Today's Three Things: Grant Holmes Flirts With No-Hitter As Braves Outduel Arizona
The Atlanta Braves won a close one after both starters were close to untouchable
The Atlanta Braves took down the Arizona Diamondbacks 2-0 in Phoenix’s Chase Field on Friday night.
Here is Today’s Three Things from the contest.
The Turning Point
The only option here is to go with the top of the ninth. In a scoreless game, Arizona inserted closer Paul Sewald, hoping to get through one last half-inning and then walk it off in the home half of the 9th.
That didn’t happen.
Sewald gave up two solo home runs, the first on a belt-high fastball on the inner third to Ozzie Albies and the second on an absolutely grooved middle-middle heater at 90.5 mph to Matt Olson. Sewald stayed in the game long enough to pick up two outs before being finally lifted after 16 pitches, four batters, and one loss.
Fun fact, courtesy of Braves analyst CJ Nitkowski: After tonight’s game, Sewald has pitched 28.2 career innings against Atlanta and allowed 23 total runs and 10 homers. Not great!
Today’s Player of the Game
With all due respect to Ozzie Albies, who had three of Atlanta’s six hits, Grant Holmes gets this one.
Grant carried a no-hitter into the sixth inning, ultimately surrendering a one-hit single to second baseman Ketel Marte to save Kent Mercker for at least one more night. Holmes finished six full innings with just the one hit and three walks allowed, striking out four. He finished with 14 whiffs and a 36% CSW, showing that he was not only able to minimize hard contact (only six hard-hit balls, one of which fell for a hit) but also miss plenty of bats.
Holmes wouldn’t have finished the no-hitter, as his velocity was starting to drop in the 6th inning from his early-game average of 96 to more of the 93-94 range.
What You’ll Be Talking About
How soon before there are more tweaks to the lineup?
We saw Walt Weiss show some impatience with his lineup tonight, pinch-hitting for catcher Jonah Heim in the top of the 8th (and sacrificing his DH in the process). He’s seemingly had a quicker hook recently with some of the platoon bats, pulling Eli White in Monday’s fifth inning for a pinch-hitter.
I’m asking in the context of Austin Riley. The third baseman was not only hitless with a strikeout in this one, but he also twice grounded out with runners in scoring position. While I don’t expect the Braves to completely remove him from the lineup, I do wonder how long he’ll be in the #4 (vs RHP) or #5 spot (vs LHP) like he was tonight.
Looking for more discussion about this game?
Here’s tonight’s Postcast, where I went live over on Locked On Sports Atlanta to break down the win.
What’s Next for the Braves?
Tomorrow’s a fun one: Bryce Elder vs Michael Soroka. The broadcast is a national game on Fox, although with Brandon Gaudin doing the play-by-play, and the first pitch is scheduled for 7:15 PM ET.