We have a game coverage guide here. It kindly suggests that recaps be started in the sixth or seventh, to make sure they go up in a timely fashion. I never pre-write, due to a very specific game in 2018 against the Orioles (if you know, you know). The tenor of this recap would’ve been very different (and incoherent, a la Spiderman 3) had I pre-written anything. Because, for the first eight innings, I was livid that the Braves were basically the same ol’ lackadaisical, our talent will win out Braves.
Well, guess what, Ivan, you dummy, you absolute numbskull? The Braves not only won out in this game after looking not just dead in the water, but “we threw ourselves with our legs encased in cinder blocks into the water,” courtesy of a ginormous ninth-inning rally capped off by, what else? A walk-off grand slam by Dominic Smith, making his Braves debut. So, I’ll save all the mental and physical mistakes the Braves made in this game for a meaningless coda at the end, and instead, well — let’s revel in the ninth inning first, because it’s the only thing that mattered.
After floundering and floundering, the Braves got to work against closer Carlos Estevez from the jump. Drake Baldwin laid off a bunch of elevated fastballs and drew a leadoff walk, and Matt Olson made up for an earlier miscue by roping a single into right to put the tying run on base. Austin Riley popped out, but then Mike Yastrzemski, who I felt should’ve probably been yoinked out of the game earlier (Ivan, you dummy, you absolute numbskull), came through with a hard-hit single up the middle to give the Braves their first run and put pinch-runner Jorge Mateo on third as the tying run.
Estevez then totally fell apart, walking Ozzie Albies on four nowhere-near pitches. Michael Harris II then lashed a comebacker into Estevez’ feet — a real turnabout of an early-season debacle last year where the Braves lost on a similar batted ball hit by a Padre — pushing the tying run across. That brought up Dominic Smith, who was in the midst of a rather feeble Braves debut, and, well, kablamo. There’s no real other way to describe it. Estevez threw a challenge fastball on 3-2, Smith accepted the challenge, and pulled off the ultimate result, creaming a grand slam, an absurd outcome to cap an absurd victory. Ah, that’s the stuff.
Okay, let’s cover the rest of the game. Did you know it was started by Reynaldo Lopez, who was in the midst of a shoulder-laffy-taffy-or-not saga prompted by him missing nearly the entire season last year, and a mysterious velocity drop in his final Spring Training outing that was mysteriously ascribed to “mechanical issues, now fixed” before the season got underway? Well, Lopez quieted some concerns, in that his velocity largely returned to the 94-96 mph band. Yay for that. On the flip side, his mechanics weren’t always perfect, and he mostly skated along. A lot of his outing was outs in the air, which worked out pretty well for the Braves. He got into hot water in the third, with two on, two out, and Bobby Witt Jr. at the dish, but escaped because Witt lined an amped-up, 97 mph down-the-pipe fastball right to Ronald Acuña Jr. in right field. The defense behind him played well, and Drake Baldwin helped out by throwing out a runner at one point.
Things looked like they were gonna get dicey for Lopez when he started the third time through in the sixth, but they didn’t. Mauricio Dubon helped out with a spectacular scoop-jump-and-gun play in the hole to retire Maikel Garcia, Lopez blew Witt away with a fastball, and Acuña flagged down a liner in the gap. Those defensive efforts were well-needed because…
…the Braves were absolutely eviscerated by Michael Wacha. The veteran right-hander struck out three of the first four Braves he faced, went nine up, nine down, and faced the minimum (thanks to a Baldwin double play ball) through 4 1/3, until Yastrzemski broke it up with a bunt single, of all things. The Braves turned that bunt into a real threat when Harris doubled to left (it was called a single for whatever reason, but yeah, it was basically a double). But, Wacha escaped fairly easily when Smith chased a curve in the dirt for strike three. Baldwin then hit into another double play to erase Acuña a second time, so Wacha’s final line was a seven strikeout, one walk affair in six innings of work.
The Braves tried to push Lopez through another frame, but errrnnnnt. His very first pitch of the seventh was a flagging 92 mph fastball that ended up at the bottom of the zone, and Salvador Perez, his longtime AL Central rival, didn’t miss it, creaming it over the wall in left to put the first run on the board. The Braves then immediately yanked Lopez for Dylan Lee, who gave up a two-out double but otherwise had no issues in a two-strikeout frame.
