Today's Three Things: Braves drop series after San Diego's late homer barrage
The Atlanta Braves have just one win against the Padres in seven games this season
The Atlanta Braves dropped their series finale against the San Diego Padres 5-3 in Truist Park on Sunday afternoon.
Here’s Today’s Three Things from the contest.
The Turning Point
The bottom of the fifth for the Braves.
Sitting in a tie game, 1-1, Alex Verdugo led off with a single before moving to third on an Ozzie Albies double.
Michael Harris II put up perhaps the worst at-bat of the season right here. Dylan Cease threw him four pitches, a slider that bounced in front of the plate and three more so low that their red dots showed as being on top of the plate. Harris swung at all three and struck out.
Nick Allen then hit a sacrifice fly, bringing in Verdugo, before Albies scored on a wild pitch and then Ronald Acuña Jr hit a two-out double to center.
But the rally ended when Drake Baldwin struck out. (This isn’t shade at Baldwin). Atlanta needed more there - they had Cease on his heels after the first two batters both reached and got into scoring position, but Harris gave him an easy strikeout and then after the sacrifice fly was the 2nd out of the inning, Atlanta’s options to manufacture more runs were completely off the table.
The Braves would go on to be held scoreless for the rest of the game.
Today’s Player of the Game
Give me Ozzie Albies.
Our resident Short King went 2-2 with a run scored, a RBI, and a walk. And unlike last night’s multi-hit effort, which was mostly soft ground balls that weren’t fielded by the Padres defense, both of these doubles were 100+ off the bat.
While he was thrown out at third base, trying to stretch his 2nd inning double into a triple, it was still a sign that this current eleven-game hitting streak isn’t entirely smoke and mirrors. Ozzie rounding into form is perfectly timed with Atlanta’s schedule getting harder as we wrap up May and head into June.
What You’ll Be Talking About
All of the home runs.
The Braves gave up three longballs to the Padres, two being egregious misses that San Diego punished. The Manny Machado homer in the 8th, coming off of a Dylan Lee elevated fastball, and the 7th inning Jake Cronenworth homer off of a hanging slider from Spencer Schwellenbach, were mistakes that were punished.
But I want to talk about Gavin Sheets and how improbable his 6th-inning two-run blast was. Watch this video and tell me what’s unusual about the slider that Schwellenbach throws:
The location is what stood out to me. Felt a bit improbable, so I dove into the numbers in Statcast.
Isolating for right-on-left sliders in zone 14 (down and in to a lefty) this season, MLB hitters have a collective .072 batting average and .103 slug off of that specific pitch in that specific location. Of the 2,581 that were thrown there entering today’s action, only two had been homers before this one.
Sheets himself had seen 27 of them this year and not only did he not hit a single one of them, he whiffed over half of the time! In his entire career, he’s seen 207 down-and-in sliders and put exactly seven into play.
It was quite literally the perfect call, a combination of pitch and location that he hasn’t been able to handle in his career…but this time, he homered on it.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What’s Next for the Braves?
The Braves are heading to Philadelphia tonight and taking their off day there before the start of a three-game set against the Phillies on Tuesday night. Here are the pitching matchups:
Tuesday: Spencer Strider (0-2, 5.79) versus LHP Ranger Suarez (3-0, 3.70)
Wednesday: AJ Smith-Shawver (3-2, 3.67) versus Zack Wheeler (6-1, 2.42)
Thursday: Chris Sale (2-3, 3.66) versus LHP Cristopher Sánchez (4-1, 3.17)
Harris has a great defensive glove but gives all of that up when he consistently whiffs with runners in scoring position, and I guess he thinks its his duty to record the 3rd out in an inning, which I'm sure the stats will show he leads the team in that area. When he gets a solid hit and brings in a few, like he did in the last win (there is a correlation), everyone takes that one instance and mix it with his defensive play, and all is forgotten and forgiven, at least until he goes 4 or 5 games hitless and the cycle goes over and over. In reality Harris helps in winning one game and assists in 4 losses. Put a couple of months of that and that's what we call the present. Bottom line he has a great glove but cannot be depended on to help at all on the offensive side, and to me that is what we called the "Arcia Problem" the past 2 years until finally the club booted Arcia with his .180 average as his defensive skills started disappearing. The other significant difference between Arcia and Harris is the club was paying Arcia peanuts compared to Harris' contract, and that is that. I keep hoping Harris will come in one day (soon I hope) and just start hitting. That happens and that problem goes away. That is the same thing I hoped would happen with Arcia, and with Kelenic, and with Verdugo, and Murphy, and even Eddie Rosario and Adam Duvall. Of course the problem didn't go away with any of those which is why some are no longer on the team and others are close to being done. Have you ever seen a small boat out on the water with the rudder stuck, and it just keeps going in circles? Use that to form your own conclusions............about the Braves. Who controls the rudder? The Manager? The General Manager? The ownership group? The team captain (never mind, he's in LA). Someone will have to straighten the rudder so this team can succeed. I hope we identify that someone soon.
Last year I thought Harris just went thru the "Sophomore Slump". Is there a "Junior Slump, too?"