesday (7:15 PM): Spencer Strider vs Andre Pallante
Wednesday (12:15): Bryce Elder vs Miles Mikolas

Talk to y’all later.