Today’s Three Things: Bryce Elder Shines With New Cutter in Win Over Athletics

Atlanta put up a crooked number early and coasted to an easy win and their second shutout of the season

The Atlanta Braves blanked the Athletics, 4-0, in Truist Park on Monday night.

Here is Today’s Three Things from the contest.

The Turning Point

Is the bottom of the first inning too early for this?

Facing soft-tossing lefty Jacob Lopez, Atlanta dropped a three-spot and nearly batted around in the inning. Ronald Acuña Jr. started off with a walk, advancing to second on a Drake Baldwin single and scoring on a Matt Olson double. After a groundout, Eli White walked to load the bases and then Mauricio Dubón hit a two-RBI single to right to push the lead to three.

Lopez actually settled in after this, making it through three more innings with only three hits and two more walks, but the high pitch count set the tone for this one.

Today’s Player of the Game

With all due respect to Mauricio Dubón, who finished with three hits and three RBI (but also two fielding errors), we’re going with Bryce Elder here.

The sinkerballer threw six scoreless innings, allowing five hits and one walk opposite five strikeouts. He unveiled his new-ish cutter in this one, throwing it seven times in lieu of his four-seamer. More on that tomorrow.

It continues a trend of exemplary performances for Elder recently. Across his last eight outings, stretching into last August, he’s allowed only thirteen runs in 50.2 innings with 37 strikeouts, good for a 2.31 ERA.

What You’ll Be Talking About

The offense.

The Braves have scored seventeen runs in their four games, three wins and a loss. But with the exception of the season opener, most of those runs have been clustered - six runs in Saturday’s ninth inning, Sunday’s only run coming in the 8th, and three of tonight’s four runs coming in the first inning.

At the same time, the Braves have hit just five homers, which together accounted for nine of those runs. For as much contact as the team’s made and how they’ve been, for the most part, not overly strikeout-prone, the runs still haven’t come as freely as we expected them to based on spring training results.

Some of this is the lack of power production from the top of the order. The trio of Ronald Acuña Jr., Matt Olson, and Austin Riley has yet to record a home run. They’ve combined for just eleven hits across 44 at-bats, albeit with three doubles.

But some of it feels intentional, as well. Matt Olson’s first-inning double came on the first pitch, but with a two-strike swing, measured at just 68.9 mph (His 2025 bat speed average was 73.9 mph).

It feels like this offense has more to give, but thankfully, the pitching staff has absolutely picked up the slack in the meantime. This is the third time in franchise history that the Braves had recorded two shutouts in the first four games of a season. The other two instances came in 1899 & 1906.

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/loss.

What’s Next for the Braves?

Game two is tomorrow night at 7:15 PM ET, with LHP Jose Suarez taking on RHP Aaron Civale.