Today's Three Things: Braves avoid sweep thanks to Austin Riley and Bryce Elder
Atlanta avoided the season sweep to the Los Angeles Dodgers with a close victory on Sunday Night Baseball
The Atlanta Braves took down the Los Angeles Dodgers 4-3 in Truist Park on Sunday night to avoid a LA sweep of the season series.
Here’s Today’s Three Things from the contest.
The Turning Point
Bryce Elder was cruising in this one, having allowed just two hits and one run after five innings.
So in light of some extended bullpen usage on Saturday night, Atlanta decided to get a bit aggressive. Elder was sent back out for the 6th inning, set to face Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman for the third time. It almost ended in disaster after Elder allowed a leadoff walk to Mookie and then a single to Freeman, advancing Betts to third.
But enter Pierce Johnson. The curveball specialist, sidelined a bit this year from a leverage perspective, came in and absolutely extinguished the Dodgers’ rally. He got Teoscar Hernández to pop out, Max Muncy to ground out to the right side (letting Betts score from third), and then a big strikeout of Andy Pages to end the threat.
After talking over the winter about trying to be more balanced in his pitch usage, Johnson went back to his bread-and-butter in this one, throwing 10 of 14 curveballs. It’s now the sixth consecutive scoreless and hitless outing for Johnson, leading one to believe that he’s probably going to move back into that 6th-7th inning setup role behind Raisel Iglesias and the setup duo of Dylan Lee and Daysbel Hernández.
Today’s Player of the Game
‘Big Country’ has a reputation for turning it on in the month of May and he lived up to that tonight.1
In both the first and third innings, he watched Alex Verdugo get on in front of him (walk, single) and then drove him in with a 108 mph blast to left-center field. The first one came off an elevated sweeper and went 426 feet, while the other was off a sweeper down in the zone and went 416 feet.
It’s not even like he’s particularly good against sweepers or anything - these were his first two homers off of sweepers since September 6th, 2023 - but he was feeling it tonight. The two homers put Riley one ahead of Sean Murphy for the team lead in homers, with eight, and extend his team-leading RBI total to 24.
What You’ll Be Talking About
Bryce Elder’s evolution.
In mid-April, Elder was sitting on a 0-1 record and 7.20 ERA, having allowed 12 runs in 15 innings across his first three starts.
But since then, he’s 2-0 with a 3.18 ERA and two quality starts. Most notably, the depth’s been there - Elder has 17 innings across those three starts, making it into the sixth inning all three times and through it twice.
With the state of Atlanta’s rotation, currently missing Reynaldo López (shoulder surgery) and Spencer Strider (hamstring strain), and the continued issues for Chris Sale and Spencer Schwellenbach, having someone who can give you five or six innings where you’re still in the ballgame is crucial to success this season. Elder’s usage of the elevated four-seamer and not hanging his slider has allowed him to turn over the lineup multiple times and go deeper into games than last season.
What’s Next for the Braves?
The Braves are starting a four-game set against the Cincinnati Reds this week in Truist Park. Here’s the pitching matchups:
Mon: AJ Smith-Shawver vs Brady Singer
Tues: Chris Sale vs Andrew Abbott
Wed: Grant Holmes vs Hunter Greene
Thur: Spencer Schwellenbach vs Nick Lodolo
All four start times are 7:15 PM ET.