The toughest road trip of the season for the Atlanta Braves has gotten off to an incredibly inauspicious start, as the NL East-leading squad went into Minneapolis and ended up getting swept by a Minnesota Twins team just scuffling to stay alive in the crowded AL Wild Card race.
Things remained deadlocked until the third inning, which is when Minnesota pushed the first run of the game past the plate in pretty frustrating fashion. A walk, a soft single from Kaelen Culpepper and an even-softer bunt single from Luke
Keaschall put AJ Smith-Shawver in a bases-loaded situation with Byron Buxton at the plate.
AJSS induced a ground ball out of Buxton but he hit it at such a pace and in such a spot in the infield where Jim Jarvis was unable to even get the runner at second base. Instead, everybody was safe and the Twins went up 1-0. Naturally, Josh Bell grounded into a double play in the very next at-bat and even more naturally, this came after the Braves were unable to score with two runners in scoring position during their half of the third inning. Frustration already abounded.
Following a quiet fourth inning for both teams, things picked up again in the fifth — though it was once again another source of frustration for Atlanta. Austin Riley got a two-out rally going with a walk and then Jim Jarvis joined him on the basepaths with a walk of his own. That set the stage for Ronald Acuña Jr. to potentially do something big at the plate and sure enough, Acuña came through by poking one into left field in order to tie the game at one run apiece. While Drake Baldwin was unable to keep the two-out rally going, there was at least a tiny sign of life from the offense.
That’s why the bottom half of the fifth was so frustrating. AJ Smith-Shawver had been doing fine up until this point, which is when he found himself in a ton of one-out trouble. Kaelen Culpepper’s second single of the game kept the Twins alive and then he was eventually joined on the basepaths by Luke Keaschall and Byron Buxton in order to load up the bases. Buxton got on after an eight-pitch walk so you just had the feeling that this AB against Josh Bell probably wasn’t going to go well either. Sure enough, AJSS walked Bell on six pitches and just like that, the Twins were back in the lead. Dylan Dodd was then called upon for relief and things got worse after Kody Clemens picked up a double to make it three runs in the fifth for Minnesota. Once the smoke cleared, the Twins were up 4-1 — a scoreline that really hasn’t suited Atlanta here in Minneapolis.
To Atlanta’s credit, they did respond once it was their turn to bat in the sixth. Perhaps spurred on by the exit of Taj Bradley, the Braves got to work immediately in the sixth by ambushing Kody Funderburk with a trio of singles to lead things off. The third single in that sequence came from Lane Thomas, who laser-beamed one into the grass in right field to make it a 4-2 game. Ozzie Albies sent one out to right for a sacrifice fly to make it a one-run game and then following a single from Mauricio Dubón off of Tommy Nance, a balk actually went Atlanta’s way for once. This time, Dubón essentially coaxed it out of Nance by taking a huge lead from first base. The balk tied the game up and it was officially “game on” from that point forward.
Now, I don’t believe in the whole “Commentators’ Curse” deal but hoo boy, Dylan Lee’s seventh inning would be the best example to make me believe that it’s an actual thing. Lee entered the game in relief of Victor Mederos after he left a man on second with one out and the commentators mentioned that Lee had not given up a hit in his last nine appearances. It took two pitches (or roughly the amount of time to discuss that stat) for Lee to give up an RBI single to Kody Clemens that put Minnesota in the lead. The Twins eventually picked up some insurance run with a Brooks Lee RBI single that brought home Clemens and now the Braves had to overcome yet another deficit in a series where it felt like the Braves were trailing for the entirety of all three games.
There was no comeback on the horizon, as the Braves ended up only getting one hit across the eighth and ninth inning and the eighth inning in particular was contentious. Maurico Dubón battled for nine pitches against Jeff Hoffman, only to get rung up by the home plate umpire on a check swing on a full count. He was incensed by the call (or at least the lack of going to the first base umpire in order to confirm the call) and argued furiously and Walt Weiss went out there and got himself ejected in order to make sure that Dubón didn’t get tossed.
It was honestly the one of the most casual ejections I’ve ever seen in a game — almost as if Weiss was seemingly like “Bro, just eject me,” and home plate umpire Carlos Torres seemingly responded with “Alright, you got it” and then Torres gave him the hook.
Anyways, that ejection was about as interesting as things got in the final two innings as the Braves went down in order from that point forward. Yoendrys Gómez closed them out for the third day in a row and the Braves went to go hop on the plane in the midst of a three game losing streak and having now lost five of their last six. Woof.
Atlanta has lost three games in a row on a few occasions this season but that was actually the first time where they’ve actually gotten swept over a three-game series and it comes against a team that you could argue that the Braves have no business getting swept by. That’s baseball for you, though, and now the Braves have no choice but to continue searching for a way to break out of this current funk. They’ll have to hop over to Chicago for a make-up game against the White Sox tomorrow at 2:40 p.m. ET before facing off with the red-hot Brewers for three games. Things aren’t going to get any easier for Atlanta after what looked to be (on paper, at least) the “easier” part of this seven-day, four-city road trip.
