Today's Three Things: Victor Mederos, Mayor of The Battery Atlanta
The Atlanta Braves didn't have the offense, but still won thanks to a heroic effort in relief from Victor Mederos.
The Atlanta Braves took down the San Diego Padres 3-2 in Monday night’s series opener in Truist Park.
Here is Today’s Three Things from the contest.
The Turning Point
The top of the 7th inning.
Atlanta got their second solo homer of the game, this one from Ozzie Albies, the inning prior to push their lead to 3-1. Bryce Elder gave that run right back, though, allowing a solo shot to the red-hot Ty France to open the frame.
Manager Walt Weiss, not wanting to ride Elder’s low pitch count (77 pitches) in a close game, immediately swapped to lefty reliever Danny Young.
Young faced former teammate Luis Rengifo and gave up a single to the infielder, with Rengifo advancing from first to third on two groundouts. That’s when Weiss made another pitching change, asking Victor Mederos to clean up the inning. And after a walk of pinch-hitter Luis Campusano, Mederos did just that, getting Sung-Mun Song to fly out to end the inning.
The Padres would only have one more baserunner in the rest of the contest.
Today’s Player of the Game
It’s Mederos, with 70% of the vote.
You see, the flamethrowing righty didn’t just clean up the seventh inning.
He came back for the eighth, against the top of the order, and not only retired them in order, but did it in dominating fashion - five pitches to induce a groundout (Fernando Tatis Jr.), a pop out (Jackson Merrill), and a flyout (Manny Machado).
With the bullpen’s entire leverage contingent unavailable, manager Walt Weiss decided not to use Tyler Kinley (who had started to toss) and instead left Mederos in for the 9th inning.
In a one-run game. After Mederos had already gotten four outs and sat down twice.
The extended outing didn’t faze Mederos at all, who allowed only a hard-hit groundball single to Luis Rengifo but otherwise struck out France, got Xander Bogaerts to softly line out, and induced a fielder’s choice groundout by Jake Cronenworth to seal the win and pick up his first-ever professional save.
Mederos spoke to BravesVision’s Wiley Ballard after the game, explaining that he never really was taught how to throw a four-seamer when he was with the Angels and it was something the Braves taught him after he was traded to Atlanta this April.
This is reminiscent of Grant Holmes never being given a slider by the A’s and it being the ‘one weird trick’ that unlocked him as an MLB-quality arm for the Atlanta Braves after they signed him as a minor league free agent.
But it’s been a whirlwind four days for the righty Mederos, who followed up his first career hit and RBI on Friday night with tonight’s first career save. The Cuban has quickly become a fan favorite, with MLB.com’s Mark Bowman joking that the ballpark would be renamed to ‘Victor Mederos Stadium’ by tomorrow night’s game.
What You’ll Be Talking About
In light of the low offensive output today - three runs on only four hits- let’s talk about Bryce Elder’s resurgent outing tonight.
Elder was absurdly dominant for the first 11 starts of the season, with a 1.97 ERA that had him among the league’s leaders and even got him “dark horse Cy Young candidate” mentions.
But starting with his last start in May, a six-run disaster versus the Red Sox in Fenway, Elder’s peripherals collapsed, and he put up an 8.47 ERA across seven starts, even being skipped due to “arm fatigue.”
Tonight was a throwback outing for Elder, with the righty going six-plus innings and allowing only two runs on five hits. He walked only one, meaning that both the runs - which came on homers where he hung a slider and sinker, respectively - were only solo shots.
Elder, who had ramped up his four-seam usage down the stretch last year and early this season, was back to mainlining his sinker tonight, using it to record seven outs on the ground. While he didn’t have much success with his seldom-thrown slider, getting just one whiff on five swings, it was Elder leaning into his strengths of groundball contact to give the Braves some sorely-needed length.
I still don’t know what to expect out of Elder for the rest of the season - this is just one outing - but more quality starts like this would go a long way to helping give some much-needed ‘half days’ to Atlanta’s pen, like they got tonight.
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 doing it again tomorrow at the same time, with Reynaldo López (4-2, 3.50) taking on Walker Buehler (5-5, 5.36) at 7:15 PM ET.