The winning streak of four straight series comes to a close with a blowout loss
Oh, hey there. Did you know I’m starting this recap at 1:28 am ET? Well, you do now, assuming you’re even reading the recap and not just going to the comments to complain. Anyway, the Braves and Dodgers sat through a long rain delay, culminating in the latest start in Truist Park history. Then, the Braves lost 10-3 to the Death Star. It happens.
Before the game devolved into a blowout, it was actually kind of interesting. The Dodgers got on the board first with a barreled double, a hit by pitch, a deep flyout that moved the runner to third, and then a weird mental lapse by Nick Allen where he got a hard grounder hit to him, but chose to flip it to Ozzie Albies (who had no shot of turning a double play and didn’t even attempt a throw). The Braves, though, struck right back with an Ozzie Albies single and steal, and after a weird 3-1 soft lineout by Michael Harris II for some reason, another soft liner that actually turned into a triple for Eli White into the right-field corner. Neither Allen nor Alex Verdugo could get White in, though, and that lead lasted all of three minutes before Shohei Ohtani deposited a hanging Spencer Schwellenbach curveball into center field for a go-ahead solo shot to start the third.
The Dodgers ended up tacking a third run on a seeing-eye single later in the inning, but things only devolved into silly season in the fourth. Spencer Schwellenbach did okay through 18 batters, considering the competition — a 4/1 K/BB ratio, a homer allowed, and a hit by pitch. Not his best start, not on par with the two good ones he had prior, but not his shellacking in Toronto, either. It was fine, and he had enough stuff to manage the Dodgers to a reasonable extent. But, with two outs and batter number 19, things went poorly. Ohtani hit a hard single, and then Mookie Betts hit an RBI double that would’ve been an easy out if Austin Riley were just positioned nearer to the foul line, as we beseech the Braves to do nightly. After a liner single by Freddie Freeman, the Braves were down 5-1, so they went to… Aaron Bummer, their best reliever… to face two righties. Yeah, I don’t know. I mean I do know, but I don’t, you know? What happened afterwards was probably too dumb to describe in this recap at 1:35 am ET, but basically the Dodgers ended up scoring two more runs on balls that collectively traveled less than 200 feet.
It was after all that transpired that Ozzie Albies randomly hit a homer. So there was homer parity for a while, and the Braves even scored a third run on an Allen double. But after the bullpens took over, the action kind of stopped, at least until Scott Blewett came on, walked two, and then grooved a 3-1 pitch to Freeman that made it a 10-3 game, which is where it ended. The Braves vaguely rallied in the ninth and loaded the bases with one out, but ended the game on two strikeouts.
My viewing interest after a while was mostly about what the Braves were (or were not) doing at the plate, and it’s hard for me to think that at this point they’re once again showing some kind of signs of confusion related to whatever it is they’re trying to do that’s very clearly not what they were doing for most of 2019-2024. They struck out nine times in this game, but four of them were looking, and they had just two of the game’s ten hardest PA-ending swings, while having eight of the ten softest. Those things don’t mean much by themselves in a vacuum, but the team has also freefallen down the offensive inputs rankings since leaving Phoenix, which is bizarre given that they had three games at Coors Field to do what most teams do there, which does not involve said freefall.
They’ll try to avoid the sweep (and a season series sweep) tomorrow night.