Today's Three Things: Braves Show Impressive Patience at the Plate in Series-Opening win over Royals

The Atlanta Braves tied the franchise record with fourteen walks drawn in tonight's win

The Atlanta Braves took down the Kansas City Royals 10-7 in Kauffman Stadium on Monday night.

Here’s Today’s Three Things from the contest.

The Turning Point

The top of the 8th.

Atlanta had just scored a run in the prior inning to push their lead to 5-2, but Kansas City got it right back on consecutive doubles by Bobby Witt Jr. and Vinnie Pasquantino to keep the deficit manageable at two.

And then the Braves struck. Atlanta batted around in the 8th inning, scoring four runs thanks to the heart of the order. After Nick Allen drew a one-out walk, turning the lineup over, Jurickson Profar singled and Matt Olson doubled to score a run. After the ever-dangerous Ronald Acuña Jr. was intentionally walked to bring up Austin Riley, ‘Young Thicc’ popped an 0-1 slider to left, clearing the bases with a double that pushed Atlanta’s lead into safe territory…or as safe as it could be with this bullpen. More on that later.

Today’s Player of the Game

Austin Riley.

Despite being the only Braves player without a walk tonight, he more than made up for it with his offense. Riley had a team-high four RBI, hitting a solo homer and the three RBI double that blew the game open.

It was a big game that was needed, too. Riley’s weekend in Texas was dreadful, with the newly activated third baseman going 0-11 with six strikeouts. The stats weren’t the only thing that was bad - his at-bats themselves looked bad, repeatedly being late on fastballs and swinging at breaking pitches out of the zone.

While Riley wasn’t that productive on high velocity tonight, grounding out against 98 mph and whiffing or fouling on the other two >95 mph pitches he saw, he did hit a fastball for the homer and successfully got a slider down for the bases-clearing double.

For as important as it is to get Michael Harris going down the stretch so he can contribute next year, getting Austin Riley from his actual 108 wRC+ to his more typical 120-ish wRC+ is a necessary improvement if this offense wants to get back to ‘contending for the World Series’ quality.

What You’ll Be Talking About

The pitching staff, in almost their entirety.

Spencer Strder was on the struggle bus tonight, struggling with both his fastball velocity (average of 94.9 mph) and locations (50% zone rate). He ended up needing to bring his slider into the zone more to compensate and stay in counts, resulting in just five total whiffs in his 96 pitches (48 swings) and a pedestrian 18% CSW.

I don’t know if he’s starting to feel the effects of the accumulated workload after missing, essentially, an entire season or if this was a rare off-night. His fastball velocity has stopped its trend of improving in recent starts, and it’s possible that this is just his ceiling this season and we need to wait for next year to get the ‘old’ Spencer Strider back.

Pierce Johnson looked phenomenal when he came in to clean up a two-on-and-no-outs situation for Strider in the 6th, but both Daysbel Hernández and Dylan Lee allowed runs to score in their innings.

And then Rafael Montero took the mound for the 9th, tasked to hold a six-run lead. He almost didn’t do it.

Montero allowed two walks and two hits in the 9th, failing to record an out and being charged with three runs. Raisel Iglesias was called into the game and although he allowed one additional run to score on a sacrifice fly, was able to lock down his 12th save of the 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 win.

What’s Next for the Braves?

Newly-acquired starter Erick Fedde (3-10, 5.22 with St. Louis) gets the ball tomorrow evening against 2025 All-Star Seth Lugo (7-5, 2.95). First pitch is scheduled for 7:40 PM ET.