Shockingly enough, the Braves were unable to figure out how to crack Dan Straily. Straily went into this game with a few bad starts under his belt, but he managed to right the ship and get things back under control against the Braves. Straily threw six scoreless inning while he was on the mound as the Braves couldn’t capitalize on any of the small chances that they had.
The Braves had a chance in the second inning when Johan Camargo hit a double with one out and then Ozzie Albies (of all people) took a walk. The scoring chance was immediately snuffed out when Tyler Flowers hit into a double play and that was that.
Ronald Acuña Jr. attempted to continue his revenge tour on Miami when he hit a double in the next inning. Once again, the Braves’ chance of cashing in a runner in scoring position was dashed when Ender Inciarte popped out to end the inning.
Freddie Freeman led off the fourth with a single of his own and that was as far as Atlanta’s offense got in that frame as well, since Dan Straily and the Marlins were basically able to lock down Atlanta’s offense for the evening.
In fact, the three hits that I just told you about were in fact all of the offense that the Braves were able to muster on the night. Meanwhile, Mike Foltynewicz pitched well enough to help his team to victory. Folty went six innings and struck out eight while only giving up two walks and two hits.
Unfortunately, those two hits ended up being costly for Folty and the Braves. Those two hits came in the fourth inning, which is when Brian Anderson hit a double out to left field and then Derek Dietrich roped one up the center of the diamond and into center field to score what ended up being the only run of the game.
On paper, this sure seemed like the most likely game for the Braves to have a bit of an offensive explosion. Instead, they got shut down by Dan Straily and ended up getting shut out on the night. It’s baseball, weird stuff tends to happen and tonight is a prime example of that. The good news is that both the Phillies and Nationals lost, so this ended up being a wash for all of the relevant teams in the NL East.
Still, you’d like to see the Braves take advantage of nights like this, so it’s still a bit of a disappointment that they took the loss tonight. Hopefully we’ll see them bounce back tomorrow night.