Braves charge past Red Sox, extend lead in NL East
By Chris Turner
The Boston Red Sox came into Tuesday night's game ranked in the top five in team batting average, RBIs, runs, and hits. They ended the night on the wrong side of an 9-3 blowout loss thanks to some timely hitting and impressive pitching from the Atlanta Braves.
Charlie Morton delivered a solid performance on the hill to keep the explosive Boston offense at bay, allowing just two earned runs and five hits over six innings, while striking out seven Red Sox batters. He's now struck out 22 batters over his last three starts. His only blemishes on the evening came from Justin Turner, who scored two Boston runs via a 3rd inning sacrifice fly and 6th inning home run.
Matt Olson opened the scoring barrage for Atlanta early in the first, launching his 11th homer of the season 426 feet to right to make it 2-0 Braves. Olson is currently riding a six-game hitting streak, his longest since he went on two separate eight-game streaks in July and August of 2022.
Atlanta added two more runs to close out the opening frame, with Ozzie Albies singling home a run, following by Marcell Ozuna grounding out to score another a few batters later.
The reigning NL Player of the Week continued to build on his case for NL Player of the Month with a three-hit, fourRBI night. Sean Murphy ripped a 110.5 MPH single into left to score a fifth run in the 2nd inning, and then singled again in the 5th to plate two more and extend the Atlanta lead to 7-1. His third hit came in the eighth inning after he lined a double into the left center gap to score Matt Olson all the way from first.
Orlando Arcia shined in his second game back from the injured list, putting together a three-hit performance with two singles and an RBI double.
The Braves are riding a three-game win streak, and have won 11 of their last 14 games.
Atlanta will try for the two-game sweep over Boston on Wednesday, with first pitch scheduled for 7:20 p.m. ET.