Not the best showing in the much-ballyhooed matchup between the last two World Series champions. The Braves led in every single game and, I would argue, should have won two of the three (I wouldn’t classify our early 1-0 lead on Saturday in that fashion). However, the Astros came back in all three and swept the Braves in Truist Park, marking the first time an opponent has done that (in a three-game series, at least) since May 2021.

Like on Friday night, the bullpen wasted an outstanding performance by the Atlanta starter. Today, Max Fried was excellent and seems not to have skipped a beat after missing a couple starts with a strained hamstring. He went 6.2 scoreless innings and allowed just three hits and three walks. He really only got into two jams. The first came in the second inning, when he allowed a pair of soft singles to lead off the inning. However, he induced a double-play grounder from Jeremy Pena and struck out David Hensley to get out of the jam. His second real jam came in the seventh, and he was lifted for Nick Anderson after walking Kyle Tucker with two out in the seventh to put runners on first and second. However, Anderson promptly struck out Pena to get out of the inning.

Meanwhile, the Braves weren’t getting much going against Christian Javier, who struck out 10 over his six innings of work, seven of them in the first three innings. Kevin Pillar broke the scoreless deadlock with a home run into the Houston bullpen in the fifth, though, and the Braves got a free run in the sixth when Alex Bregman blew a potential double play by launching the pivot throw into the Braves dugout. That allowed Ronald Acuna to come around and score to give his team a 2-0 edge.

In the eighth inning, however, this weekend’s bullpen issues struck again. Anderson got a couple of outs sandwiched around a single, but allowed the next two hitters to reach to bring Yordan Alvarez, who absolutely murdered us all weekend, to the plate. This precipitated a move to current closer AJ Minter.

It was not a great weekend for AJ Minter, to say the least. He gave up the game-winning homer to Alvarez on Friday and it didn’t go much better today.  With the bases loaded, Alvarez hit a game-tying single. Minter got out of the jam from there to leave the game tied going to the bottom of the eighth. But the bullpen meltdown continued in the ninth. The Astros put a pair of runners on and Minter got to the brink of getting out of the inning, but Corey Julks singled up the middle with two outs to give Houston the 3-2 lead. And, of course, now that we were behind, we can’t go to Dylan Lee or Jesse Chavez to get one out and give ourselves a chance in the bottom of the inning. No, now that we’re behind, it’s not worth actually trying to win the game and it’s time to throw in the white flag (personified here by Danny Young). He proceeded to hit Mauricio Dubon with a pitch and relinquish a back-breaking two-run single to Alex Bregman. Yes, Brian Snitker’s bullpen management still drives me up a wall.

So this season continues to be something of a roller-coaster ride. I think the narrative that we can’t compete with good teams or whatever is a bit much. First, getting back the injured will definitely help. Second, we did take a series in San Diego and swept St. Louis (who’s been bad so far but I expect to be a factor at the end of the season). This weekend certainly didn’t go as planned, though, so hopefully the Braves can get well on Miami as this week goes on.