BABIP didn’t comply, and so the Braves lost
Well, the Atlanta Braves did it. No, I don’t mean, “lose another Chris Sale start” or “finish April 2025 below .500,” though they did those too. Instead, they somehow went homerless for an entire series at Coors Field for the first time in their franchise history.
In the first two games of this series, the Braves made piddly contact, but got the most of it, racking up 14 combined runs despite a sub-.300 xwOBA in each game. In the third game of this series, the Braves didn’t really do much better (maybe even worse) offensively against Chase Dollander and a few Colorado relievers, but they didn’t get things to fall in, and therefore, ended up with just the lone run (scored on an RBI groundout).
Offensively, perhaps the homer-stricken Dollander matching up against a team that was perhaps not trying to hit homers was some kind of menacing syzygy for the Braves. The Braves had a barreled out to lead off the second, and then little else of note. They scored a run thanks to a leadoff walk and a poked grounder single, followed by two groundouts, in the third, and that was it. A leadoff walk and a steal of second went nowhere in the fifth. In the sixth, Dollander walked a couple and then had to leave the game with a 1-0 count on Ozzie Albies because of a split, bloody fingernail, but Jake Bird came on and got a strikeout. The Braves then did nothing against Bird in the seventh, Seth Halvorsen in the eighth, or Zach Agnos in the ninth. Albies did have a two-out single to stave off defeat for a while, but Eli White couldn’t replicate his heroics from earlier and flew out.
The Braves had nine hard-hit balls, with all but one going for outs. Michael Harris II and Marcell Ozuna both had lineouts right at a fielder, and Drake Baldwin scalded a grounder right to the shortstop playing up the middle. They also had three walks, but without any power production, you’re basically beholden to sequencing and the whims of fate, and those things did not smile on the Braves today. What made all of this somewhat irritating is that the broadcast booth talked about how the players have a daily chase rate contest — perhaps if they were focusing on “hitting the ball hard” moreso than “not chasing” then things might be different, but if they’re all in on whatever they’re doing now, I guess we’ll just have to hope for good fortune the rest of the way because there are going to be a lot more games like this where the ball just won’t drop.
On the flip side, Chris Sale dominated, but since it was the Rockies, it was mostly expected. Unfortunately, he didn’t dominate quite enough for the Braves to get a 1-0 win or anything. Sale came out looking like his old, 2024 self in the first, but a couple of hanging changeups and an RBI groundout gave the Rockies a 1-0 lead in the second. Later, Sale threw a well-placed (inner edge) but sub-92 mph fastball to Brenton Doyle, who hit it out of the park for the decisive run. Sale got into hot water one other time, as Doyle tagged him for a leadoff double in the sixth and then advanced to third on a wild pitch, but Sale got two strikeouts and a groundout to keep it a one-run game. He struck out Jacob Stallings for the final out of the seventh to end his day, and Pierce Johnson breezed through the eighth, all to little avail.
The Braves will now enjoy an off day before they head home, still under .500, to face the mighty mighty Dodgers. Maybe that matchup will conjure up some memories of clashes past and inspire them to try and hit the ball out of the yard once again.