Just your average night where Bryce Elder outdueled Sandy Alcantara, all nine men in the lineup reached base safely thanks to nine hits and nine (!) walks, and it was all over in about two hours and forty minutes. If the Braves hadn’t gone 1-11 with men in scoring position, it might’ve taken a little longer, but it’s awfully hard to complain about a single thing that happened tonight. Kirby Yates and Joe Jimenez took over from Bryce Elder, giving the bullpen a much-needed night off. Neither of them looked like the next coming of O’Ventbrel, but they got the six outs we needed, and the team rolled on.

So… about Bryce Elder. His Statcast page is like a cuckoo’s egg inside a Tiffany box: blue, and more blue. He doesn’t have velocity, and when his pitches get hit, they can really get yanked. But he’s getting swings and misses, and like Dylan Lee, he’s walking the tightrope of staying out of the heart of the zone while also avoiding walks. He’s got an old-school sinker-slider mix, but Statcast sees his slider as by far his most valuable pitch, while the sinker he throws even more often has nowhere near the effectiveness in getting outs. He’s had a really nice start to this season, but before I start believing that he’s turned some kind of corner, I’d like to see more evidence of a repeatable skill.

The top of the lineup went 3-12 with six walks, and that’ll do just fine. Unfortunately, Marcell Ozuna played his first game in a week and had his best game since last October: two singles and a walk with a run scored in five appearances. His days are still numbered, no doubt, but they ought to be negative numbers.

I tuned in around the 7th inning or so, so I don’t have much other brilliant insight to share. But I do have one bit of news. Last week, I proposed to my girlfriend, and she said yes. And the Braves are in first place.

As Manuel Maloof once said: “Anybody don’t like this life is crazy.”