Braves Blast Mets to Take Opener of Pivotal Series
The Atlanta Braves have closed their deficit in the NL Wild Card to just a single game
The Atlanta Braves absolutely took it to the New York Mets, cruising to an easy 5-1 win in Truist Park on Tuesday night.
Here’s what you need to know about from the contest.
Schwellenbach SHOVED
There was some consternation across Braves Country when the team announced their rotation for this series - several folks wanted the team to push Chris Sale up to Tuesday night so that he’d be on regular rest and available for game 162 next Sunday, if needed.
But Spencer Schwellenbach’s a good fallback plan.
The rookie absolutely dominated New York tonight, allowing just one earned run across his seven innings. The solo homer from Mark Vientos represented the first Mets run of the season off of the righthander, coming in the fourteenth inning he threw against them across his two starts.
For the game, Schwellenbach went seven innings with only three hits and the one run allowed, walking one and striking out four on just 87 pitches (62 strikes). Schwelly was absurdly efficient, getting four first-pitch outs and throwing three pitches or less in fourteen different at-bats.
More surprisingly, he did it without his full pitch mix. Instead of mixing five or six pitches between 15%-20%, he instead threw his four-seamer, slider, and cutter a combined 86% and added in just five curveballs, four splitters, and three sinkers.
(The splitter was still really good, though.)
The rookie will be lined up to start game 162, were Atlanta to need it for postseason eligibility, and if not he’d be in the mix (along with Charlie Morton) to start a potential game three of the Wild Card round (were Atlanta both to make it and need to play a game three.)
The Money Mike game?
We talked on this morning’s podcast about how Michael Harris II has been one of Atlanta’s hottest hitters across the last month, batting over .300 and tying Matt Olson for the team lead in homers with eight.
Harris is now in the lead.
Money Mike came to bat three times in the first four innings and picked up hits each time, logging a single (1st), a RBI double (3rd), and a solo homer (4th) as part of an offensive explosion off of Mets starter Luis Severino.
But that wasn’t all - Harris also had a fantastic diving catch in the top of the fifth, robbing Luisangel Acuña (yes, Ronald’s brother) of a base hit.
In retrospect, losing Harris for more than two months over the summer to a hamstring injury was one of the more significant Atlanta injuries of the season, behind only Ronald Acuña Jr. in all-around impact. He’s just the seventh Braves player since 1900 with fourteen hits over a five game span, per the broadcast.
A much more sustainable offensive approach
Know how we’ve talked over and over about Braves hitters trying to do too much, constantly waiting for the perfect pitch and then trying to drive in all the runs themselves while failing to actually accomplish much of anything?
About that.
Atlanta clearly had a gameplan off of Luis Severino in this one, swinging on the first pitch twelve times and picking up multiple hits and runs. Atlanta’s big third inning was powered by back-to-back RBI hits by Harris and Ozzie Albies, both on the first pitch. Atlanta had three different hits in the inning with runners in scoring position, which felt like a record when it was happening.
Chipper Jones would be happy, too; Atlanta only has one batted ball over 102 (the Harris homer, coming off the bat at 111.5) and settled for merely quality contact. That big third inning saw only one ball register as “hard-hit”, taking what Severino gave them and doing enough with it to either advance the runner or get them in.
All told, the team tagged New York’s de facto ace for four runs on seven hits in just four innings. Severino used 89 pitches (61 strikes), giving Atlanta the bullpen advantage for the rest of the series (if the next two games actually go off as scheduled.)
The weather does NOT look good
This is an Atlanta team we’re talking about here, so let’s go to the locals and see what the Weather Channel has to say about the next two days:
Yup, that’s between one and three inches of rain in each of the next two afternoons and three to five inches expected each evening/overnight.
MLB has, to date, not publicly discussed what the plan would be if rain impacts this series. Ostensibly, these two teams could get back together and makeup a game on Monday, the day after the season ends, with the league hopefully adjusting the Wild Card schedules to let whichever team is in the postseason play the later game on Tuesday.
Either way, it’s the worst possible time for a hurricane to be hitting the South, so thanks for that Mother Nature.
What’s next for the Atlanta Braves?
The Braves are in good position for the rest of the series (again, assuming these games actually happen as scheduled). Chris Sale (18-3, 2.38) gets the ball for Atlanta opposite Mets lefty David Peterson (9-3, 3.08) at 7:20 PM ET on Wednesday.