The Atlanta Braves once again left it late but they still got the job done and were able to break out the brooms one more time. Thanks to a Matt Olson RBI single in extra innings, the Braves are now winners of seven-straight games following a 3-2 win over the Colorado Rockies.
This time, we didn’t have to wait until the eighth inning to see the Braves put a number on the scoreboard. The wait only lasted three innings this time, as Sean Murphy continued to get his season going in the right direction
by leading off the third inning with a solo homer to put Atlanta on the board first.
Austin Riley very nearly made it back-to-back dingers after he hit one to deep left. Somehow, the ball hit the yellow part on top of the fence but bounced back into the field of play so that it became a double instead of a dinger. Fortunately, a wild pitch from starter Mason Adams and an RBI single from Ronald Acuña Jr. (who made up for getting picked off lackadaisically at first to end the first inning) ended up bringing Riley home anyways so the Braves came out of the third with a 2-0 lead.
Things settled into a bit of a lull for the next two innings, though it has to be mentioned that Sean Murphy got another challenge correct during the fourth inning, which gave Tyler Mahle a strikeout. Even before this current upturn in form at the plate, Murphy had been providing value with with his ABS challenges behind the plate and his overall command of games with the pitchers that he’s been working with. There’s more than one way to be productive as a catcher and Sean Murphy has started to get it done in all facets of the game.
Meanwhile, business picked up again in the sixth, which is when Tyler Mahle finally gave up his first (and only) run of his outing on a no-doubter of a dinger from Jake McCarthy. The solo shot cut it to a 2-1 lead for the Braves and fortunately, Mahle was able to keep it at 2-1 on his way out. For Mahle, he’s now made five starts in a Braves uniform and this is the fourth time that he’s gone six innings and also the fourth time that he’s given up one run or fewer. Perhaps this is why Alex Anthopoulos was so adamant about the team getting better when their sole starting pitching acquisition back at the Trade Deadline was Tyler Mahle — the results have been very impressive so far.
Once Mahle left the game, we got another example of the baseball gods punishing a team for leaving the bases loaded. Unfortunately for us, it was the Atlanta Braves who felt the wrath, as they loaded up the bases with two outs in the bottom half of the seventh inning only to leave them loaded when Matt Olson struck out to end the inning. Sure enough, Dylan Lee entered the game in the top of the eighth and gave up leadoff single to Brett Sullivan. Following two productive outs moving Sullivan to third base, Connor Norby completed the A-B-C baseball move by poking one out to left for a game-tying RBI single. The Braves squandered their opportunity and the Rockies capitalized on theirs. That’s baseball!
Both the bottom of the eighth and ninth innings for the Braves were quiet and Raisel Iglesias pitched a clean ninth inning of his own, which meant that this one ended up heading to extras. Victor Mederos pitched a clean inning and left ghost runner Mickey Moniak stranded at second. The Braves got their chance to walk it off and made no mistake with it — Ronald Acuña Jr. looped one into left for a single and wisely, Braves third base coach Tommy Watkins put up the stop sign for ghost runner Brewer Hicklen. Any thoughts of Hicklen being stranded at third were quickly dispelled once Matt Olson shot one up the right field line for a walk-off single that allowed the Braves to break out the brooms for a second time in the span of a week.
Well, the Braves had to really fight for it for all three games but they came out on top in this one just like they did in the previous two and just like in the Dodgers series as well. This seven-game winning streak is exactly what the doctor ordered and the Braves have well-and-truly taken advantage of this return back to Atlanta.
They still have one game left to go on this homestand, as they’ll be making up their rained-out game from June against the San Francisco Giants. That game starts at 6:05 p.m. ET and we’ll see if Bryce Elder can help push Atlanta to their eighth-straight win.
