I’ve said it before, but my least favorite part of the rebuild was the Braves acting essentially like a speed bump — there to make other teams genuflect a bit before the altar of baseball before carrying on their merry way onto whatever else they were doing. In other words: the Braves were the Washington Generals, night in, night out. But at least on this day in 2016... well, they weren’t the Globetrotters, but they went from being a speed bump to an unexpectedly interesting spike strip. At least for one game.
The gist: The very bad Braves tangled with the very good Cubs, and something wondrous happened. Making his second start of the year, Lucas Harrell had one of his best outings in nearly half a decade and totally dominated. Nick Markakis hit a two-run homer that was the game’s only scoring play until the Atlanta bullpen blew it by allowing three runs in the eighth, but then a second Markakis homer immediately tied the game in the ninth. Two innings later, Tyler Flowers poked a two-out go-ahead single through the right side, and the Braves survived a two-on, no-out situation in the bottom of the inning thanks to an improbable save by Mauricio Cabrera.
Box scores: Baseball-Reference, Fangraphs
The set-up: Yes, these 2016 Braves were, at this point, still the worst team in baseball. At 28-57, they had once again lost four straight coming into this series opener, already their seventh time with a losing streak at least that long in around half a season. The Cubs, well, were not. (And yes, these 2016 Cubs were the curse-breaking World Series winners, after all.) They came into this game just half a game out of the majors’ best record at 52-32, though they were definitely feeling it a bit. Despite that gaudy seasonal mark, they’d won just one of their last seven games, getting swept in all four games at Citi Field and then losing two of three to the Reds. Their division lead that fallen to “only” 8.5 games.
Starting for the Cubs was innings-eater Jason Hammel, coming off a 2.3 fWAR season with somewhat diminished effectiveness: 83 ERA-, but 110 FIP- and 108 xFIP-. He had been blasted by the Mets in his prior outing (10 runs and five homers in four innings, definitely in the running for his worst start ever, and certainly a career high in runs and homers allowed), but was mostly going out there and allowing three or four runs a start, like he did earlier in the year against the Braves in a game the Braves actually won, 5-1.
The Braves, meanwhile, were giving a second turn in the rotation to Lucas Harrell, a guy who had one good year with the Astros in 2012 and then totally fell apart, washing out of MLB in 2014 and spending 2015 in the KBO. He then got a minor league deal with the Tigers, which lasted all of about a month of game time before he was released. The Braves signed him, and had him toil at Gwinnett while guys like Joel de la Cruz, Casey Kelly, and Aaron Blair were being blasted in the majors, until finally calling him up on July 2. To be very clear, Harrell wasn’t pitching that well in the International League, either. But, baseball always finds a way to surprise you — in his first start as a big-league Brave, which was his first start in the bigs in over two years, he threw six innings of one-run ball with a 5/1 K/BB ratio. That was actually not just his first start in over two years, but one of his best starts ever, certainly his best in three-plus calendar years. Would he do it again? In short, yes.
This game was a scheduling quirk — a game on April 30 got rained out, and was rescheduled for July 7. Why July 7? Because the Braves were already coming to Chicago to play the White Sox on July 8-10, so this off-day excursion wasn’t a particularly huge additional burden relative to some others. The Braves had split that series prior to the rainout, and lost the one in Atlanta to the Cubs a few weeks later.
How it happened: This game was the story of a few players, and one of those players was definitely Nick Markakis. Here’s why: after Jace Peterson started the game with a dunker single into left, Markakis was the one to bring him home:
It was July 7, but just the third longball for Markakis. Still, it gave the Braves a surprising lead.
And with that, the large crowd at Wrigley Field was treated to... the Lucas Harrell show? Yes, Harrell dazzled against a really good team. He retired the first eight batters he faced, with Javier Baez, hitting ninth, connecting for Chicago’s first hit. Former Brave Tommy La Stella flew out, and that was that. Harrell got into a bit of hot water in the fourth, starting the inning by hitting Kris Bryant and then giving up a single to Anthony Rizzo. But, his team (and Bryant) bailed him out:
A groundout ended the threat.
