Today’s Three Things: Ozzie Albies, in the Clutch, With the Bat
The Braves got a key two-RBI single from Ozzie Albies and then deployed their leverage arms to secure a win over the Nationals
The Atlanta Braves took down the Washington Nationals 5-4 in their series opener on Thursday night from Truist Park.
Here is Today’s Three Things from the contest.
The Turning Point
The dynamic of this game shifted in the bottom of the 6th inning.
With the game tied at three each, Atlanta got to work against Jake Irvin. Drake Baldwin worked a six-pitch walk, and after Ronald Acuña Jr. one-upped Baldwin with a five-pitch free pass, the Nats made a pitching change.
Youngster Carson Palmquist was tasked with getting out of the inning despite the heart of Atlanta’s order coming ot the plate, and he almost did! The Miami product got a Matt Olson flyout and a Michael Harris II groundout, albeit with the runners advancing to 2nd and 3rd.
But Ozzie Albies showed that the youngster still had something to learn. After getting ahead thanks to an elevated sweeper and one in the dirt, both of which elicited swings, Palmquist went to the sweeper well one more time. No one told him that Ozzie thrives off of bad balls.
Albies stuck out the bat and swatted it to the right-center gap, allowing both runners to score and staking Atlanta to a 5-3 lead.
In the top of the 6th, the Braves bullpen was tasked with holding onto that lead. With James Wood drawing a one-out walk, Luis García Jr. shot a triple past a diving Michael Harris II, scoring a run and drawing in Atlanta’s infield. The Braves got a weak popout off of Dylan Crews and then Dylan Lee entered to induce an inning-ending groundout of CJ Abrams to preserve the lead.
It was academic from there, with the Nationals not getting another baserunner until a two-out walk in the 9th inning.
Today’s Player of the Game
Winning his fourth of the year, it’s Ozzie Albies.
It’s been a weird season for Albies. The surface stats say he’s totally back after a rough start to his 2025, hitting .261/.311/.437 with 18 home runs, but that’s being carried by a red-hot April (.324/.371/.552) and a surprisingly decent June (.274/.309/.429). Since the All-Star Break, Ozzie’s hitting just .220 with a .678 OPS and, hilariously, more home runs (four) than walks (two).
But he still has a knack for coming through in the clutch. With runners in scoring position this season (which isn’t the same thing as high-leverage situations), he’s hitting .315 with a .802 OPS, and we saw that tonight with what ended up being his game-winning two-RBI single.
Albies has one more club option year at a hilariously cheap $7M, and the Braves are expected to pick that up. I have no clue what they’ll do with the club’s longest-tenured player after that, but for now, let’s enjoy the ride with our Curaçao Short King.
He ain’t as good as he once was, but he’s as good once as he ever was.
What You’ll Be Talking About
The starting pitching, yet again.
Grant Holmes went only 4.2 innings, allowing three runs on five hits. He only walked two, which was good, as all three runs came on solo home runs.
Again, the issue was missing enough bats. Holmes mainlined the slider tonight, getting nine whiffs (on sixteen swings) and four more called strikes on it. But the entire rest of the arsenal combined for one total whiff on the other 19 swings, with his curveball, cutter, and sinker all getting rocked. It’s a tough place to be in for Holmes - his slider needs to be set up with something, but the four-seamer isn’t good enough to survive on its own and the cutters and sinkers don’t move well enough to either get chase or miss bats.
At the end of the day, this is a swingman/’utility pitcher’ package, not a traditional starter, unless he gets back to his previous 95-96 mph average fastball and finds a way to miss more bats with his non-slider secondaries.
Also, you can see the effect that having both Dylan Dodd and Didier Fuentes down for today (as well as Robert Saurez still out injured) did to the pen. Danny Young came out to salvage Holmes’s fifth inning and then couldn’t finish the sixth, meaning Victor Mederos had to come save him. Mederos then couldn’t finish his own seventh inning, with Dylan Lee having to be the hero there before giving the Braves a clean 8th.
Under the normal bullpen setup, that’s probably Dodd bailing out Holmes and then he and Lee take the sixth and seventh, with Suarez in the 8th and Iglesias in the 9th. It’s why I’m not opposed to adding another high-leverage reliever at the deadline, in case someone gets hurt or is down due to usage in a tight spot.
Looking for more discussion about this game?
Here’s tonight’s Postcast, where I went live to break down the contest.
What’s Next for the Braves?
Atlanta’s back on BravesVision tomorrow, with Bryce Elder (6-6, 3.96) taking on lefty Foster Griffin (12-2, 2.76) at 7:15 PM ET.