The Atlanta Braves' comeback, walk-off win in extra innings against the Reds on Tuesday was a rollercoaster. Atlanta had multiple opportunities to put runs on the board during the course of the game, but came up short time after time. Then Michael Harris II tied the game in the bottom of the ninth with a double and Marcell Ozuna roped the game-winning hit in the bottom of the 10th. However, neither of those guys were the Braves' real heroes from Tuesday night.
Cincinnati is not a good offensive team, but the Braves' pitching staff combined to strike out 17 batters and gave up just one run over 10 innings of work. Not only did they dominate the Reds, but many of them put up performances that they desperately needed to.
Several Braves pitchers finally got on track against the Reds
Let's start with Chris Sale as an example. Sale hadn't been "bad" to start the season, but it has been abundantly clear that he wasn't pitching the way he wanted to. His fastball velocity was very inconsistent and his sliders often got too much of the plate to effectively miss bats. Sale was making it work, but no one thought that he was quite right.
That all changed against Cincinnati where he was piping mid-90's heat with regularity and getting some ugly swings against his slider. By the end of the night, Sale had a line of 6.2 IP, 5 H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 10 K. That is more like it.
The breakout performances didn't end there. Daysbel Hernandez gave up a run, but that was due to an infield single to Elly De La Cruz and Atlanta couldn't keep him from running wild. Other than that, he continued to be terrific. Rafael Montero has been an adventure since being traded for, but he only gave up a walk and got through his inning without incident. Raisel Iglesias has been anything but his usual reliable self closing games out this season, but it only took him seven pitches to get two strikeouts and a lineout in the 10th inning.
In short, this win was a team effort. The offense was certainly very frustrating at times, but they eventually came up big when they needed to. One just hopes everyone realizes just how good the pitching was as well and how much several of those guys needed that performance.