Charlie Morton twirled another gem – one run on three hits over six innings in Coors Field, for heaven’s sake – which was a good thing as the Braves offense left 12 more men on base. Fifteen hits and a walk and they only cashed in three runs, one of them on a solo shot by Marcell Ozuna! (He also had an RBI single. He’s unconscious right now.) Scoreless innings from Pierce Johnson, A.J. Minter, and Raisel Iglesias closed the deal, and Pierce Johnson has firmly cemented himself among the top four relief options in Snitker’s arsenal, along with Joe Jimenez.

In the MVP-watch, Ronald Acuña Jr. had an off night – two infield singles and he got picked off. But he still went 2-5 and raised his average. He’s hitting .335. God, he’s good.

I won’t complain too much about the offense’s inability to push more runs across as strand rate tends to even itself out and this team has not struggled too much in its cluster luck this season. Fortunately, the offense managed to have one of its nights on a night that Charlie was on top of his form, as he has been in each of his past four starts.

The other major news of the day yesterday was Hurston Waldrep‘s promotion to Double-A (yay!) and the Angels, Yankees, and White Sox reportedly putting some of their more famous recent acquisitions on irrevocable waivers, allowing any team in baseball to shore up their team for the rest of the year by placing a claim on one of the following players: Lucas Giolito, Matt Moore, Reynaldo López, Hunter Renfroe, Randal Grichuk, Harrison Bader, and Mike Clevinger. And, of course, Josh Donaldson was given an outright pink slip.

Since we’re the winningest team in baseball, we’ve got the lowest priority in waiver claims, so no one worth getting is likely to fall to us. But it’s just a measure of how far these teams have fallen from their own preseason expectations, and, by contrast, how well the Braves have done in rising to meet their own.