Atlanta Braves finally get on the board this season.
The Atlanta Braves will not go 0-162 this year, in fact they will not go 1-161 as they took both games of the early season doubleheader against the Washington Nationals on Wednesday. The teams played two extremely different types of games as game 1 was a slugfest, and game 2 was a pitching duel with the only runs scored coming in the 7th and final inning.
Without a doubt, it is nice to be on the board and have a couple wins under the belt. Hopefully, between this and coming home for the debut Friday night, the boys will get going, get back to .500, and then go on from there.
First things first: Ronald Acuna is scorching hot as he hit almost .500 in this series and belted a couple of long balls and chipped in with two stolen bases on Wednesday. If he keeps this kind of play up, he will get some MVP votes at the end of the season.
Another player that is on fire is Travis d’Arnaud. He had the big hit of the first game and continued his torrid start to the 2021 season after his silver slugger 2020 season.
With that being said, let’s get to the main takeaways:
3. Atlanta Braves Bullpen saved game 1… barely
Fair to say that Max Fried was not on it today. It was obvious from the start it was going to be a challenge for the southpaw to go any distance today. Early on, he left a hanger for Trea Turner to put one in the left-field seats for the second game in a row (that guy absolutely destroys Atlanta Braves pitching).
Fried was able to last two innings of 5 run ball before exiting. He was clipped with a liner on the leg and may have been removed due to injury concerns but I would expect him to be fine for his next start.
The story of game 1 was though was the work Josh Tomlin, Nate Jones, and AJ Minter did in the middle innings to put a stop to the red hot Nationals bats and preserve the Atlanta Braves lead for the teams first win of the season.
The lone trouble spot was Will Smith had trouble closing the game out, allowing a run, and some base runners but he too was able to get a timely double-play to collect the win.
The bottom line is at least for today, the bullpen looked a lot like last year’s team where they were very reliable. Hopefully that remains the case going forward.