A while ago, I noted that Matt Olson was going through what looked like an adjustment period, shying away from his earlier walks-over-homers schema towards something that resembled trying to hit bombs… just without the bombs, or the hitting, for the time being. Well, suffice to say, the adjustment has… adjusted. Olson homered for a fourth straight game in the first contest of Tuesday’s doubleheader. Combined with unexpectedly delightful pitching from Jose Suarez, the Braves easily rolled over the Nationals,
6-3.
The Braves had their fair share of struggles with Nationals starter Jake Irvin in 2024, but there was the inkling of an idea that 2025 wouldn’t be the same, given Irvin’s personal regression from reasonable innings-eater to pretty much a horrendous all-around season. Very early on, the Braves looked bamboozled by Irvin, who struck out five of the first nine he faced. Meanwhile, Jose Suarez was looking the part of random late-season doubleheader fill-in for a non-contending team, as he had just a 2/1 K/BB ratio through two innings, was bailed out on a barrel by Eli White’s amazing leaping catch at the right-field wall, and completed those innings in a 2-0 hole thanks to the Nats dunking a couple of balls through the defense in the second.
And then, things turned around really quickly. The Braves got a couple of one-out singles in the fourth, and a White groundout made it a 2-1 game. Vidal Brujan then blooped a ball of his own in front of Jacob Young’s errant dive, tying the game and giving Brujan a “double.” That brought up the third time through for Irvin, and, well, he didn’t really survive it. Jurickson Profar golfed a curveball below the zone for a two-run homer to right, and Olson followed with a gargantuan shot of his own on a very misplaced four-seamer, sending it into the second deck. In the span of 12 pitches, the Braves went from trailing 2-0 to leading 5-2. Homers, what can’t they do? The Braves nearly got more, as Ronald Acuña Jr. hit the Braves’ third consecutive barrel of the inning, but unfortunately, his was the one that ended up being caught to end the frame.
After that, Suarez appeared to gain some kind of bloodlust buff, and dominated the Nats. Over the next four innings, he struck out seven batters, and walked just one. He even managed to end his outing with strikeouts of the two guys seeing him for a fourth time. Suarez ended his day with an overall line of nine strikeouts and two walks over seven innings of work; it was easily his best start since some time in the 2022 campaign, when he was still a quality starter in his own right. Suarez had also been pitching pretty well at Triple-A, but the Braves never really saw fit to give him another shot at the big league level since his three crappy relief outings early in the year; we might see that change for the remaining few weeks of this beleaguering season.
Having expended their efforts on the five-run inning, the Braves mostly stayed silent over the next few frames, allowing Irvin to finish six innings. His 5/2 K/BB ratio was pretty good, but the two homers allowed (HR/FB of 50 percent will do that) weren’t helpful to his cause, and as you can see, he stopped striking guys out after the first time through. Olson doubled in the seventh, and Brujan had another dunker to drive in a sixth Atlanta run in the eighth. The Nationals got that run back with Pierce Johnson pitching in the bottom of the eighth, and then the skies opened up substantially, forcing both teams to play the ninth in heavy rain. Raisel Iglesias struggled with the wet mound and issued a leadoff walk, but then struck out two of the next three batters to end the game.
Overall, this was a good stat-padding effort for some of the Atlanta crew. Olson had two hits, while Acuña added three and a walk, raising his wRC+ from 148 to 150 in a single game despite the fact that the season is almost over. Ha-Seong Kim had a couple of hits of his own, and Michael Harris added a three-hit effort. One guy that did not pad any stats was Drake Baldwin. The Rookie of the Year hopeful has had a brutal September, and there was the hope that his three-hit (including a homer) game last night could turn around the second half of his month and perhaps sew up the award for him, but it was not to be — Baldwin suffered a brutal 0-for-5 with four groundouts and a strikeout, with only one of those grounders being anything other than a routine, easy out.
The series continues later today, with Chris Sale on the mound for Atlanta.
