Today's Three Things: Braves Obliterate Rangers In Most Entertaining Win of the Season
Just like New York's hottest club, Atlanta's Friday night win over the Texas Rangers had EVERYTHING
The Atlanta Braves obliterated the Texas Rangers 15-1 in Truist Park on Friday night.
Here is Today’s Three Things from the contest.
The Turning Point
It came early in this one.
Atlanta entered the 4th inning having put eight men on base, but scoring only two. They left runners on 2nd and 3rd in the bottom of the first, followed by leaving the bases loaded in the 2nd.
They didn’t leave them loaded in the 4th.
With the bottom of the order up to bat, the Striper Bros got to work. Shortstop Jim Jarvis, known as “Jimmy Baseball” to his friends, singled to open the inning, followed by a fortuitous bounce off the third base bag by Brewer Hicklen that resulted in a double. With runners on second and third and no outs, Drake Baldwin came up for his third at-bat of the game, having already recorded an RBI.
He picked up three more here, sending a 0-1 splitter 419 feet into the home bullpen to break this one open.
Things were academic from this point, with Atlanta scoring seven more runs before the Rangers finally got on the board and cruising to an easy win.
Today’s Player of the Game
With 56% of the vote, Chris Sale picked up his team-leading 11th Player of the Game award.
I talked in The Scouting Report today about how Sale wasn’t able to log more than one quality start in his last seven outings, being pulled with two outs in the sixth inning on three different occasions.
Well, Chris Sale apparently took that as a challenge.
The veteran lefty went seven shutout innings tonight, allowing just two hits and no walks while striking out six. He was surprisingly efficient at the same time, needing just 89 pitches (62 strikes) and looked like he could have gone the distance if Atlanta asked him to.
His very last pitch, a 98 mph fastball to strike out 1B Jake Burger, was a middle-middle heater that Sale stared down after throwing it. He was fired up, and pitching like it was a scoreless tie, not an eight-run lead.
The veteran lefty had everything working for him, getting eight of his sixteen whiffs on his four-seam fastball and five more on the slider. He averaged 96.5 mph on his four-seamer, a full half mph higher than his season average, and maxed out at 99.2. His ERA is now down to 2.06 after tonight’s win.
But special mention, and even an additional Player of the Game award, goes to reliever Victor Mederos.
He allowed just one run on three hits in the final two innings tonight, striking out one and flashing both a low-90s cutter (with a 40% whiff rate) and the ability to reach back and get high-90s on his fastball.
And because of the blowout nature of this game, he showed a different aspect of his game, as well.
With Atlanta up 12-0 entering the 8th, manager Walt Weiss made a plethora of replacements. Jorge Mateo replaced Ozzie Albies at second base, Joey Bart replaced Drake Baldwin behind the plate, and Dominic Smith moved from DH to first base to give Matt Olson the final few innings off.
That means Victor Mederos was in a standard lineup spot, and that mattered in the bottom of the 8th. Coming up fourth in the inning, Matt Olson loaned him batting gloves and a bat. Originally being told before the inning to not swing if he came up, the coaches said before the at-bat that he could swing, but “not hard”.
About that.
Facing position player Kyle Higashioka, Mederos laced a 104 mph single through the left side, driving in two.
He still hadn’t fully processed it after the game, telling the media he “was just in disbelief. I was just like, there’s no way this is happening.”
Mederos is the first Braves pitcher to record a hit since the universal DH was put into place before the 2022 season, and the first Atlanta pitcher to record an RBI since Max Fried on July 17th, 2021.
What You’ll Be Talking About
This was a fun game.
Every Braves starter not only recorded a hit, they had all done it by the fourth inning. A reliever got a two-RBI single, while Atlanta racked up nineteen hits and six walks. Texas pitchers only faced the minimum in one inning, the third, and that required a double play to erase a leadoff single.
But it’s also important to point out that despite the massive lead and entertaining vibe of the game, Atlanta was still taking the game seriously.
Austin Riley, having a nightmare season, ranged far into foul territory and laid out to catch a pop-out from Alejandro Ozuna in the eighth inning. With an eleven-run lead.
Let’s hope that puts the “Riley doesn’t care” comments to rest, yeah?
The baseball gods rewarded Riley for his hustle, with the slumping slugger homering off of the position player Higashioka to open the bottom half of the inning. Atlanta then pulled Riley for Kyle Farmer for the ninth inning, which shows us that Walt Weiss was deliberately leaving Austin in the game for one more at-bat, possibly as a confidence booster.
Let’s hope the baseball gods continue to shine on Riley and this was the success he needed to start the rally.
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 are looking for an early series win tomorrow afternoon at 4:15 PM. Prospect Owen Murphy (0-1, 2.25 ERA) will make his first career MLB start against lefty MacKenzie Gore (5-8, 4.63 ERA) at 4:10 PM ET.