Every baseball season has at least a few of these games for every team, but that doesn’t make it fun when it happens to the one you root for. On Wednesday night, the Braves had to suffer through a bunch of things that they didn’t even come close to overcoming: an awful Bryce Elder effort, bad luck on both sides of the ball, and bad defense. That’s how you lose 8-0. It is what it is.
Most of this game didn’t really have anything warranting discussion, and pretty much everything hinged on one inning where the Red Sox plated six runs. Bryce Elder wasn’t particularly good up to that point, with just a 1/0 K/BB ratio through the first three frames. Whatever mechanical adjustments he had made to move up a performance notch this season were seemingly absent, and his pitches were all over the place in eminently hittable ways. A great throw from left field cut down a runner at the plate for the third out in the first, and Elder was relying heavily on his defense in this one.
Which, of course, made it a real issue when the defense stopped backing him up. In the bottom of the fourth, Elder threw a four-seamer down the middle, and it turned into a hard-hit leadoff single. He then had a pretty gross walk (falling behind 3-0, non-competitive 3-2 pitch) to put two on. A bunt moved the runners over and brought up Marcelo Mayer. Elder threw a cutter up and in and Mayer somehow chopped it weakly to Matt Olson at first, but Olson booted it, and it was 1-0 in favor of Boston. Elder then threw a slider that didn’t quite dive as far as it needed to, and it was yanked into left field to make it 2-0. A bloop single on another down-the-pipe four-seamer loaded the bases, and Cedanne Rafaela unloaded them by mashing a meaty first-pitch sinker into left field. That was it for Elder, but Wilyer Abreu got some revenge for Michael Harris II’s onslaught and his own game-ending grounder from last night by hitting a Dylan Dodd pitch below the zone up the middle for a two-run single. So, in the span of not very long at all, it went from a tie game to a 6-0 rout.
This wasn’t Elder’s only bad start of the year (he also had some pretty bad pitching against Detroit and Cleveland), but it’s the sort of thing he needs to avoid to keep the good times rolling. He didn’t really have any trouble bouncing back after those other outings, but he has absolutely no margin for error of just kind of throwing pitches willy-nilly across the strike zone, nor for forcing his defense to make every play because he’s not striking anyone out.
Offensively, the Braves didn’t do much, but it wasn’t entirely for lack of trying. To be fair, Connelly Early had a nice game (7/3 K/BB ratio in seven innings), but things could’ve been different. Ozzie Albies hit into an inning-ending double play with two on in the first. Chadwick Tromp struck out to end the second, stranding two more. Ha-Seong Kim hit a ball decently well with a man on and two outs in the fourth, but it went for a harmless flyout.
Even after the game imploded, the Braves’ lack of sequencing and BABIP fortune didn’t end. Olson had a barreled out to start the sixth. After Tromp doubled in the seventh, Ronald Acuña Jr. hit a 100+ mph liner… but right at the right fielder. Meanwhile, the Red Sox added a seventh run on a seeing-eye roller and a bloop. The top of the eighth was probably the silliest in this regard, as the Braves had two hard liners, a weak fly ball, and a walk, but none of those balls in play found grass. Jarren Duran made it 8-0 with a crush job off Carlos Carrasco, and the game ended with, what else — a hard liner out off the bat of Tromp.
Not much else to say, really — it happens, it sucks. I played catch with my kid after the game got out of hand, and that was a lot more fun to pay attention to than the Braves lining out over and over while the Red Sox sprayed the ball through the fielders.
The Braves can still win the series tomorrow behind Chris Sale, though they’ll need to overcome Payton Tolle and avoid all the nightmarish stuff that happened tonight to do so.
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