The Atlanta Braves bounced back from their game-one loss on Tuesday night as they beat the Angels 5-1.
Spencer Strider pitched so well on the mound and the Atlanta offense surged with homers from Orlando Arcia and Michael Harris II. Harris launched two homers during Tuesday night's game.
Matt Olson got things started in the first inning with a sac fly that brought in Ozzie Albies. That would be all the scoring we would see during the game until we reached the fifth inning. Both pitchers were doing well up until that point.
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Spencer Strider reached a milestone as he pitched to the second batter of the game, Shohei Ohtani. Strider was sitting on 199 strikeouts through 123 innings pitched. He set a record in 2022 as the fastest to reach 200 strikeouts in a season as he did so in 130 innings last year.
He broke his own record on Tuesday as he reached 200 strikeouts in just 123.1 innings with a strikeout of Ohtani. Strider struck out Ohtani twice during this game. This put him on a list with just 3 other players (Charlie Morton, Phil Niekro, and Charlie Morton) as the only ones in Braves history to have multiple 200-strikeout seasons.
Strider completed his night after 6.2 innings allowing just 1 run on 5 hits with 2 walks and 9 strikeouts. That makes 8 straight starts that Strider has struck out at least 9 batters in a game. He looked absolutely locked in.
He almost completed seven innings but he allowed a single to start the inning but recovered and got the next two outs. He hit the fourth batter faced in the inning and after 110 pitches his day was done. Joe Jimenez came in and induced a ground out to end the inning. Jimenez continued his incredible work out of the bullpen.
Minter and Iglesias finished out the night for the Atlanta Braves as they combined for two scoreless innings with just one hit and two strikeouts. It's been encouraging to see the bullpen start to get things back to normal.
The series finale takes place tomorrow afternoon in Atlanta and the first pitch is scheduled for 12:20 PM EST on Bally Sports South and MLB Network. Yonny Chirinos makes his second start for the Atlanta Braves and will face off with recently acquired Lucas Giolito.