Today’s Three Things: Braves Offensive Slump Continues in Loss to Rays

The Braves have scored just seven non-Acuña-created runs in the last five games

The Atlanta Braves dropped their series opener to the Tampa Bay Rays 7-1 in Truist Park on Tuesday night.

Here is Today’s Three Things from the contest.

The Turning Point

The top of the third.

With Atlanta having gotten a first-inning Drake Baldwin RBI single to offset Junior Caminero’s first-inning homer, AJ Smith-Shawver checked back in for a third inning.

Problem is, he was late to work.

Jonathan Aranda walked on six pitches to open the frame. Caminero then hit what appeared to be a tailor-made double-play ball to shortstop, but the combination of Mauricio Dubón’s distance from the bag and surprising speed from Caminero turned a likely double play into just a force out at second base.

And that meant that the homer swing that cleanup hitter Liam Hicks put on a 2-2 fastball in the heart of the zone resulted in a two-run shot, not a solo homer. But despite being up 3-1, Tampa Bay wasn’t done.

Chandler Simpson singled up the middle, stole second base, advanced to third on a flyout to left field, and then scored on a soft liner to center to push the lead to 4-1 before Smith-Shawver could stop the bleeding.

The inning laid bare the weaknesses of Atlanta’s roster. The Braves are built almost entirely on slug and defense, with neither showing up tonight - Atlanta’s five hits were all singles, while they had both a fielding error and a thrown-away pickoff tonight.

By contrast, Tampa Bay had multiple speedsters in the game in Simpson and Jorge Mateo, as well as several high-contact bats plus enough slug. The top of the order, Yandy Díaz, Jonathan Aranda, Junior Caminero, & Liam Hicks, combined to go 6-15 with three homers, four runs scored, and five RBI. To add insult to injury, they also drew three walks to just two strikeouts- Atlanta’s entire roster walked just once tonight.

And everyone on the field for Tampa could defend, too - the Braves had outs on hard-hit balls with expected batting averages of .940, .590, .570, .530, .490, .470, and .430 tonight. Of Atlanta’s 16 hard-hit balls, Rays ran down 12 of them for outs.

It’s a sobering look at what a well-rounded team that’s hot looks like versus one that’s simply built to slug and is ice cold at the moment.

Today’s Player of the Game

It’s honestly hard to name one today, but we can go through the options.

Drake Baldwin had the lone Braves RBI, getting a line drive single to score Ronald Acuña Jr. from second in the first inning. It was Atlanta’s only hit with runners in scoring position on the evening, as well as one of the hard-hit balls that did fall for a hit.

Brent Suter came in to relieve a struggling AJ Smith-Shawver (more on him in a minute) and he went 3.2 innings with just one unearned run allowed on three hits, walking one and striking out two. My hesitation here would be that the unearned run that scored was due to him, as Suter threw away an attempted pickoff in the 6th and that runner (old friend Jorge Mateo) ended up at third. He scored on a groundout to the next batter, although Tampa Bay only had one additional hit in the inning, an infield single, so absent the throwing error, that might have been a scoreless frame.

Michael Harris II made an extremely difficult catch on a slicing liner right at him in the first inning, with Statcast giving the ball an expected batting average of .960. While final fielding grades aren’t out until the morning, so we don’t know the difficulty grade of the catch, I wouldn’t be shocked if it were a four-star catch. While Harris didn’t record a hit on the evening, it wasn’t for lack of trying - he had a 101.1 mph lineout and a 92 mph flyout - and he also didn’t strike out.

You tell me.

What You’ll Be Talking About

AJ Smith-Shawver’s start, and how it likely closed the door on the youngster getting a game three in October.

As we mentioned above, Smith-Shawver went only three and a third innings, allowing four runs on five hits while walking two and striking out three. He gave up the two homers to Caminero (solo) and Hicks (two-run), with Tampa’s other two coming off of Elieser Hernandez after Atlanta waved the white flag.

And, just to make me look dumb, Smith-Shawver finally did the thing I asked him to - he picked up first-pitch strikes to 14 of the 19 batters he faced - and it still didn’t help. Smith-Shawver’s poor control meant that even ahead 0-1 in the count, Tampa Bay hitters still weren’t inclined to chase his splitter out of the zone. He threw 36 of them, eliciting seventeen swings, but only four whiffs. They chased it just 33%, mainly swinging at the ones in the zone (89% zSwing) and putting five of them in play.

This is NOT the heatmap of someone who knows where his pitches are going

The one saving grace was that he was able to minimize the hard contact somewhat, with only five of the thirteen batted balls off him being hard-hit and holding Tampa’s average exit velocity to 88.0 mph.

At this point, it’s hard to see a path for the youngster to get a postseason start absent either more injuries that decimate Atlanta’s options or a massive leap in his command and control over his last few outings. While I don’t know if he’ll be relegated to bullpen work after Reynaldo López returns or used as a glorified opener once a week as his rotation spot comes around, this was likely the last start he’ll make this season.

That being said, the future’s still incredibly bright for the young man. He’s capable of throwing in the high-90s, and we saw last season what he can do when he’s locked in. In his first seven starts of 2025, Smith-Shawver had a 2.33 ERA and had a few gems in there, including eight scoreless innings with only one hit against Cincinnati to open May. He’s got the tools and athleticism to be an impact starter once the control returns; the problem is that’s typically a longer process than Atlanta has remaining in the 2026 season.

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?

Atlanta’s looking to get back into the series, with Reynaldo López (4-3, 3.64) being activated off the IL to face Griffin Jax (6-10, 3.82) at 7:15 PM ET.