Austin Riley finally turned the corner at the plate while the pitching staff dominated from the start.
The Atlanta Braves completed a 5-1 homestand Wednesday with a 7-0 win over the Detroit Tigers. The win moves the Braves back to 10 games over .500 with a 41-31 mark. They will enjoy an off day on Thursday before heading out on a seven-game road trip that will begin Friday in New York against the Yankees.
Rare Sweep
Wednesday’s win gave the Braves their first-ever sweep against the Detroit Tigers. Atlanta and Detroit are now an even 15-15 in head-to-head matchups since the start of interleague play in 1997.
This was the first series sweep by the Braves since they swept a two-game series against the Red Sox back on May 7-8. It was their first three-game sweep since April 22-24 against the Marlins.
On the season, the Braves have only participated in six sweeps so far: five by them (Diamondbacks, Marlins, Rangers, Red Sox, Tigers), and one by the Dodgers in Los Angeles.
Pitching staff flexes its muscles
The Braves’ pitching staff turned in a dominant performance top to bottom in the series. Max Fried, Spencer Schwellenbach and Reynaldo López combined to allow two runs and struck out 19 in 16 1/3 innings. The bullpen was even better, tossing 10 2/3 scoreless innings to go along with 13 strikeouts. Wednesday’s win was the Braves’ league-leading 10th shutout of the season. Eight of those 10 have come at Truist Park.
Atlanta has shifted back to a normal five-man rotation and they have to be encouraged by the recent performance of Schwellenbach. Over his last two starts, Schwellenbach has allowed three runs combined over 12 innings, after allowing nine earned runs over his first 9 2/3 innings.
While the Tigers didn’t really seem to bring a particularly effective offensive approach into the series, it was still an impressive run. As of the time of writing, the Braves have the seventh-best pitching staff by fWAR, and the fifth-best rotation. Their 92 xFIP- as a staff is tied for third-best in MLB.
Sean Murphy breaks out
It has been a tough start to the season for Sean Murphy. who suffered an oblique injury on Opening Day and then missed nearly two months of action. Murphy entered Wednesday’s game with just a 16 wRC+ and one homer over his first 56 plate appearances; his .234 xwOBA was also terrible (though not as bad as his .189 wOBA).
But, Murphy took a big step in putting all that behind him as he homered twice Wednesday as part of his third career four-hit game. His wRC+ is now up to 75, and his xwOBA will likely increase pretty handily too, as his homers were monster shots and his two singles were high hit probability balls as well. Murphy ended the homestand on a good note, and maybe this is a turning point for him, as he had just a .236 xwOBA in his last three games before his Wednesday afternoon breakout, and had a sub-.300 xwOBA for the whole of June as well.
Austin Riley stepping up
Speaking of heating up, Austin Riley finally found a groove at the plate to snap out of a deep slump. Riley homered in each of the three games against the Rays and then added four hits, three of which were doubles, in the sweep of the Tigers. He was 10-for-19 with four doubles and three homers over the six-game homestand. His xwOBA was in the .370s for June before today’s game, so he’s basically given the Braves about three weeks of all-in-all average Austin Riley at this point.
Riley has just one barreled out in June, even though he’s still tied for 16th in MLB with nine total barreled outs.
Atlanta snaps streak of one-run losses
The Braves pulled out a pair of 2-1 wins to start the series against Detroit. That snapped a stretch of seven-straight losses in one-run games. For the season, Atlanta is 8-10 in one-run contests. Additionally it was the first time that the Braves had won consecutive games 2-1 since September 2015 against the Phillies.
The one-run losses haven’t really be a specific problem for the Braves this year, as 8-10 is a perfectly reasonable record for any team to have in 18 games (look at the Rays’ 13-6 and Astros’ 5-14 to see how that sort of thing can either keep you vaguely afloat or absolutely tank your season), but have still been frustrating given that they’ve come in a few games the Braves probably could’ve won if not for a poorly-timed bullpen blow-up.