I attended the second of these, and I left right before the stunner in extras – I could have chosen to feel annoyed that I missed all the excitement, but I prefer to think that I did what I had to do to change the team’s luck.
In this woeful year, it’s a comfort that at least there are a few teams in worse shape than we are, and it’s a relief when we’re actually able to beat them like we’re supposed to.
The Nationals, stalled in an overlong rebuild not helped by the owners’ unwillingness either to spend money on the team or to sell it for less than the price they’ve chosen, are hard to watch right now.
Their two best players, C.J. Abrams and James Wood, played in the first game and sat for the second, while their best pitcher, Mackenzie Gore, pitched in the nightcap. All three came over in the Juan Soto trade.
The rest of the lineup is hard to watch, and honestly pretty hard to name – other than Josh Bell, who’s been around for quite a while, I’d never heard of most of them, other than a couple of former top prospects like Dylan Crews and Brady House.
The Braves got a five-spot in the fourth inning of the opener, against Jake Irvin, as Ha-Seong Kim and Michael Harris singled, Vidal Brujan doubled, Jurickson Profar hit a three-run homer, and Matt Olson followed up by going back-to-back. A homer in his fourth straight game!
They then got a five-spot in the 10th inning of the nightcap, as Drake Baldwin hit a pinch double to drive home the Manfred Man, then Kim singled him to third, Jurickson Profar walked the bases loaded, and Matt Olson brought them all home with a triple (!); after a pitching change, Ronald Acuña walked, and Ozzie closed the scoring with a sac fly.
The Braves tried resting some regulars for the second game, but the white flag lineup managed only three hits in regulation, and Snitker finally started to empty the bench in the late innings, bringing in Kim for Nick Allen, Brujan for Nacho Alvarez, and Baldwin for Sandy Leon; those original three went 0-7, and the new guys went 2-5.
The Braves’ pitching was strong, though the Nationals lineup is one of the worst in the league. Our starter in the first game was Jose “El Demente” Suarez, whom we got for Ian Anderson; he spent the last decade in the Angels organization and today was his first start since September 2024.
(His nine strikeouts were actually a career high; today was probably the fourth-best of his 62 career starts. He has a career ERA of 5.36. But hey, he’s still only 27, and hope springs eternal.)
Chris Sale came out for the second half of the twinbill, and he was about as good as we’ve seen him: he recorded the Braves’ second nine-strikeout performance of the day, allowing just three hits and no walks across eight stingy innings.
He struggled to command the ball a bit in the first inning, when it was still raining softly after a two-hour rain delay to start the game, but he got much stronger as the game went on and really was never in any serious trouble after that.
Right now, the Nationals are worse than just a bad team: they’re not a particularly interesting one. It was hard to look at the evening lineup and see much resembling a major league roster. I don’t mean to take the wins for granted; if anything, I’m aware that there but for the grace of God go we. But boy, thank goodness we won these. We’ve got four more games against them in the next week!
Another afternoon getaway game in Washington tomorrow, then an off day on Thursday as the Braves travel up to Detroit Rock City.
You have to play all the games, of course, but it might be interesting to do a little study of teams that begin the season against good teams and close it against bad ones versus the opposite. My prior is that there would be no difference at all on average…. the season is too long and the players too used to stretches of success and failure for it to matter at all. But you never know what you’ll find.
The one thing I do think is that the MLB tendency to schedule home-and-homes over the course of a couple of weeks is… not unfair, exactly, but exaggerates differences in team quality by often having teams face each other when one team happens to be playing well or poorly.
The Braves have never swept a four game series against either Les Expos or the Natinals. And since Snit used his “cannot win” lineup last night and won anyway, I’m not sure how he’s going to find a way to blow the getaway game today. Maybe we can coax Tommy Milone out of retirement to start.
That’s a really good question and all the games should count the same, but do they? Injuries wrecked this season greater than any hypothetical could fix, but in another season, a team that opened with 7 out of 10 against Washington and Pittsburgh and closed with 7 with the Dodgers and Padres on the west coast might have been buyers at the trade deadline.
There may or may not be a statistical difference found over a season, but the point at which a team throws in the towel could make a difference.
It’s true… you catch a team at the right time, it can be a big help. But, in the end, the schedule can be a mixed bag.
I’ll always remember the Braves completing a season-series sweep (13 games) of the 1st-year Rockies to cap their 1993 division title. I’ll also always remember the lowly Marlins inducing the Mets to cough up the division in 2007.
BTW, was listening to the end of the 2nd game last night & Ben Ingram’s call of Acuna’s 9th inning catch was terrific.
And blessings to you AAR for attending. Ben made it seem like a rather intimate gathering last night.
The true blessings are due to my wife, who was having a blast, particularly after we snuck down to field level about halfway through.
It’s hard to read too much into a start against the Nationals, but Suarez’s stuff looked legit.
https://x.com/pitchprofiler/status/1968052175827050983/photo/1
Our first five-game winning streak since August 13-17, and only our second of the year. (Our only other four-game streak came in April 18-21.)
We just outscored the Natspos 31-10, and we’re not just a game and a half behind the Marlins for third in the division. We’re really just playing for pride right now, and it’s a lot easier to feel pride for a group of guys who are continuing to try to play hard after a season that went as sideways as this one. Hell of a series.
Recapped