Sunday was an embarrassment for the Atlanta Braves: 14 innings, 1 hit, no runs, two losses. But they have to get back in the saddle again quickly.
After committing only 4 errors for the year, there were three officially recorded for the day — just to add insult to injury (despite that, the Atlanta Braves are still tied for the fewest errors in baseball).
Starting the day, Atlanta had a chance to move into a virtual tie for first place, which would have been a great achievement after their pedestrian start. You’d think that would have provided incentive enough.
Instead, these “pedestrians” got run over by a bus as they stranded themselves in the middle of a crosswalk.
There was no fire, seemingly no enthusiasm going on.
For sure, there were some nice defensive plays, but it simply appeared that Arizona took all the air out of the stadium with three early runs in Game 1, and then — the dagger — a five-spot to open Game 2.
After that, it simply appeared that the rest of the afternoon was mailed in.
Welcome our Atlanta Braves to national TV
So naturally, the Braves have to regroup and find a spark right away: Monday evening brings a national telecast on ESPN along with a somewhat-rejuvenated Chicago Cubs team — winners of 4 straight before dropping their last pair to Milwaukee over the weekend.
The matchup would seem to be favorable to the Braves — Charlie Morton against Zach Davies. Morton has been the Braves most consistent pitcher while Davies has been hammered for an 8.80 ERA and 2.09 WHIP in just 15 innings so far.
That all sounds good… except that Madison Bumgarner came into Sunday afternoon’s contest with an ERA above 8, too.
So who should we look to as a key for determining whether the Braves will get up off the deck and start steering their ship in the right direction? Ronald Acuna? Freddie Freeman? Maybe Marcell Ozuna?
Turns out, none of these are actually the kind of harbinger of success that you might expect. To wit:
In the Braves’ twelve losses…
- Acuna has hits in seven of them (missing one such game)
- Freeman has hits in seven of them as well
- Ozuna? 5 such games
On the flip side, how about the 9 wins?
- Acuna has hits in five of these (missing one such game)
- Freeman also has hits in five of the wins
- Ozuna has hits in four of these games
No, the real Nostradamus act is coming from… Ozzie Albies:
- He has hits in 7 of the 8 games won in which he played.
- He is hitless in 9 of the losses in which he played (11 games). In the other 2, the Braves lost by scores of 7-6 and 14-8.
It hasn’t even mattered so much where in the order he has hit: if Albies is hitting, the Atlanta Braves are usually winning that game.
Maybe it’s a coincidence… maybe it’s still too small a sample size… or maybe it’s simply a confirmation of what our Fred Owens has been repeating often on our podcasts: that Albies is the key to this Braves offense.
So watch out for our spark plug… and root for Albies to have a great offensive game: then maybe… just maybe these Braves can get their act together.