The Atlanta Braves took down the Chicago White Sox 2-0 in Rate Field on Thursday afternoon.
Here is Today’s Three Things from the contest.
The Turning Point
The bottom of the 7th inning was pivotal.
Grant Holmes (more on him in a moment) lost his no-hit bid fairly quickly, walking the leadoff batter and then hanging a slider to cleanup man Andrew Benintendi.
Once the no-hit bid was over, manager Walt Weiss went to flamethrowing youngster Didier Fuentes to preserve the 2-0 lead and clean up the mess.
Consider that trash taken out.
Fuentes punched out Braden Montgomery looking, with catcher Sean Murphy calling three straight sliders to open the at-bat before going to a fastball out of the zone for a ball and then a splitter, called for strike three.
He then got Colson Montgomery swinging, getting him to swing through sliders for both strikes two and three.
He then struck out Chase Meidroth, elevating a four-seamer that Meidroth swung through for strike three.
Three batters, three punchouts, and a clean line for Holmes. Credit to Murphy for calling more sliders (eight) than fastballs (five), and credit to Fuentes for executing them.
Today’s Player of the Game
By a pretty overwhelming vote total on the Postcast, it went to Holmes.
He was officially credited with six-plus innings of one-hit, scoreless baseball with three walks and three strikeouts. Holmes picked up 16 whiffs, his second-highest total of the season, and posted a 30% CSW. Most notably, he didn’t change what was working - his slider was the most used pitch for both trips through the order and was pacing that way for the first four batters he faced of the third trip.
Said Holmes afterwards, “My game plan every game is to get as many outs as quick as possible, go deep in the game, whether that be five, six, or seven innings, get the guys back in the dugout as quick as possible,” Holmes told the traveling beat, including the AJC’s Chad Bishop.
Holmes finished with seven groundouts, five lineouts, and three groundouts, requiring some good defense to keep the hits off the board until the 7th. The average exit velocity he allowed was a whopping 95.0 mph, exactly the threshold of a hard-hit ball, which nine of the sixteen batted balls were.
Better to be lucky than good, I guess. And to have a good defense, who Holmes credited after the game. “How the day was going, I felt like I could throw it anywhere and they were going to hit it at somebody. I was just keeping that mindset.”
While I don’t know how sustainable this is going forward - Chicago had four batted balls with expected batting averages over .500, including a .710, a .750, and a .900 that all ended up being outs - it’s a much-needed boost to an embattled starter who was undoubtedly feeling the pressure of a temporary six-man rotation and a poor performance his last time out. “Coming back and doing what I did today kind of puts a little bit more of a confidence in my game.”
What You’ll Be Talking About
With all due respect to both Grant and the bullpen, which was lockdown today (3IP, 0H, 0BB, 7Ks), we still need to discuss the offense.
Atlanta picked up eight hits, but seven of them came from the bottom of the order. Austin Riley (double, single, two RBI) and Mauricio Dubón (three hits, run scored) were the offensive catalysts, but Sean Murphy (single) and Michael Harris II (double, run scored) got involved as well.
The problem is that despite the bottom of the order getting on a combined seven times, the top of the order never drove them in. Of the quartet of Ronald Acuña Jr., Drake Baldwin, Matt Olson, and Ozzie Albies, they all combined for one single (Albies) while striking out six times.
Even worse, the only hard-hit balls from that group were both from Baldwin, a 100.9 mph lineout and a 103.7 mph groundout. Acuña’s three batted-ball outs were all weak contact, with two coming in below 60 mph, although he did hit 28.2 ft/sec in an effort to beat out an infield grounder to open the game.
Because of the top of the order’s struggles, Atlanta finished 1-for-11 with runners in scoring position and ended up leaving seven runners on base.
Still wild to me that after all the injuries to the top of the rotation in spring training, the pitching staff has been the more reliable part of the team this season and the offense has been the one we’ve needed to worry about.
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 loading up on buses for the 85-mile drive to Milwaukee’s American Family Field for Friday afternoon’s series opener against the Brewers, and boy is it a doozy:
Chris Sale (12-8, 2.16 ERA) takes on Jacob Misiorowski (12-5, 1.75) at 4:10 PM ET.