Shocking Insights from Braves’ Gut-Wrenching Defeat in Baltimore – You Won’t Believe What Happened!
The Atlanta Braves defeated the Baltimore Orioles 6-3 on Thursday, picking up a much-needed win. The win ended the Braves’ five-game losing run, their longest since the 2017 season. They will return home on Friday, beginning a six-game homestand with a three-game series against the Tampa Bay Rays.
Thursday’s victory was a bit of a relief after Atlanta had lost seven of their previous ten games. They finished their three-city road tour with a 3-6 record, falling to 36-30 on the season. They will begin the weekend at least nine games behind first place in the NL East, depending on the outcome of the Phillies’ game in Boston on Thursday night.
The Braves still have the top wild card place, but at this point, it is more important for them to right the ship and get back on track than any exact position in the standings. Atlanta was 19-9 at the end of April, leading the MLB. They are 17-21 since the beginning of May and are currently 4-7 in June. The mediocre road trip pushed them down.500 on the road between 17 and 18. They are 19-12 at Truist Park overall, but only 6-8 at home since May 13.
I wouldn’t say the NL East race is gone, but the Braves should be concerned about themselves rather than the teams they’re chasing, because they’ve been playing so poorly that it’s unreasonable to expect other teams to take a similar step back. Getting back on track offensively and returning to where they were in April is more important now than monitoring the standings on a daily basis in the middle of June.
The offence is still inconsistent, even in terms of inputs. In April, they had four games with an xwOBA of.400 or above, eight games between.350 and.400, seven games between.310 and.350, and ten below.310. Since then, they’ve had only three games above.400, five between.350 and.400, ten between.310 and.350, and an incredible 18 games below.310. When you put up a below-average and, frankly, very bad set of inputs in half of your games over the course of around six weeks, you get the stretch you’ve witnessed.
What’s worse is that the Braves have been the unluckiest offensive team since May 1, and unlike in previous examples, they’ve been unlucky because their best-hit balls are turning into outs at an alarming rate. They definitely might have remained a top-tier competitor with good luck rather than bad luck, even with inconsistent hitting, but instead they’ve been dead in the water in around half of their games since May 1 and don’t have any luck to fall back on to improve things.
A strong pitching performance by rookie right-hander Spencer Schwellenbach was overshadowed by the disappointment of Wednesday’s loss. Schwellenbach got pounded in his last start at Fenway Park, but he limited a strong Orioles offence to four hits and two runs in six innings. He struck out three and struggled to put hitters away at times, but his split-change provided a fresh dimension. He hit 98.0 mph with his fastball and shown a decent range of pitches.
His tough third inning started with a sharp double from Cedric Mullins and then a 75 mph flare off the bat of Jorge Mateo. One of the two runs in the inning came on errant throw home by Matt Olson. Schwellenbach got a double play grounder to escape the jam with just two runs scoring. The game could have gotten sideways in that moment, but he was able to keep it together and turned in a career-high six innings. It was a similar effort to his first career outing by xFIP, but not marred by a game-changing blast against him the third time through.
It was clear when neither Hurston Waldrep nor Spencer Schwellenbach were demoted following their most recent starts, but Alex Anthopoulos revealed Wednesday that the team will use a six-man rotation for the time being. Anthopoulos told the AJC’s Justin Toscano that they are trying to be proactive and thought this would be a smart strategy to avoid weariness. He also stated that the Braves’ rotation had worn down by the time the postseason arrived in each of the previous two seasons.
One of the major themes from the beginning of the season was how the Braves planned to manage innings for their rotation, which included newcomers Chris Sale and Reynaldo López. Sale has been excellent, but owing to injuries, he has only thrown slightly more than 150 innings over the last three seasons. He’s already pitched 74 2/3 innings in his first 12 starts. Lopez pitched six innings Thursday, giving him 69 1/3 for the season. He pitched 66 innings in 68 games as a reliever last season.
A takeaways post would be incomplete without mentioning the team’s recent issues with runners in scoring position. The Braves scored six runs in Thursday’s triumph, but were 3-for-16 with runners in scoring position and left ten on base. Atlanta was 3-for-31 with runners in scoring position during its three games at Baltimore, leaving 28 men on base. Some of them were trapped because barrels had run out, but what else is new?
If they are unable to hit a large number of home runs, whether due to drag or other factors, their only other option for scoring is to sequence hits together. The Braves are currently ranked 15th in aggregate batting line and 14th in RE24, a measure of run expectancy changes produced by their hitters. However, since May 1, they have ranked 28th in batting line and 29th in RE24; it’s not so much that they are sequencing poorly, but rather that they aren’t capitalising on their very few scoring opportunities. (Someone should create an xRE24; that would be something.)
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