Kevin Gausman and the bullpen split 2 hits, and the Braves finally scratched across some runs late to even the series at 2 – 2, finish the road trip at 5 – 2, and put a 22 games in 20 days ordeal behind them at 13 – 9.
The Braves had 9 hits, but only 1 of them came in the 3-run 8th. Charlie Culberson led off with a single, Tyler Flowers was hit by a pitch, and Dansby Swanson sacrificed them over. After an Ozzie Albies pinch-walk, a Derek Dietrich throwing error to the plate allowed 2 runs to score. Albies advanced to 3rd, where he scored on an Ender Inciarte sacrifice fly. The Braves opened the scoring in the 6th, with a Nick Markakis walk, a Johan Camargo ground out, and a Flowers single.
Gausman finished with 80 pitches in 5 innings, walked 1, and struck out 5.  Jesse Biddle, Dan Winkler, Brad Brach, and A.J. Minter closed it out with an inning apiece, cumulatively allowing only a walk to go with the other Marlins hit.
The Braves now stand at 73 – 57, and hold a 3 game lead over the Phillies.
Tampa Bay comes to town on Tuesday.
This team needs a day off
I don’t know what this team did before getting Kevin Gausman. He has been a lifesaver. He’s basically been 2015 Shelby Miller for us.
Ian Anderson with a great game striking out 9 in 6+ innings, no runs.
Fried stuggled and Bryse was used out of the bullpen for an inning.
@2 Gausman has been 1997 Greg Maddux
We’re lucky to miss Blake Snell. I just realized how incredibly good he has been this year, especially considering he’s pitching in the AL East.
Blake Snell
knows perfectly well
he cannot handle the Braves
the order adjusted, the absence he craves.
September will not be easy. We are in for an emotional ride!
On September 1, the reinforcements come. If Snit manages them well, then we get a big positive jolt.
Kevin Gausman has been everything a contender could want from a deadline acquisition. When he does tap into that “untapped potential”, he is among the very best.
I am still guarded with future expectations, of course. Gausy has a reputation for strong second halfs.
I hate to be a doomsayer but TB is going to be really tough. They are on an 8-game winning streak that included four against the Red Sox. I am sure most of it is pitching so don’t expect too many runs. I would be happy with a split with TB, a win against the Cubs, and 2/3 against the Pirates and then on to the tough stuff. At that point, reinforcements will be available.
We seem to be experts at scheduling teams that are very hot.
Phils against the gNats again so hopefully the gNats will give is some aid and comfort.
I also hope the day off helps some.
Has anyone noticed that Ozzie is a great pinch hitter? Every time he gets a day off, he does something positive in a PH appearance.
Urbandictionary.com’s take on Anibal’s nickname, “Alejo,” icymi:
Coming off of the four game sweep at home to the Rockies, the Braves managed to go 5-2 on the road, and actually tacked two games onto their lead in the division. I think they’d take that week every time, from here to the playoffs.
In other news, over the weekend Atlanta United’s Josef Martinez broke the four way tie for most goals scored in a season, notching the game winner against “rivals” Orlando City with a beautiful little chip. He now stands alone as the league’s single season goal scoring king, with 28.
He has 8 more games to play. Barring injury or being pulled from matches to rest for the playoffs, he’s going to obliterate the previous record (27) by light years.
The Phillies have to play us, Cubs, Rockies and Nats.
They also have to play the Mets, who own them
@12
Did i read somewhere you had a 78000 crowd?
I continue to find conversation of upcoming schedules in baseball as a metric for determining who’s more likely to win the division less than compelling. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel this is an aspect of the phenomenon where people watch baseball through the prism of a football fan.
For instance, people were including Pittsburgh in the “the rest of our schedule is gonna be tough” talk going into last week, but they were terrible. Now people aren’t really worried about them next weekend, but watch them somehow snap up two of three or something.
Yeah, if you look at how we played last weekend vs. how Tampa Bay played, we’d be lucky to split, but it really doesn’t work like that in baseball.
The only part of the upcoming schedule that I’ll grant a waiver on and admit it might be meaningfully difficult is the 7-game West Coast swing without an off day. However, that’s almost entirely based on the travel considerations baked into that, not the on-field difficulty of those games.
