There was plenty of Atlanta Braves offense to support Max Fried… which was a good thing, for the bullpen tried to give some of that back to the White Sox.
It’s August 31st and the Atlanta Braves are still enjoying a 5.5 game divisional lead.
The reason it’s still a 5.5 game lead is because Washington continues to match the Braves… win for win. In fact, the Nats own the NL’s 3rd-best record.
A separation has now happened in the NL East… the Phillies and Mets have both fallen back (11.5 and 13 games, respectively) and neither are now looking like playoff teams… the Phillies more so, but the Mets recent schedule has killed them in just the past few days.
We’ll soon resume our battles against the divisional opponents (sans the Marlins – we’re done seeing them this year). It will be a lot of the Phillies and Nats through mid month once we finish up things this weekend.
So it was good to see the Braves take care of business on Friday by getting solid wood on the ball against a tough Ivan Nova.
Here’s 3 notable takeaways from this game.
3. Max Fried earned a better fate
Yes, Max Fried got the W to push his record to 15-4 on the year, but Luke Jackson didn’t clean up the mess in the 7th inning like we’d hoped.
The inning began with the Braves holding a 6-1 lead. It was 6-2 when Jackson entered the game after a tough error call on Freddie Freeman when a sharply hit grounder got past him.
Once the 7th ended, that lead had all-but-evaporated to a 6-5 margin.
At this point, Fried had been excellent: 4 hits allowed, 1 earned run (maybe should have been 2) with eleven strikeouts against 1 walk through 6 innings.
Unfortunately, a homer plated the 2 runners that Jackson inherited, which nudged Fried’s ERA up to 4.05 for the season.
Somewhat Related
Is it time to call out Tyler Flowers… or to at least ask why he is having trouble handling the baseball?
He was charged with yet another passed ball last night. That makes 16 on the year and not only does that figure lead all catchers in the majors, he’s done that in substantially fewer innings (581) than anyone else in the Top 10 (save for Russell Martin… 7 PB’s in 431 innings… 10th place).
Flowers is also 10th in MLB in allowing Wild Pitches (32), though again, he’s seen roughly 150-170 fewer innings than the average catcher in the Top 10 of that list.
Yes – Flowers had the key homer last night and went 2-for-3 with 3 RBI (he’s hitting .236 on the year). But both his offense and defense have taken a sharp turn for the worse in 2019.