The game

I’ll circle back to longer musings, but last night’s game was a nice change of pace. Spencer Schwellenbach had yet another good game: six innings, and just one run on five hits and two walks, with five strikeouts. At this moment he’s a very good fourth starter, exactly 43 starts into his career as a starting pitcher, which more or less began a year ago, as he was mostly a position player and occasional reliever in college. His development story has been extraordinary, and it’s not inconceivable to imagine that his ceiling remains to be reached.

There have been a number of highlights this year – Chris Sale and Marcell’s pushes for the Cy Young Award and the MVP, respectively; Reynaldo Lopez’s career year; the quiet dominance of Raisel Iglesias – but Spencer Schwellenbach’s emergence has unquestionably been the best thing we’ve had the pleasure of watching all year.

For much of the game, the offense was doing nothing much. Journeyman starter Jakob Junis, he of the 4.48 career ERA, held us to two hits through six innings. (In fairness to the gentleman, he’s also currently enjoying the best year of his career; his career ERA through 2023 was 4.64.)

So, when Spencer finally gave up a run in the sixth inning, tying the game, you could be forgiven if you tuned out. But the Braves offense finally flipped a switch when the Redlegs went to their pen. Marcell Ozuna immediately answered the Reds’ run with his first homer in four weeks

Remarkably, that was where the rally started, as much of the rest of the lineup joined in the fun: Olson singled, Laureano doubled, Murphy walked, and Urshela singled home Olson and Laureano. The next inning, Michael Harris homered for the second night in a row, Eli White singled, and Marcell doubled him home. Urshela finally finished the scoring with an RBI double in the ninth. Something tells me that we’re going to hang onto him as a utility infielder for a good long while after this successful audition.

Because so much of the Braves’ scoring was late, Schwellenbach was relieved by two of the better arms in the pen, Dylan Lee and Joe Jimenez, who both threw perfect innings. Finally, Aaron Bummer pitched the ninth, only managing seven strikes in 15 pitches but somehow managing to record three outs.

It was a good game, top to bottom: six different Braves scored a run, and one of the few who didn’t was Urshela, who drove in three from the bottom of the lineup.

However, the lineup is still somewhat dubious: Harris is still a bad choice for leadoff; Soler only plays two-thirds of most games before getting replaced at the top of the lineup by a weak-hitting defensive caddy; and Murphy’s down to .202 and is in real risk of ending the season below the Mendoza line. Ozzie Albies’s impending return will push Merrifield to the bench, likely providing a modest improvement, but though he’s an absolute clubhouse sparkplug, he’s only occasionally an offensive differencemaker.

The offense

In all, this month, the Braves have scored 4+ runs seven times, and are 6-2 in those games, while they’re 2-6 in the others. Overall this year, they’re 63-22 (.741) when they score at least four runs, and 19-48 (.284) when they don’t.

This wouldn’t have seemed to be such a high bar, considering that the team scored at least four runs in all but 37 of its games last year; they’ve failed to score at least four runs in 67 games so far this year, with 10 games to go.

If you want to know why they’ve struggled so much to get anything going and keep it going, that’s why.

That’s why it’s been like this all summer:

May 13-14 (-5 run differential)
June 14-13 (+13)
July 12-13 (+6)
August 16-13 (+3)
September 8-8 (+11)

This afternoon

Blowouts like last night are lovely, but I’d give anything for the runs to be better distributed. If only one of last night’s runs could have been advanced to Tuesday night’s heartbreaker.

I hope they saved enough for this afternoon! It’s a businessman’s special. Chris Sale is on the mound for the good guys, against rookie Julian Aguiar, a peach-fuzzed 23-year-old from Long Beach with a 4.88 ERA (6.32 FIP). He throws in the mid-90s, like everybody, but his best asset is his command of his slider and changeup.

Hopefully our guys hit him like the rest of the league has been hitting him!