Braves hit four homers, drop 15 on Phillies again in romp

The Braves have scored 15 runs twice this season. The first time, they demolished the Phillies by a 15-1 tally. Tonight’s game wasn’t quite as close, but the runs for the Braves and the opponent were the same, as the Braves prevailed by a 15-7 margin. (Also, what is it with teams from Pennsylvania? The Braves have scored 12 or more runs eight times so far this season, and five of them have come against the Phillies or Pirates.)

As you can imagine from a game that featured nearly 100 plate appearances, a lot of things happened. but most of them were of little consequence. The usual “here’s what happened” recap can’t really do things justice, because describing events in prose requires words, and the Braves romping and stomping all over a likely-miserable Zach Eflin rendered much of the game’s latter innings moot.

The Braves hit four homers:

• Ender Inciarte hit a two-run shot in the second to open the scoring. It was his first homer since late April and not particularly well struck (96 mph off the bat, 19 percent hit probability), but Citizens Bank Park gonna Citizens Bank Park, and Inciarte got a neat bat flip/emphatic throw thing going too, as good for him.
• Ronald Acuña Jr. followed up Inciarte’s blast with a two-run dinger of his own in the same inning. It followed a walk by Eflin to Max Fried and was absolutely crushed to right-center, traveling an estimated 447 feet. It was majestic and very, very gone.
• Eflin’s third inning of work somehow went even worse than his two-homer second, as the score was already 7-1 by the time he departed the game with two outs. The Phillies summoned Ranger Suarez from the bullpen against Ozzie Albies, and they probably wish they had rolled Cleric Suarez or Wizard Suarez or something instead, because Albies promptly lined an 0-2 Suarez slider into the left-field corner for a grand slam.
• With the southpaw Suarez still out there, Adam Duvall got in on the fun by banging his first Braves homer in his 2019 MLB debut, nearly a year to the day that the Braves first acquired him. Duvall went 3-for-5 in his first MLB action of the year, popping out in his first at-bat against Eflin, striking out in his last at-bat, but otherwise adding two singles, one of the infield variety, to his longball.

In addition to the four homers, the Braves collected three doubles (two by Josh Donaldson, and he would have had a third had he actually run on a ball that bounced off the wall in the first, but was thrown out at second; one by Freddie Freeman) and drew seven walks, four of which were issued to Freeman. Basically, they had fun. Even Max Fried got his hitting shoes on, going 2-for-3 with a walk and driving in a run by beating out the relay throw on his grounder to second (which the Phillies challenged, and lost, for some reason in a five-run game, but whatever). The only Brave probably not having much fun today? Johan Camargo, who fared 0-for-6 with three strikeouts at the dish and a few defensive miscues at shortstop. No big deal, but probably somewhat of a bummer for him given the hitting antics of his teammates.

On the pitching end, things were, as mentioned, of little consequence. Max Fried suffered only one dumb sequence (infield single off a diving Camargo’s glove, hit yielded to the pitcher and a runner caught dead to rights trying to advance to third ruled safe when Donaldson couldn’t hold on to the baseball, passed ball to score a run) in his first five innings of work. He promptly stopped cruising in the sixth, yielding a pair of (very cheap) two run homers (combined hit probability of 21 percent) to J.T. Realmuto and Sean Rodriguez. That was it for Fried, who left the outing having allowed five runs (four earned) with a 6/3 K/BB ratio. The two homers led to a 33.3 percent HR/FB rate, further widening his already-sizable FIP/xFIP gap from around a third of a run to half a run. Yeesh, sorry, Max. At least this game was fun and you had fun terrorizing the Phillies while batting.

After Fried left, the merry band of Jerry Blevins, Chad Sobotka, and Jeremy Walker finished off the game. Both Blevins and Sobotka yielded a run apiece and clogged the bases, allowing six baserunners in fewer than three innings, but also struck out five of the eight men they faced. From the Phillies’ perspective, the plate appearance that probably summed up everything the best was their last gasp in the eighth: down by eight, two on, a 3-2 count after Sobotka threw three straight balls, and Harper swings at... this... ?

Walker, meanwhile, threw a no-drama, 13-pitch ninth, striking out Rhys Hoskins in the process.

With the Nationals dropping another game to the Dodgers earlier in the day, the Braves re-extend their lead to 6.5 games. They’ll send Kevin Gausman back to the mound for a second consecutive Sunday tomorrow afternoon, where he’ll face Aaron Nola on special order (because the Phillies re-shuffled their rotation to ensure that Nola would pitch against the Braves). But hey, tomorrow’s game is tomorrow, and for tonight, the Braves can celebrate the big ol’ bootprint they planted at Citizens Bank Park tonight.