You know what they say: more homers by your favorite team is better than fewer homers by that team. If you buy into that saying, and you’re a Braves fan, this was a fun game for you. The Braves knocked five total homers, including two by one player, and a walkoff shot, to prevail in a Spring Training contest over the Miami Marlins by a 6-5 score on Sunday afternoon.
Here’s a listing of the homers:
- Tyler Flowers got the scoring started with a two-run shot off Dan Straily. The longball followed a Freddie Freeman double and was the start of Flowers’ perfect day, as he got nailed by a pitch in his next plate appearance.
- With Straily still out there, Adam Duvall collected his first Spring Training hit of 2019 with a deep fly to left field.
- In the fourth, Alex Jackson, starting at designated hitter on the day, popped Drew Steckenrider for a solo homer, making the score 4-0.
- Fast forward to the sixth, and Duvall came up against Tyler Kinley and blasted a liner over the left-field fence for his second homer of the day.
- The Braves were held scoreless for the next two frames as the Marlins managed to knot the game at five apiece, but with one out in the ninth, Andres Blanco unknotted it with a game-ending walkoff homer.
So, yeah, home runs! Awesome. The Braves scored all six of their runs courtesy of the longball, and four of the dongs were solo shots. They only managed three non-homer hits (Jackson, Freeman’s double, and Acuña).
The pitching end was more of a mixed bag, but mostly just yielded runs on singles. Sean Newcomb got the start and breezed through two innings, facing the minimum thanks to a double play and striking out two. He went back out for the third and allowed a leadoff single, but with two out, allowed his famous bugbear: a walk. That prompted a rare Spring Training mound visit that did not result in a departure, and Newcomb bounced back to strike out Miguel Rojas and end his three-inning outing on a very positive note.
Arodys Vizcaino then made his 2019 Spring debut and struck out the side. Right after, Jesse Biddle came on and allowed two runs on four hits, and then the Marlins were able to manufacture a third run off Jonny Venters thanks to a leadoff double. Corbin Clouse and Patrick Weigel then threw back-to-back perfect innings (one strikeout, Clouse’s), which left it up to Joey Wentz to close out the game. But, Wentz did not succeed at his delegated task, allowing four straight hitters to reach with one out. The final batter to face him, Deven Marrero, hit a two-run game-tying single; Andres Santiago then replaced Wentz and kept the Marlins from scoring any more, which set up Blanco’s walk-off shot.
Perhaps most importantly, though, no one else got injured. Woo.
The Braves host the Astros tomorrow afternoon at 1:05 pm ET.
Loading comments...