Today's Three Things: Grant Holmes Cruises Thanks to Five Early Runs

The Atlanta Braves had everything working in Sunday's dismantling of the Boston Red Sox

The Atlanta Braves scored five runs in the first two innings of Sunday’s series finale, ultimately taking down the Boston Red Sox 8-1 to win the series on Sunday afternoon in Truist Park.

Here is Today’s Three Things from the contest.

The Turning Point

With all due respect to Austin Riley’s first-inning home run, which came off an awful cutter location - middle-middle - the nail in the coffin was Atlanta’s second inning on offense.

Already down 3-0 and having thrown 30 pitches, Red Sox starter Brayan Bello needed to staunch the bleeding if Boston wanted to have a chance of getting back into this game.

He did nothing of the sort.

Bello opened the frame with a double to Jorge Mateo, who got the start at shortstop in place of Ha-Seong Kim. Mike Yastrzemski then singled Mateo to third with a ground ball up the middle that shortstop Andrew Monasterio dove and knocked down on the other side of the 2nd base bag, but couldn’t make a play on. José Azócar then loaded the bases with a four-pitch walk before Drake Baldwin drew his own walk to push a run across.

Ozzie Albies finally gave Bello an out, flying out to left on the 25th pitch of the inning, before Matt Olson grounded out on the first pitch (scoring Azócar in the process) and Harris grounded out, also on the first pitch. Atlanta’s two quick outs meant that Bello escaped the inning on ‘only’ 27 pitches, an improvement on the first frame but with a total pitch count of 57 that would ultimately see him leave after five.

For the game, Atlanta finished with eight hits, four for extra bases, while drawing more walks (six) than strikeouts (five). The Braves had twelve hard-hit balls, including eight of the top ten exit velocities, and recorded an expected batting average of .281 for the game.

Today’s Player of the Game

By vote of the postcast, it’s Grant Holmes.

The swingman worked a strong six innings today, not allowing a single run and walking only one while striking out four with five hits scattered across the outing.

Similar to Bryce Elder’s outing on Saturday night, Holmes also ramped up his sinker usage in an effort to end some at-bats a bit earlier. Success was mixed - Holmes had only three groundouts to Elder’s fourteen, but it’s the same idea and worked out here.

The bigger thing for me was Holmes only walking one across the six innings and 24 batters he faced. He threw every pitch other than the changeup (six thrown) in the zone more than 50% of the time, allowing balls in play but not really getting tagged by anything more than a few doubles.

Holmes checked off a lot of the boxes we were looking for here - didn’t get overly terrorized by the second time through the order, while he also didn’t issue a boatload of walks.

What You’ll Be Talking About

The final three innings after the rain delay.

Atlanta went with Reynaldo López out of the 35-minute rain delay, and he rewarded the team with two scoreless innings. He allowed two hits, a single and a double, and struck out two. More importantly, he averaged 94.8 mph on his four-seamer, touching 96.5, and picked up two whiffs on three swings with his slider.

But the Braves strangely didn’t leave him in the game for the 9th, where he could have gotten the three-inning save, and instead went with beleaguered slider enthusiast Tyler Kinley. The righty allowed two hits, including a single followed by an RBI double, to end the shutout with two outs in the 9th inning. More concerningly, the double came on a curveball, the pitch that Kinley’s tried to incorporate more this year to keep hitters from being able to sit on his slider.

The farther we keep getting into the season, the more it’s looking like the Braves need to prioritize a high-leverage relief arm at the deadline, one that can get righties out.

Looking for more discussion about this game?

Here’s tonight’s Postcast, where I went live on a solo show to break down the contest.

What’s Next for the Braves?

Atlanta’s flying to Miami for four games starting Monday night in LoanDepot Park. Here are the pitching matchups for the series:

Mon: JR Ritchie vs Max Meyer
Tue: Martín Pérez vs LHP Braxton Garrett
Wed: Chris Sale vs Janson Junk
Thu: Spencer Strider vs Sandy Alcantara