Today's Three Things: Braves avoid sweep thanks to Jurickson Profar and Sean Murphy

The Atlanta Braves, even in their worst season in a decade, are a better team than the New York Mets.

The Atlanta Braves rallied to take down the New York Mets 4-3 on Sunday afternoon at Truist Park, avoiding a sweep in the final series of the season between the two rivals.

Here are Today’s Three Things from the contest.

The Turning Point

The bottom of the 6th inning.

Fresh off of being routed in the first games of the series, Atlanta’s behind New York 2-0 and hurting to make something happen on offense. To make matters worse, while they have a runner on first (Ozzie Albies), they also have two outs in the inning.

No matter.

Michael Harris (single) and Nacho Alvarez Jr. (walk) get on base for Sean Murphy, the slumping catcher whose single earlier in this contest was just his second hit in the entire month of August. And on a 0-2 pitch, he shot a single through the right side, scoring Albies and Harris to tie the game at two each.

While I wasn’t thrilled about the decision to swing - this was the eighth consecutive pitch from David Peterson that wasn’t over the plate - the approach to shoot the ball the other way was the right one, and the Braves were rewarded with a game-tying single.

Today’s Player of the Game

Give me Jurickson Profar, again.

Atlanta’s left fielder went 2-4 today, including a two-out single back up the middle in the 8th that scored what ended up being the winning runs for Atlanta.

He also made an impressive looking catch that, while being graded by Statcast as a 90% catch probability play, still helps show Atlanta that there might not be a need to move him to designated hitter sometime in the remaining two years of his contract with the club.

Profar’s now hitting .322/.444/.576 over the last 15 games, driving in 20 and scoring 14 more runs on his own. In his 42 games as Atlanta’s leadoff hitter, encompassing both his pre-suspension start to the season and recently, he’s hitting .259/.379/.422 with the same number of walks as strikeouts (29).

What You’ll Be Talking About

Atlanta’s offense and how they got it done.

The Braves won today’s game without hitting a home run, not the first time it’s happened this season. But would you believe it’s the first time since 2023 they won a game with exactly zero extra-base hits?

Atlanta drew five walks and tallied eight hits, all singles, in the victory. This win is the last time they’ve done that since they beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 5-2 on September 10th, 2023 thanks to seven singles, four walks, and a quality start from (of all people) Allan Winans.

The Braves are now 1-8 in their games this season with no extra-base hits.

Looking for more discussion about this game?

Here’s today’s Postcast, where I went live to break down the win.

What’s Next for the Braves?

Atlanta’s heading to Miami for three against the Marlins. Here are the pitching matchups for the series:

Mon - Spencer Strider (5-11, 5.24) vs Edward Cabrera (6-7, 3.52)
Tue - Hurston Waldrep (4-0, 0.73) vs Sandy Alcantara (7-11, 6.04)
Wed - Joey Wentz (4-4, 5.25) vs Ryan Gusto (7-6, 5.05)