The Atlanta Braves were shutout by the Diamondbacks, losing 2-0 in the series opener in Truist Park on Friday night.
Here is Today’s Three Things from the contest.
The Turning Point
It somehow ended up being the bottom of the first inning, although we didn’t know it at the time.
Geraldo Perdomo battled through a nine-pitch at-bat to finally rip a single through the left side. That brought up Corbin Carroll, in an at-bat that was more consequential than any second at-bat of the game has any right to be.
Carroll got a 0-1 fastball on the inner-third and shot it out to left, where Mauricio Dubón was waiting. He wasn’t waiting in the right place, though, with the ball going over his head and Carroll ending up on second base.
You can see on the high home camera that Dubón aggressively breaks in, but too far and can’t recover in time to make the plan, leaping as it goes over the outstretched glove.
A soft groundout to first base from Gabriel Moreno scored the run, which ended up being earned after the official scorer changed the call on Carroll’s play from a fielding error on Dubón to a straight hit.
Today’s Player of the Game
Chris Sale, with his team-leading 14th of the season.
Sale was charged with just one earned run in his six innings, striking out nine with no walks. And the one run was “earned”, so his ERA’s now sitting at 2.16.
This was a tough matchup for Sale, as Arizona entered the game with MLB’s second-lowest whiff rate at just 22.3%. You can see that contact ability reflected in several of Sale’s stats, including just 11 whiffs and needing 108 pitches to get through six innings.
(Sale said after the game that he appreciated Weiss letting him going over 100 pitches to finish the 6th, describing it as Weiss watching the pitcher, not the pitch count, and remarking that it was a much more common practice earlier in his career.)
But despite the lack of whiffs, Sale finished with nine strikeouts, partly thanks to 21 called strikes. Even though he got the strikeouts, though, Sale not only allowed a lot of contact (fourteen batted balls), but eight of them were hard-hit and the average exit velocity he allowed was an unusual 93.9 mph.
I feel like we say this twice a month at this point, but for Sale to get the results he did shows he’s one of the best pitchers in the league. Even though he’s likely behind Jacob Misioroswki in the NL Cy Young race, not many pitchers could manage to not only get through six innings with only one run allowed, but to do it with nine puchouts and no walks.
What You’ll Be Talking About
Jeez, Atlanta’s offense got dominated tonight.
The Braves punched out eleven times and didn’t walk once, despite starter Brandon Pfaadt entering the game with only 13 stirkeouts in 32 innings since returning from the minors. Pointing out they picked up just three singles, two of them coming off of Pfaadt, is somehow underselling the futility for the Atlanta offense tonight: They had ZERO flyouts opposite ten groundouts and had just four hard-hit balls, all of which were outs. The Braves had six innings where they went three up, three down, including a stretch of nine consecutive batters retired.
While Arizona went an embarassing 0-for-14 with runners in scoring position tonight, at least they got a runner in scoring position - Atlanta had just three baserunners, all of who ended the inning still on first base.
For a game where you weren’t no-hit, it’s hard to draw up an outing with more offensive futility than what Atlanta was able to conjure tonight.
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 hoping to even up the series tomorrow night on Fox, with Grant Holmes (7-4, 3.47) opposite lefty Eduardo Rodriguez (11-4, 2.70) at 7:15 PM ET.
We have done so much hand wringing and teeth gnashing about what AA did and didn't do with respect to the starting rotation last off-season and at this year's trade deadline, that we seem to forget that if we don't hit, and recent history would indicate that we have struggled vs playoff caliber type pitching, that it doesn't matter whose pitching if you can't score runs.
Everyone "remembers" when Elder got lit up in the playoffs. What we seem to have a hard time remembering is that the Phillies starters just shoved against us.
I learned a very long time ago that it is impossible to win baseball games if you don't score runs. And it's impossible to score runs if you don't hit.
Bruce: Acuna is now .240, gets picked off/thrown out more than he steals, zero hustle (the one ball he hit tonight was fumbled by Arenado, but Acuna's normal jog to 1st base allowed it to be a no contest out), 12 homeruns and 30 RBI's: yet he is calling the shots. He gets the "easy" DH (why not just cut Dom?). Not mandatory he back up anything. Not mandatory he run out anything. Not mandatory he hussle. His career is "injured to death", yet he "manages" the Braves. He will not steal 73 bases in the rest of his career, nor hit 40 homeruns. Too fragile.