Mercedez Benz Stadium’s capacity is somewhere around 71k for a regular event. It can be expanded for special events to hold up to 75k. So no, 78k is too much for the venue to hold. That said, here is a list of Major League Soccer’s largest crowds:
1 Atlanta United FC 1–1 Seattle Sounders FC 72,243 Mercedes-Benz Stadium July 15, 2018
2 Atlanta United FC 3–1 D.C. United 72,035 Mercedes-Benz Stadium March 11, 2018
3 Atlanta United FC 4-0 Orlando City SC 71,932 Mercedes-Benz Stadium June 30, 2018
4 Atlanta United FC 2–2 Toronto FC 71,874 Mercedes-Benz Stadium October 22, 2017
5 Atlanta United FC 3–3 Orlando City SC 70,425 Mercedes-Benz Stadium September 16, 2017
6 LA Galaxy 2–1 NY/NJ MetroStars 69,255 Rose Bowl April 13, 1996
7 Seattle Sounders FC 1–0 Portland Timbers 67,385 CenturyLink Field August 25, 2013
8 Seattle Sounders FC 3–0 Portland Timbers 66,452 CenturyLink Field October 7, 2012
9 New York Red Bulls 5–4 LA Galaxy 66,237 Giants Stadium August 18, 2007
10 Seattle Sounders FC 1–1 Los Angeles Galaxy 66,216 CenturyLink Field October 27, 2013
You’ll note the trend at the top.
A bit of reference for the non-socceroos among us. The largest crowds for league play soccer, in the world, tend to be in Germany’s Bundesliga. The Bundesliga is one of the world’s four premiere leagues (all European.)
Borussia Dortmund will regularly draw 80k fans or so to league play. Bayern Munich will draw 75k or so. Over in the English Premiere League, this year’s classic rivalry match between juggernauts Liverpool and Manchester United drew just over 74k.
It’s pretty hard to really grasp how successful Atlanta’s MLS team has been out of the gate.
@15 – another way to look at it is that every team we’re about to play is saying “this is a tough part of the schedule” too.
@15 I agree with you. Well stated.
It’s a long season because of all the potential irregularities. Each series is particularly meaningful in its own way, but on the much grander scale of the full season it’s just two baseball teams basically playing a little better or worse than .500 passing by each other for a brief set of games.
September is going to largely be graded by how this team handles the west coast trip and how useful the reinforcements will be. As for who they face, any team can play good ball in short doses.
If you reduce the schedule talk down to one series or another, yes, it’s going to produce outliers like “overperforming” vs. Pittsburgh and “underperforming” vs. Miami, but if you include a large sample, then I think it’s helpful. I gave a long list of quality opponents over the next 3 weeks, and I think that’s large enough to conclude that I can’t be disappointed if we go even .500 against that group. Splitting a series with Miami? Disappointing.
The magic number is 30
IF we go .500 (16-16)
The Phillies would need to go 19-13 to catch us.
The Nats would have to go 24-7
The bullpen has the highest fWAR in the month of August.
As mentioned, Bryce Wilson has also been used out of the pen. They might end up having the best staff overall in September.
With Touki and Bryse coming in September, if the bad Julio shows up we should be able to yank him quickly. Hopefully that won’t be the case, but it doesn’t take many pitches to recognize the bad Julio.
The difference between Good Julio and Bad Julio is how many runners are on base before he gives up the inevitable home run.
#24
That belongs in the glossary.
I think Chuck Hernandez should get some sort of an award.
His slogan should be “Chuck Hernandez, cleaning up Roger McDowell’s messes since 2016”
There was a time where Beachy, Medlen, Venters, and O’Flaherty were excelling above their pedigree and, seemingly, their talent and most thought McDowell was doing a perfectly fine job. It shows how hard coordinators and coaching are to evaluate.
Yeah. McDowell’s prowess as a pitching coach took a big hit when Beachy and Medlen’s elbows exploded.
And Minor’s shoulder exploded, and Jurrjens’s knees exploded, and, and…
Jeff Wren blamed all those good pitchers breaking down on McDowell’s teaching of mechanics.
Also, Medlen and Beachy came back too soon from TJS.
Jeff Wren blamed everything on anyone not named “Wren.”
I blame everything on anyone not not named “Jonathan Schuerholz.”
@17 right. Bundesliga is drawing the most spectators overall every season since they built lots of new, modern stadiums for the world cup when Germany last hosted it. I just finished watching my team, Hamburg (SV) tonight – and they relegated into the second division for this season. Still 47K spectators came to watch a second division game against a shitty, most boring competitor tonight.
New thread.