Today's Three Things: Defense Lets Atlanta Down in Walkoff Loss to Baltimore
The Braves kept things close with the Orioles, but poor defense allowed them a chance to get the walkoff hit in the 9th
The Atlanta Braves dropped game two of their series against the Baltimore Orioles 3-2, being walked off in Camden Yards on Saturday night. Atlanta’s young arms gave it every opportunity, but three catchable balls turned a strong pitching night into a 3-2 loss.
Here is Today’s Three Things from the contest.
The Turning Point
There’s no other place to look at but the bottom of the 9th inning.
Tied 2-2 and with Atlanta sending flamethrower Didier Fuentes back out for a second inning, Baltimore was looking to put the game away with the bottom of their order.
Fuentes started with a fastball-induced strikeout of Tyler O’Neil, but that’s where his luck would end. Facing Jackson Holliday, he got up 0-2 but couldn’t sneak a 99-mph fastballs past Holliday on four separate tried. The fifth heater induced a hard-hit fly ball, 101.9 off the bat and headed for the left-center gap. Mauricio Dubón got there, sprinting 4.5 feet in the three seconds of hang time, and then just…dropped it.
The ball clanged off of Dubón’s glove and rolled away, allowing Holliday to motor in to second ahead of the throw. It wasn’t ruled an error, likely due to it not being “ordinary effort” to make the play, but it’s a catch opportunity that the two-time utility Gold Glove winner makes almost every time.
You can see from the high home camera that it wasn’t a bad route - a little deep and he had to cut in a bit late, but with plenty of time to make the catch, and yet he just…didn’t.
Dubón reportedly told the TV crew before the game that the diving catch he made on Friday night not only knocked the wind out of him, it caused some significant soreness that lasted the rest of the night. Maybe this was his mind having a bit of the yips about laying out for another ball?
Holliday advanced to third on a very deep fly ball out from pinch hitter Colton Cowser, with leadoff man Dylan Beavers ambushing a first pitch heater past a diving Ozzie Albies to bring in the winning run and start the celebration.
Today’s Player of the Game
I’m going with Victor Mederos here.
Pitching the 6th and 7th, Mederos delivered two scoreless innings with one hit, no walks and three strikeouts. More impressively, he generated 10 whiffs on 18 swings. Baltimore swung four times at his changeup and missed all four, and he reached 99.9 mph with the fastball.
While the righty suffered a blow-up at the hands of the Padres earlier this week, he’s also proven to be capable of both missing bats and giving the Braves length, something which seems to be mutually exclusive in the Atlanta bullpen this season.
Honorable metion goes to Ozzie Albies. He rebounded from one of the most embarassing strikeouts of the year to hit a game-tying home run in the 8th inning, the second time the Braves have gotten a game-tying home run in the 8th inning in this series.
What You’ll Be Talking About
Dubón’s dropped fly ball wasn’t the only disappointing defense of the night. Shortstop Jim Jarvis twice dropped a Pete Alonso pop up in shallow left field, being charged with errors both times.
The second time, Victor Mederos was able to erase the baserunner in the 7th thanks to a strikeout of Gunnar Henderson, but it happened with only one out to Bryce Elder in the 3rd inning. Elder got a strikeout but then gave up two consecutive singles to Taylor Ward and Christian Encarnacion-Strand that ended up bringing in an unearned run. The other unfortunate side effect was that the error, which prolonged the 3rd inning for Elder, also ended up hanging another twelve pitches on his arm. Despite allowing just one earned run and striking out eight, the error plus his four walks meant that he was sitting at 98 pitches after five and was pulled for a reliever to start the 6th.
To add to the sloppiness, Eli White stumbled rounding first and fell down roughly ten feet from second base, only being called safe after the throw got away from the covering fielder and White was able to scramble to his feet and get to the bag.
Just an ugly night of baseball that, at the end of the day, was more sloppy than alarming. The young shortstop Jarvis got a bit rattled by his error and had a second one later, while a makeable catch was dropped and it directly led to the Braves losing. This is one of those “if you play it ten times, the Braves probably win six or more of them” games, but that’s baseball, Suzyn.
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 still in line to potentially win the series, with Reynaldo López (4-3, 3.95) taking on offseason trade acquisition Shane Baz (4-9, 4.13) at 1:35 PM ET.