Baseball is a funny game. It’s hard to win a lot. You win seven straight, sweep one team, win a series against another, Martin Perez is on the hill, it’s rainy — you figure, no one can win ’em all, we’ll get ’em tomorrow, we’re in a good place, yadda yadda yadda. Well, turns out, the Braves can get ’em tomorrow and today, as they showed no signs of letting up in an 11-3 rout that granted them a sweep of the Marlins as well as their eighth straight win. The victory extended their longest winning streak of the season so far, while extending the stretch of three or fewer runs given up to six games, and the stretch of four or fewer runs given up to nine.
Overall, this game featured one of the silliest homers you’ll ever see, and then descended into silliness basically everywhere else, as the Braves walloped Miami pitching. In the end, it was a stat-padding laugher, which was kind of a nice change of pace amid a stretch of fairly tight games.
Things were pretty quiet for the first few frames; Matt Olson hit a ringing double in the bottom of the first, but Michael Harris II grounded out. Perez issued a leadoff walk in the second, but a double play ball allowed him to have a 1-2-3 frame.
The first bit of silliness came in the bottom of the second. Mauricio Dubon hit a soft liner to right for a single, and decided to try to stretch it into a double, where he was handily thrown out. That wasn’t all that remarkable in and of itself, except that two batters later, Dominic Smith dunked an even softer liner to left, and was also thrown out trying to stretch it into a double. That was a nice appetizer for the bottom of the third, where, with two outs and a runner on first, this happened:
It wasn’t the ball going off Jose Canseco’s head. It wasn’t even Tim Hudson’s adventure with Bryce Harper. But, nonetheless, it was very silly, and helped repay Ronald Acuña Jr. for at least some of the heinous xwOBA underperformance he’s experienced this season.
And then, perhaps as a result of some skybound deity laughing so hard they cried at the Marlins own-goaling the Braves two runs, the rains came. Said rains lasted for quite a while, knocking both Perez (3 IP, 3/1 K/BB) and Janson Junk (3 IP, 1/1 K/BB, one “homer” allowed) out of the game.
Tyler Kinley had few issues in the fourth. The Braves had a scoring chance in the bottom of the inning, as Mauricio Dubon walked against Tyler Zuber, and eventually stole second and took third on a throwing error. However, Smith grounded out, and Austin Riley stared at a Zuber strike three down the pipe for some reason. Victor Mederos followed Kinley with two quiet frames (2/1 K/BB ratio). John King matched Mederos for one frame, but the game got completely away from the Marlins in the bottom of the sixth.
Olson started the inning by nearly homering on a ball just foul. Five pitches later, he found a changeup just above his ankles and scoop-bliterated it into center to make it 3-0. Harris followed with a double, and Dubon bounced a curve below the zone for a single. Given that King throws with his left hand, the Braves then pinch-hit Lane Thomas for Mike Yastrzemski. Thomas swung at a first-pitch get-me-over slider from King and yanked it down the left-field line for his first hit with his new team, pushing the score to 4-0. The Braves then proceeded to rouse Ozzie Albies from his team-enforced slumber; he drew a walk to re-load the bases. Out went King, in came onetime Braves farmhand Victor Vodnik, and Riley greeted him with a sac fly to center. Two groundballs against Vodnik suggested that the inning end, but Xavier Edwards bobbled the second one, allowing another run to score. Things could’ve gotten even zanier, but Acuña’s hard liner was hit right at the center fielder to end the inning.
Danny Young came in for the seventh and was really the only Brave (other than Jim Jarvis, who went 0-for-4) to not have a good game. Young started his night with a strikeout, but then a walk and a few singles made it 6-2. Young could’ve gotten out of the frame by retiring backup catcher Brian Navaretto, but instead, he hit him on the shin with a sweeper. That forced Dylan Lee into the bases-loaded situation, and Lee got out of it as Otto Lopez weakly lifted an 0-1 changeup to center. I feel for Young, who is not that far removed from Tommy John Surgery, but you figure that the Braves won’t keep him on the roster too much longer if he doesn’t find some feel for his arsenal sooner rather than later.
With the Miami rally thwarted, the game then descended into something more farcical. Walk-triple-single against Vodnik in the bottom the seventh got those two runs right back. Brent Suter made his Braves debut in the eighth, and picked off a batter he walked. Cade Gibson was Miami’s last pitcher-slash-victim, and he gave up Acuña’s second longball of the night. It wasn’t really fielder-aided this time, but it was also just a routine fly ball that happened to float all the way towards the right-field corner and across the very generous wall out there in front of the Chop House. As a result, Acuña now has his second two-homer game of the year… and maybe the most unique one of his career. That may have been a good place to shut this one down, but it was not to be. Olson hit a liner to center that smashed out of the center fielder’s glove; a Harris single then scored Olson, and a Dubon double then scored Harris to make it 11-2. Dubon’s double actually came against Sanoja, who was “punished” for whiffing on Olson’s liner by being forced to pitch and get the final Braves out of the game.
Suter went back out for the ninth and was basically just lobbing it in there to get the game over with. The Marlins ended up collecting three hits on letter-high, sub-90 mph fastballs in the process, but eventually they ran out of BABIP and outs, and the game ended.
It was a fun one in the box score here:
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Acuña had the two homers;
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Olson would’ve been perfect but for the liner-that-turned-into-an-error, with two walks to go with his homer and double (and “double”);
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Harris finished a homer short of the cycle, with his triple somehow his first of the season; and
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Dubon went 4-for-4 with a walk and a double.
Meanwhile, Braves pitching had an 8/4 K/BB ratio and avoided any Marlins longballs — by my count, they haven’t allowed a homer in five games now, which is wild (and very helpful).
Stay tuned for tomorrow, when the Braves rumble into Yankee Stadium to face old pal Max Fried.
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