Today's Three Things: Braves Lose Olson and Snitker to Ejections In Loss

Matt Olson has been thrown out of a game for the first time in his career, a span of 1,222 career games.

The Atlanta Braves dropped game two of their series against the Pittsburgh Pirates by a score of 3-1 at Truist Park on Saturday night.

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

The Turning Point

The bottom of the 9th.

Facing closer Dennis Santana, Atlanta needed two runs to tie, three to win. #2 hitter Eli White, in the game for an ejected Matt Olson (trust me, that’s coming), struck out swinging. Ronald Acuña Jr. hit a lazy pop fly to right Field's no man’s land that dropped to bring up the tying run. Despite Ronald’s attempt to make things easier by stealing second, Drake Baldwin struck out and Ha-Seong Kim flew out to end the game and officially drop the series.

Today’s Player of the Game

Baldwin.

That 9th-inning strikeout notwithstanding, Baldwin was the majority of Atlanta’s offense tonight, picking up two of their five hits. Baldwin tripled to lead off the 2nd inning, eventually being singled home by Marcell Ozuna to get the Braves on the board. He followed that up with a one-out double in the 4th, with Michael Harris II advancing him to third on an infield single, although Atlanta couldn’t get him in.

Baldwin’s now hitting .277 on the season with a .818 OPS, some of the league’s top marks for all qualified rookies. While he’s nowhere close to Nick Kurtz’s 35 homers with just 19, he is 2nd in RBI with 80 and 4th in slugging at .474. Given his everyday playing time and the precedent of Michael Harris over Spencer Strider in 2022, it feels like Baldwin’s all but locked up the National League Rookie of the Year award. More on this next week.

What You’ll Be Talking About

The dual ejections for Atlanta tonight.

Both manager Brian Snitker and first baseman Matt Olson got ejected from this game, the first time in 1,222 career games for Olson.

In the bottom of the 6th inning, Olson hit a pop fly to the right side that was dropped by catcher Henry Davis. Pretty mundane, right?

Olson was called out on the play. He was ruled to have interfered with Davis as he initially started pursuing the pop fly. Here’s the initial broadcast shot:

Snitker was ejected in the immediate aftermath of the disagreement and Olson, who continued arguing the call from the dugout between innings, was ejected before he could take the field for the 7th inning.

Upon further review, Davis created the contact - after initially grazing Olson with his glove, it sure looks like he purposefully lunged into Olson’s back before continuing around him to go field the ball.

Unfortunately, the rule is clear here: ANY contact by a batter or runner on a fielder attempting to make a defensive play is interference, no matter if the contact materially changed the outcome of the play or not. Believe it or not, a runner can be called out on interference even while standing on a base - the bag is not a haven.

That being said, I personally feel like more discretion was needed here. Olson clearly was not trying to obstruct and making that call so soon as he was finished with his follow-through sets a dangerous precedent for any catcher to just run into the batter on a foul ball to that side.

To add insult to injury, home plate umpire Brock Ballou then ended Atlanta’s half-inning in the 8th after assessing an automatic strike on Jurickson Profar, despite Profar being in the box and looking at the pitcher (who wasn’t on the rubber) at the requisite eight seconds on the pitch clock.

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.

What’s Next for the Braves?

Tomorrow’s the final game of the season. Charlie Morton is taking the mound, with Chris Sale to follow, at 3:15 PM ET.