Today’s Three Things: Braves Offense Held Quiet Until 9th, but Can’t Complete Rally
The Atlanta Braves struggled once again against a poorly performing pitching staff, able only to muster a late rally
The Atlanta Braves dropped the series to the Washington Nationals after a 2-1 loss in Truist Park on Sunday night.
Here is Today’s Three Things from the contest.
The Turning Point
With all due respect to the bottom of the fourth, when Atlanta had the bases loaded with one out and didn’t score, we’ve gotta talk about the Braves rally in the bottom of the 9th.
Atlanta entered the frame on the verge of a second straight shutout, but life found a way. Ozzie Albies opened the inning with his third single of the game, this one a hard-hit line drive on a fastball middle-down from reliever Gus Varland. He then moved to third base on Austin Riley’s line drive to left.
That prompted Washington to pull Varland (who wasn’t subject to the three-batter minimum this inning because he entered in the eighth) for lefty Richard Lovelady, who pitched both Friday and Saturday.
Lovelady dominated Michael Harris II, throwing four pitches out of the zone and getting up 1-2 before inducing a weak flyout to right field, one not deep enough for Ozzie to score. Eli White then ripped a 100 mph grounder to second, a tailormade double play ball…that second baseman Nasim Nuñez booted. Ozzie scored on the play, Atlanta’s first run since Friday night’s walkoff win.
Ha-Seong Kim then walked to re-load the bases, before Chadwick Tromp struck out swinging for the second out to bring up Ronald Acuña Jr.
This was a disappointing at-bat. Ronald got to 2-2, with the second ball being a high and vaguely in fastball. The game plan after that is to throw him a slider down and away, something even the broadcast announced was going to happen. Ronald swung anyway, thankfully just grazing the ball to stay alive, before breaking his bat on a soft grounder to third to end the rally one run short.
For the game, Atlanta was just 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position and stranded nine on base, with three of them being in the pivotal ninth inning.
Today’s Player of the Game
In the absence of any standout performances offensively, we’re defaulting to a near quality start from Martín Pérez.
The veteran went 5.2 innings, striking out only two but allowing just one run on five hits. It was an odd start for the lefty - he picked up just two whiffs but fooled Washington to the tune of 14 called strikes. He also gave up seven hard-hit balls, but almost all of them were on the ground and he finished with an average exit velocity allowed of just 89.6 mph.
This is one of those outings that feels like it hurts your expected ERA and isn’t sustainable - Washington had a xBA of .291 tonight, but an actual batting average of .188 - but it worked tonight and he, so far, has been able to outrun that ghost. Is that due to his locations? Or maybe his batted ball distribution?
Didier Fuentes relieved Pérez in the sixth and got a strikeout to end the inning, but was unable to return after a rain delay of nearly 90 minutes. The original plan was for him to pitch multiple innings as a ‘contrasting style’ piggyback to Pérez, but the Braves went to Reynaldo López for two and Carlos Carrasco for one once the game resumed.
What You’ll Be Talking About
Atlanta’s rough offensive weekend.
The Braves scored just six runs in this series, a tough look for a team that was averaging more than five runs a game entering the weekend. They needed three runs in extra innings to walk off Washington on Friday night before being shut out yesterday and not scoring tonight until the 9th.
While we don’t have live advanced/process stats for tonight, the last two weeks (since the start of the Chicago series) through Saturday have Atlanta hitting .195/.265/.345 with a collective whiff rate of 28.7%. Some of this is some bad luck/random variance against them, with a .234 BABIP in that stretch and expected stats mostly better than the actual (.213/.283/.335), but even the luck-normalized performance isn’t very good.
The team’s collective chase rate is up nearly six percentage points, the whiff rate on that chase is also increased (albeit only slightly, to 47.7%), and their wOBA (weighted on-base average, which accounts for the value of how you got on base) is down from .293 to .269.
Both swinging more out of the zone and having worse results on those swings? Not great!
But the flip side isn’t true - they aren’t more productive on their swings inside the zone, either. Looking at middle-middle pitches specifically, meaning attack zone 5 on Statcast, is extraordinarily frustrating. The Braves are hitting an anemic .182 with a .364 slug on middle-middle pitches in that same time span. Before the Cubs series? .287 with a .561 slug. Their whiff rate is virtually the same, so the 70-point BABIP drop accounts for some of this and consequently, this feels like it’ll normalize as the random variance shifts back in their direction.
But until it does, this offense might continue to frustrate. The question is how long: another series? A few weeks? Until Drake Baldwin returns from his oblique injury. There’s no way to know, but for all of our sakes, I hope it’s soon.
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 flying to Boston tonight to enjoy their off day before starting a series on Tuesday against their historic “rivals” in the Red Sox. Here are the pitching matchups for the series:
Tue: Spencer Strider (2-0, 3.00) vs Ranger Suarez (2-2, 2.40)
Wed: Bryce Elder (4-2, 1.97) vs LHP Connelly Early (4-2, 3.33)
Thu: Chris Sale (7-3, 1.89) vs TBD officially, but it lines up to be lefty Peyton Tolle (2-2, 2.45)