Atlanta couldn’t cash in a one-out Riley single in the seventh, even with a wild pitch that pushed the tying run into scoring position. Matt Strahm was the new Royals reliever, and the Braves didn’t pinch-hit for Yastrzemski, who hit into a forceout against the southpaw before the wild pitch. In any case, Albies flew out to keep it a 1-0 game.
For whatever reason, the Braves asked Joel Payamps to pitch a one-run game, and it went not-so-great. Payamps walked Garcia with one out, and Witt had a broken-bat bloop into center that put runners on the corners. With a lefty batter due up, the Braves swapped Payamps for Aaron Bummer. Though Witt’s easy steal of second took the double play away, Bummer got the groundball the Braves wanted… but Olson made a very uncharacteristic boot that let Garcia score easily from third. A couple of flyouts ended the frame, but the Braves were now down 2-0.
Harris greeted new reliever Lucas Erceg with a leadoff single in the eighth, but then promptly got picked off. That was absolutely brutal, because the safety meant Acuña was going to come up as at least the tying run, and also because Dubon walked later in the frame. Acuña ended up grounding out weakly, anyway.
Osvaldo Bido made his Braves debut in the ninth, which was also pretty strange, but what in this game wasn’t, at this point? To his credit, Bido absolutely showed out slash shoved, eviscerating all three Royals he faced with strikeouts. He made Tyler Tolbert look awful on a slider way out of the zone, and then froze Isaac Collins on a basically down-the-middle fastball on 1-2.
And now we’ve come full circle to the ninth, where the Braves were finally awesome and plated six runs against Carlos Estevez, with a grand slam capper from Smith to end the game. Wow. Wow wow wow.
And now, my useless list of complaints, which you could probably already predict ahead of time, but here they are for posterity:
- Reynaldo Lopez facing the order a third time despite a 2/2 K/BB ratio through 18 batters. This blowing up in the Braves’ face was a really predictable outcome because we’ve seen this sort of thing happen for years. But, hey, what way to make it not matter.
- Not pinch-hitting for Mike Yastrzemski when Matt Strahm came up. Look, Yastrzemski is an obvious platoon bat, Strahm throws with his left hand, and, more notably: Yastrzemski wasn’t in the Opening Day lineup even though if you’re gonna find a recent lefty with reverse splits, Ragans might be your guy. (Strahm is not.) So, the idea of having Yastrzemski sit against Ragans with leverage unknown, but bat against Strahm in a key situation was incongruous. It paid off when Yastrzemski was still in the game to take a meaningful hack against Estevez, but that’s an extreme level of trust in your team to ascribe to the decision-making process here.
- I’m not going to belabor the point, but Yastrzemski bunting against Wacha was pretty weird considering the scoreless tie and his spot in the lineup, but I guess to the extent he’s doing it to free up the defensive arrangement against him in later days, that works.
- Matt Olson’s defensive gaffe was, well, a gaffe. He knows what he did. On the flip side, the bullpen flowchart, such as it is, is strange. Tyler Kinley can work a six-run game, but Payamps and Bido in a closer game? We used to talk about lead-clutching, and this was some very clutchy clutching.
- Talking about baserunning is all well and good, but it seems like “do no harm to your win expectancy” might need to be an orienting principle here. Harris visibly getting a bunch of instruction from first base coach Antoan Richardson, only to immediately get blatantly picked off… I’m going to hope that’s a learning experience. And hey, it didn’t cost the team this time!
- Oh, and the challenges. Good news: they didn’t need no stinkin’ challenges. But, the Braves burned both of their ABS challenges within a few minutes of the game starting. The one Baldwin challenged while catching was at least close; Acuña challenged one while batting that was just blatantly a strike. Maybe the guys need some leverage heuristics or something. We’ll see. Or they could just hit massive bombs and we never need to worry about challenges. On that same note, the Braves dugout missed an obvious non-ABS challenge situation when Garcia attempted to complete a double play by throwing the ball well before he stepped on the second-base bag. Acuña pointed it out, but the Braves apparently took too long to challenge, and wasted an out (and Acuña in scoring position) in the process. Oops.
But, the point is — you can make all sorts of mistakes when you lock in, pull it together, and oh yeah — hit a huge dong. That’s what happened tonight, and it was glorious… in the end, anyway.
See you tomorrow afternoon as the Braves go for the sweep behind Grant Holmes. They may not have made a full-on exorcism effort today, but it worked out similarly to one anyway… and was a lot more exciting, to boot.
