Today's Three Things: Braves Die a Death By a Thousand Longballs

The New York Mets scored THIRTEEN two-outs runs to take down the Atlanta Braves on Tuesday night

The Atlanta Braves got obliterated by the New York Mets in game one of their series, losing 13-5 in Citi Field on Tuesday night.

Here’s Today’s Three Things from the contest.

The Turning Point

The bottom of the fourth.

Atlanta had just stormed back to tie the game at five, having put up four runs in the top half of the inning. Spemcer Strider was a man on a mission in the bottom half, getting two quick outs on seven pitches.

Then the wheels fell off.

Francisco Lindor reached on a bunt at just 40.3 mph off the bat; rolling towards third, a shaded Nacho Alvarez had no shot to make the play at first in time. Juan Soto then walked on five pitches before Brandon Nimmo launched a 1-2 slider in the bottom of the one into right center for New York’s third homer off of Strider.

Today’s Player of the Game

For as much as I want to give it to Matt Olson and his two doubles, let’s go with Nacho Alvarez Jr.

He picked up two hits tonight, including a two-RBI double that started the scoring in the 4th inning for Atlanta. Those were his first Major League runs batted in, so the ball was taken out of play and authenticated for him to receive.

For all of the troubles he’s had with hitting in the majors, he’s been slowly raising his batting average, now sitting at .231. Austin Riley’s expected to return to the lineup sometime over the weekend, at which point Alvarez will return to Triple-A and continue working at his new secondary position of second base. His comfort there likely determines how much he factors into Atlanta’s 2026 plans in any sort of meaningful way.

What You’ll Be Talking About

Spencer Strider’s struggles.

Look, tonight was bad - he tied a career high with eight earned runs tonight, one game after setting a new career-high with eleven hits surrendered to Milwaukee. It’s not just the runs scored, though - his two strikeouts were his fewest in any MLB start across his career.

I suspect that he’s still not 100% after the offseason elbow surgery, and if he gets there, it likely won’t be until he’s had a healthy and complete offseason to work on his stuff. There’s also workload to consider - after pitching just nine innings last year, he’s at 86.1 already in 2025 and still has roughly seven more starts to go before the end of the season. Fatigue is absolutely factoring into this, too.

The big question, though, is what he’ll look like after a full offseason to recover and work. There is a lot of uncertainty and doubt among Braves Country that he’ll ever be the same guy that he was in 2023. But even if he doesn’t get back to that level - which again, we just don’t know - he’s still shown he can be an effective pitcher in this “diminished” form. From June 8th through July 23rd, a span of nine starts, he pitched to a 3.02 ERA while striking out 70 in just 53.2 innings…and that was with a fastball that averaged just 95 mph.

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 loss and spent a lot of time early talking about Strider.

What’s Next for the Braves?

Atlanta’s looking to even up the series tomorrow night. Carlos Carrasco (2-2, 6.18 ERA) takes on lefty David Peterson (7-5, 2.98 ERA) at 7:10 PM ET.