The fifth similarly started in dicey fashion, but ended fine. This time, it was a single and a walk that put the runners on base. But, strikeouts of two of the next three batters put a pin in that rally. The sixth started with a leadoff, four-pitch walk to Bryant, but ended on a more conventional, 4-6-3 double play. Harrell also got through the seventh after a leadoff single (flyout, flyout, strikeout), and left after getting two outs to start the eighth, but then plunking Bryant (again). Overall, it was an insane start for guy-who-hadn’t-started-in-majors-since-2014-and-was-released-from-a-minor-league-team-and-wasn’t-that-good-at-Gwinnett-and-did-you-know-this-team-gave-two-starts-to-Joel-de-la-Cruz-before-trying-Harrell? His finale line: 7 2⁄3 IP, 4 H, 2 BB, 2 HBP 5 K. (Yes, a run would score, but after he left the game.) It was his best start, by Game Score (v2) in over four years, since his actually-good 2012 season. It was one of the four best starts of his career to date. It was the third-longest start of his career, ever. It was completely unexpected. Watch a highlight video of it below.
Meanwhile, just to rewind a bit — after the Markakis homer, the Braves weren’t really doing anything offensively, but unlike the Cubs, that was normal for them. They wasted a potential rally in the second that featured a leadoff double and a baserunner on a passed ball strike three, and then made nine outs in a row from the third through the fifth. Gordon Beckham snapped that streak with a leadoff walk in the sixth — on the pitch, Hammel appeared to somehow hurt his hand, and left the game as a result, having thrown just 80 pitches (5+ IP, 3 H, 2 R on the Markakis homer, 1 BB, 6 K). Travis Wood then came on to get Freddie Freeman and Markakis, and with the Cubs in a bind, starter Kyle Hendricks came on for some long relief. (This game remains Hendricks’ only-ever regular season relief outing, and he wouldn’t have another one until the 2018 playoffs. He was only available due to the upcoming All-Star Break and his turn in the rotation not due until after said break.) Hendricks threw two otherwise-perfect innings in the seventh and eighth, marred only by the nigh-unthinkable: a (leadoff) walk to Jeff Francoeur.
With Harrell gone and Rizzo due up, the Braves gave the ball to Hunter Cervenka, a weirdly-pleasant surprise to this point in the year: 58 ERA-, 79 FIP-, 95 xFIP-, 0.96 WPA, all for a guy signed out of indy ball who started the season in Double-A. Unfortunately, this was not a shining Cervenka moment (the spotlight was all Harrell’s on the pitching end...). Cervenka missed the zone with his first three pitches, and then hit Rizzo with the fourth. That brought up Ben Zobrist, who hit this cheapo RBI double:
Up next was Willson Contreras, so the Braves swapped Cervenka for a righty, Jim Johnson, who was also very effective to this point (106 ERA- but 87 FIP- and 81 xFIP-; 0.80 WPA). It didn’t work out any better for Johnson in this instance, though:
Inciarte, who had saved Harrell’s bacon earlier with a heads-up play, and had made another impressive sliding catch, goofed up big. Somehow, the play was scored as a triple (which, lol, what a horrendous scoring decision), the first one of Contreras’ career. After a walk, Johnson finally got out of the inning, but oh boy, the Braves and Harrell nursed that 2-0 lead through most of the game, and still found a way to blow it.
(Also, I find it hilarious that Contreras is really pumped up about reaching third base and the overall game state that only happened due to a freak defensive misplay. Like, dude, unless you have the gift of telekinesis and you caused the ball to fly off Inciarte’s glove that way, that play really wasn’t about you.)
Not to worry, though. If the pitching side of the ledger was the Harrell show, the hitting was the Markakis show. Here he is, again, against then-closer Hector Rondon, the first at-bat after the Braves lost the lead he had given them:
This game was Markakis’ first multihomer game since 2008, and one of only three in his career, his only one as a Brave. Weirdly enough for a guy who has had only three such games, ever, one of them was a three-homer game back in 2006.
That wasn’t the only drama in the ninth, either. After Adonis Garcia struck out, Francoeur and Contreras exchanged words at the plate, causing the benches to clear. Rondon also ended up walking Francoeur, the last two-walk game of the latter’s career. Actually, let’s take a moment here: in 2013 and 2014, Francoeur never had a two-walk game across 91 chances. In 2015, he had one. In 2016, this was his one. Wild stuff, a two-walk Francoeur game and a two-homer Nick Markakis game, all on the same field. Not that it mattered, though, as Rondon struck out both Tyler Flowers and Inciarte to send the game into walkoff territory for the Cubbies.
