Today's Three Things: Hurston Waldrep Rebounds but Bullpen Collapses in Loss

The Atlanta Braves got beat after the bullpen allowed seven runs in the seventh inning

The Atlanta Braves dropped the series finale 11-5 to the St. Louis Cardinals in Truist Park on Thursday night, losing their third consecutive series.

Here is Today’s Three Things from the contest.

The Turning Point

The top of the 7th inning.

Tyler Kinley was on the mound, holding a slim 5-3 lead for the Braves. This wasn’t the beginning of his outing; he came in for Hurston Waldrep with one out in the fifth and got a one-pitch double play to end the inning.

But coming back out, while the correct decision, didn’t work out for Atlanta.

Kinley gave up a leadoff single to Masyn Winn, who finished the night with three hits. With lefty Nathan Church coming up, Kinley opened him with a slider middle-down, and Church did not miss it. 392 feet later, the game was tied at 5-5.

It was the sixth home run of the year allowed by Kinley, with all six of them coming from lefties (and four of those on the slider, his best pitch). For Church, it was his second homer of the series, with the outfielder hitting a three-run shot in Tuesday’s game one.

After Blaze Jordan drew a walk off of Kinley, the Braves pulled Kinley for Dylan Lee, which would normally kill any sort of rally in process and quickly spell the end of an inning. It did not tonight.

José Fermín laced a 0-2 changeup out to left, with JJ Wetherholt ripping a center-cut two-strike slider to center to score pinch-runner Bryan Torres from second to give St. Louis the lead. Ivan Herrera got his own center-cut two-strike pitch, ripping a fastball to center for his own RBI single. After a fielder’s choice, Atlanta went to their third pitcher of the inning, Ian Hamilton.

Spoiler alert: this didn’t fix things, either. Jordan Walker muscled a knee-high inside sinker to left for an RBI single, Lars Nootbaar doubled on a two-strike slider at the bottom of the zone, and then Masyn Winn got an RBI on a fielder’s choice to first. This was actually a really impressive play by Jordan Walker, who was beat to home by the throw by Matt Olson but successfully swam around Drake Baldwin’s tag to score.

After an inning-ending double play, the final damage tally was a bit shocking: seven runs on seven hits and a walk, with three Braves pitchers throwing to ten different Cardinals in the frame. The final count was three runs each charged to Kinley and Lee, with this raising Lee’s ERA from 0.95 (four runs in 38 innings) to 1.64 and likely ending any talk of getting the lefty setup man to this month’s All-Star Game in Philly.

At the end of the day, it’s just one hiccup and likely nothing to be overly concerned about. But after the worst three-week stretch of the season, one where runs were at a premium, losing a game after you finally manufactured a big inning and turned a lead over to your lockdown bullpen is frustrating.

Today’s Player of the Game

Hurston Waldrep.

Manager Walt Weiss said before the game that Atlanta was hoping to get 75 or 80 pitches out of Waldrep, and the youngster made the most of those.

His first inning was rough - three runs scored on a HBP and three hits, including a three-run homer, for an inauspicious start…but from that point on, Waldrep was nearly in cruise control: 4.2 more innings with two singles, four strikeouts, and two walks.

The way he did it, though, was very interesting - Waldrep’s known for his splitter but he did not have it early, leaving several middle-middle or even higher. So he mostly stopped throwing it, finishing with just ten thrown in his 76 pitches. The more-sporadic-than-usual locations meant that it wasn’t that effective, either, getting only one whiff in four swings and having the other three put into play. Two of those were hard-hit, with the splitter’s average exit velocity coming in at a concerning 97.6 mph.

The other three hard-hit balls came on sinkers, and all five Cardinals hard-hit balls fell for base hits, naturally.

Instead, Waldrep relied on his curveball, getting five whiffs in seven swings against it, and putting up an overall 32% CSW for the outing.

But it’s nice to see a Braves starter be able to get through an outing by getting whiffs and strikeouts when needed instead of relying on weak contact and ground balls. Waldrep likely continues in the rotation for the foreseeable future as he works on getting back towards that 100-pitch threshold.

What You’ll Be Talking About

We’ve already covered the bullpen collapse, so let’s talk about the offense.

Atlanta came out of the game absolutely humming against Dustin May, absolutely battering him from the opening pitch.

No, literally battering him - #6 hitter Dom Smith, batting with the bases loaded and only one out, sent a line drive off of May’s foot and into right field for a two-run double. He was checked out by trainers for a while but eventually left the game after three more batters, but at that point it could have been as much to do with the nine batters that took him 34 pitches to navigate as the injury.

Atlanta’s offense did capitalize off of May, though, picking up five base hits, two walks, and five runs. But only one of those hits was for extra bases, and it took an advantageous bounce off of May to do it.

And after that first inning, with the Cardinals bullpen covering the final eight innings, Atlanta just didn’t do anything. The Braves added just three more hits and one walk the rest of the entire game, squandering a 1st-and-2nd-with-one-out situation in the 4th as well as 1st-and-2nd with no outs in the 8th.

Sure, eight hits is nice, but if this lineup doesn’t hit for power, then it’s going to take a lot of fortuitous bounces and manufacturing to produce big enough innings to cover for a short start or the occasional bullpen hiccup.

It’s hard to say the offense is ‘back’ when their scoring has largely been confined to single runs here and there and one or two fluky innings a series (last night’s eighth, today’s first).

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?

Atlanta’s got no time to lick their wounds, as the division rival Mets are in town for a wraparound series starting tomorrow evening. Here are the announced pitching matchups:

Fri: Grant Holmes vs Christian Scott
Sat: Chris Sale vs Sean Manaea
Sun: Martín Pérez vs Nolan McLean
Mon: Reynaldo López vs Freddy Peralta