Today's Three Things: Braves Drop Game and Series in Yet Another Pitching Duel
The Atlanta Braves couldn't figure out Bryan Woo and then couldn't get out of their own way once he left the game.
The Atlanta Braves dropped the series finale against the Seattle Mariners 3-1 in T-Mobile Park on Wednesday, officially losing their first series of the year.
Here is Today’s Three Things from the contest.
The Turning Point
The top of the 8th.
Trailing 2-0, Atlanta started to work on a rally once Mariners starter Bryan Woo (6IP, 1H, 0ER, 9Ks) passed the baton to an overworked Seattle bullpen.
The inning started with two consecutive singles, coming from Mike Yastrzemski and Sean Murphy. The ultra-aggressive Walt Weiss then called for a pinch runner, sending Jorge Mateo in as the tying run on first base.
Mateo wasn’t there long.
After Dominic Smith came just feet from a lead-flipping home run, settling for a sacrifice fly that scored Yastrzemski from third, Mateo ran into trouble. Or more accurately, didn’t run into trouble. Leading off first, reliever Eduardo Bazardo forced him back to the base with an innocuous pickoff throw…or so we thought.
Seattle challenged the safe call at first and won, with a slow-motion replay showing that Bazardo’s throw was perfectly located and allowed first baseman Josh Naylor’s glove to swipe Mateo on the backside before his foot touched the bag.
It’s another in a long line of casual, nonchalant pickoff attempts that have resulted in outs for the Braves this season due to a lack of urgency. Mateo, who was held out of the lineup for a jammed finger that’s impacting his ability to field or bat right now, had literally one job, to be a baserunner. He didn’t take it seriously, and it cost the team.
Compounding the frustration was that the current hitter, leadoff man Drake Baldwin, singled back up the middle on the very next pitch. The speedy Mateo could have possibly ended up on third base, potentially changing how Ozzie Albies approaches his at-bat and giving the Braves the ability to tie the game with a sacrifice fly.
Today’s Player of the Game
In the absence of a poll result from the Postcast (they only vote if we won the game), I’m giving it to Martín Pérez.
The veteran was his usual wily self, pitching 5.2 innings of five-hit, two-run ball with one walk and five strikeouts. He got himself in trouble in the third inning, allowing two hits to the bottom of the order before walking leadoff man J.P. Crawford. with the bases loaded and no outs, however, Pérez locked in and minimized the damage as much as possible: A ground ball double play by Cal Raleigh scored one run, with the lefty Pérez getting another groundout of Julio Rodríguez to escape the inning with no additional runs allowed.
Pérez is solidly in that “I don’t know how he’s doing this” box when you look at the data - his statcast card is underwhelming and he averaged less than 89 mph today on his sinker and less than 90 mph on his four-seamer.
Buuuut, he also got nine whiffs on his changeup, allowed only five hard-hit balls, and got eight ground ball outs (including a double play). He located well, sequenced well, and generally kept Seattle’s hitters off balance right now.
While it still doesn’t feel sustainable - Pérez’s ERA is 2.38 but his expected ERA and FIP are both in the mid-4s - it’s also hard to argue that Pérez doesn’t deserve to be one of Atlanta’s top five starters right now. Manager Walt Weiss seemingly has come to the same conclusion, telling reporters after the game that Grant Holmes wouldn’t be a full-time reliever going forward but that he’s going to take that “utility pitcher” role and be used in multiple ways going forward.
What You’ll Be Talking About
The missed opportunities in this series.
We already touched on the pickoff and how it cost Atlanta a runner in scoring position today, but the entire series was full of close moments that swung this away from Atlanta.
Game One was full of incredibly hard-hit balls off of Logan Gilbert that the Braves couldn’t get to fall, finishing with four home runs that were all solo shots. It also featured a bullpen/pitching mistake by Atlanta, keeping JR Ritchie in the game in the 6th inning, that flipped the game from Seattle to Atlanta.
Game Two was, clearly, the antithesis of this, with Matt Olson’s ninth-inning home run providing the winning margin and flipping a Seattle win to a loss.
But Game Three was another heartbreaker full of ‘almost’ moments, from the pickoff to Dom Smith’s almost home run and multiple >100 mph fielding outs, as well as one of Seattle’s stars coming up big when it mattered.
That’s baseball for you. As Billy Beane, the former A’s general manager who was chronicled in Moneyball, once said about how small samples could overcome his analytical approach: “My shit doesn't work in the playoffs.”
These three games had the performances of a close playoff series, and more breaks went against Atlanta than for them. Some of that was the players’ own fault, sure, but some more of it was just…baseball.
In the words of the late John Sterling, “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 have an off day on Thursday before starting a weekend series in Los Angeles against the Dodgers.
Fri: Chris Sale vs Emmet Sheehan
Sat: Spencer Strider vs Roki Sasaki
Sun: Bryce Elder vs Justin Wrobleski