At that point, though, the hitting completely ground to a halt, on both sides. Johnson worked a perfect bottom of the ninth, and new Cubs reliever Spencer Patton did the same in the top of the 10th. For the bottom of the 10th, the Braves gave the ball to Dario Alvarez, a guy fairly similar to Harrell in that he was plucked by the Braves midseason (off waivers, from the Mets, in May) and then shoved to Gwinnett with worse options on the major league roster, before the Braves finally promoted him. Alvarez ended up having a really cool inning, striking out the side, including Rizzo and Zobrist.
In the top of the 11th, the Braves got to Patton, who was a fairly weak relief option for the Cubs. Freeman started the inning with a walk, but for once, Markakis couldn’t come through, striking out on a fastball way off the plate. Adonis Garcia reached on an infield “single” (seriously the scorer in this one was not doing a good job) that was really just a routine bouncer that Baez somehow spiked in the dirt nowhere near the first base bag. After an out by Francoeur, Flowers gave the Braves a renewed lead:
Oh, but the excitement wasn’t done yet. It was time for yet another Brave to make an outsize impact in this game. Alvarez stayed in to hopefully close out the victory, but a single up the middle by Contreras and then another through the right side by Jason Heyward sent him packing. To face the righty-swinging Addison Russell, the Braves went to very hard thrower Mauricio Cabrera, making just his sixth major league appearance. The early returns on Cabrera were baffling — he easily hit 100 on the radar gun, but had only one strikeout across 18 batters so far. This time, the lack of a strikeout helped, as Russell did this on on 100 mph more or less down the middle:
As you can see in the video above, after that, with the tying run on third, Cabrera got Jeimer Candelario to pop up a 92 mph “changeup” to end the game.
Game MVP: The scorer that gave Contreras a triple on his go-ahead hit. I still can’t get over it.
Game LVP: Addison Russell. In addition to all of his other life problems, Russell went 0-for-4 with a walk and the brutal double play off Cabrera in this game. 2016 was actually Russell’s career year, in which he combined his once-phenomenal defense with a livable 95 wRC+ en route to 3.3 fWAR, but injuries and being-a-scumbag intervened thereafter.
Biggest play: Some combination of the Contreras go-ahead hit and Inciarte botching it. It was just so strange. It was such a strange occurrence in a strange game.
The game, in context of the season: Hilariously, because of the rainout and the rescheduling, this game technically gave the Braves a series win over the Cubs. It was their fourth series win all season, and their first against a non-NL East opponent. They’d finish the season with 15 series wins, playing much better post-All Star Break (37-35) to end with 68 wins (still last place, but only fifth-worst in MLB) overall. The Cubs, well, they had a crappy, 12-14July, and this game didn’t help. It didn’t matter, though, as no one was ever even close to challenging them for the lead in the Central, and we all know what happened by the end of the season.
Lucas Harrell never quite lived up to this high again, though he did have an eight-strikeout game and a six innings, zero runs game later in the year. He got knocked around a bit in his next two starts, but that six-inning shutting out of the Twins came after. He didn’t get another chance in Atlanta, as he was packaged with Dario Alvarez (0.2 fWAR in just 15 innings with the Braves) in exchange for Rangers prospect Travis Demeritte. Post-trade, Harrell ended up having three weak starts, while Alvarez completely imploded. It ended up being a small robbery, fueled by the smallest of samples.
Cabrera was somehow okay as a Brave (0.7 fWAR), driven almost entirely by the fact that he made 41 appearances without allowing a homer. His control completely fell apart before the 2017 season though, and he hasn’t appeared in another game at the major league level since the conclusion of the 2016 season.
Nick Markakis, who recently declined to play in the shortened 2020 campaign, finished 2016 with 13 homers, 1.2 fWAR, and a 98 wRC+. His 0.400 WPA in this game was his highest as a Brave to this point, though he’d have greater totals later in his Braves tenure.
Hammel finished 2016 with a disappointing 1.3 fWAR in 167 innings. He bounced back in 2017 (with the Royals) but then lost his rotation spot partway through 2018 and didn’t make it back to the majors in 2019.
Video?
Condensed game:
Recap:
Highlights page: click here
Anything else? The start of this game was delayed by another 90 minutes or so, making it a double-whammy of a postponement and then a delay of the rescheduled game.
After this outing, Alvarez had struck out 22 of the 40 batters he faced on the season.
The Braves went hitless between Francoeur’s double to lead off the second, and Markakis’ game-tying homer in the ninth.
Baseball is dead to me, tell me something else cool about July 7: On this date in 1981, Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O’Connor to be the first female member of the U.S. Supreme Court.