Today's Three Things: Braves Rally Late, But Come Up Just Short in Series Finale

The Atlanta Braves had great at-bats, but couldn't get the balls to fall in the finale

The Atlanta Braves dropped game three 6-4 to the Cincinnati Reds on Sunday afternoon in Great American Ball Park.

Here is Today’s Three Things from the contest.

The Turning Point

This was a back-and-forth affair that wasn’t decided until the 9th.

Atlanta entered the frame down by three, but manager Walt Weiss almost immediately started pulling all his levers in an attempt to engineer a rally.

After Austin Riley just missed a center-cut fastball, flying out to left to open the inning, Weiss sent out his first pinch-hitter of the frame, slugger Dominic Smith. Facing righty Tony Santillán, Smith worked a six-pitch walk, getting down 0-2 before holding off on four consecutive pitches off the plate away. Mike Yastrzemski then grabbed a bat, replacing shortstop Ha-Seong Kim, and shot a 2-2 fastball up and away to left-center. Smith, in the game for Jorge Mateo, was only able to advance to second.

Weiss’s decision to insert Dom for Mateo is worth questioning here. In a vacuum, going off the back of their baseball cards, it makes sense to send Dom in for a clutch at-bat late. But in the context of this season, where Mateo has been hot enough recently (.387 avg/1.086 OPS over the last 15 games) to get three straight starts at shortstop and then time at DH today (where he homered earlier in this game), it’s a bit confusing. It’s not a “this guy’s been successful against Santillan thing”, either - both men are 0-1 against the reliever, although Dom’s groundout was yesterday and Mateo’s strikeout was in 2021. Letting Dom PH for the struggling Austin Riley would have made more sense, in my opinion.

Per The Athletic’s Jesús Cano, Weiss made the PH decision for handedness reasons. “I hit for Mateo, who’s been one of the hottest hitters on our team. I think the lefties are a much better option against Santillán right there, he's really tough on righties.” The stats bear this out, with Santillán allowing a .311 wOBA to lefties going back to 2023 and a .279 to righties.

After catcher Sandy León flew out to shallow left field for the second out (and no, they couldn’t have pinch hit for him, as Chadwick Tromp was already out of the game), the lineup turned over to Ronald Acuña Jr. Ronald, who already homered in this game, singled home Smith to lower the deficit to two runs, 6-4.

This is when Cincy went to a lefty, Sam Moll, to try and preserve the win.

Moll was greeted by one of MLB’s hottest hitters, Michael Harris II, who wasn’t going to go down easily. Harris worked a nine-pitch at-bat, drawing his second walk of the game (the 10th time in his career he’s drawn two wlks in the same game) and loading the bases for Matt Olson.

The slugger, however, was unable to complete the rally. Olson got a center-cut sinker and was just barely on top of it, grounding out to third to end the game.

Today’s Player of the Game

It’s hard to not, once again, give it to Ronald Acuña Jr.

The slugger hit a leadoff homer on the very first pitch of the game, which feels like it is one of those ‘tone-setting’ at-bats that changes the outcome of the game; this might be a newsletter for an off day. He picked up his second hit and RBI of the day with the aforementioned single in the 9th inning.

Acuña is now one of just four players since 1898 to have five (or more) homers and four (or more) stolen bases in a four-game span, per MLB’s Sarah Langs, joining some notable names:

2024 Shohei Ohtani (won MVP)
1987 Eric Davis
1958 Willie Mays (MVP runner-up)

It’s worth pointing out that Ronald’s defense in right field was downright bad today. He was charged with a fielding error after bobbling a ball on the transfer, which allowed a run to score, and had two other balls go over his head and off the wall. He’s never graded out that well in the outfield, mainly due to subpar jumps, and these plays definitely won’t help his defensive ratings.

What You’ll Be Talking About

With all due respect to Spencer Strider and his five innings of three ER ball (a deep dive on him coming this week), Atlanta’s offense may merit some conversation after this one.

The Braves have just seven hits today, and yet were in a position to win this game in the 9th. They drew more walks (six) than strikeouts (five) and had eleven hard-hit balls, with every starter but Michael Harris II (surprisingly) having at least one.

Despite it being their less-than-ideal LHP-optimized lineup, Atlanta was able to consistently threaten Cincinnati pitchers and force them to bring their stuff into the zone. Braves hitters had 28 balls in play, but several bad luck/random variance outs, including a lineout from Ha-Seong Kim with an expected batting average of .750 and one from Matt Olson with a .620. They had only thirteen whiffs in the entire game, on 63 swings, and showed a pretty sustainable process at the plate that would have likely led to a different outcome if you played this game with the exact same batted balls 10 or 100 more times.

What’s Next for the Braves?

The Braves are off on Monday before starting a three-game series against the Toronto Blue Jays at home. Here are those pitching matchups:

Tue: Bryce Elder (4-3, 2.50) vs Kevin Gausman (4-3, 3.13)
Wed: Grant Holmes (3-2, 3.95) vs LHP Patrick Corbin (2-1, 3.65)
Thu: Chris Sale (8-3, 2.014) vs TBA (officially) but lines up to be Trey Yesavage (2-2, 2.19)