Five takeaways from the Braves’ loss to the Red Sox on Wednesday night in Boston:
1. The game was interrupted by an almost three-hour rain delay after the sixth inning with the Red Sox leading 7-4. The seventh inning finally began at 12:01 a.m., and rain was falling steadily again by the eighth inning, when the Red Sox tacked on two runs. The game ended a minute before 1 a.m., the Red Sox a 9-5 winner after Braves catcher William Contreras’ ninth-inning homer.
“It’s part of what we do,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said of the late restart and later finish. “I wanted a crack at it, I know that, with the at-bats that we had left.”
.2. Forty-nine games into the season, the Braves still haven’t had a winning record. They’ve been at .500 on four occasions: 4-4 on April 9, 12-12 on April 28, 17-17 on May 9 and 24-24 after Tuesday’s game. But each time they reached .500, the Braves lost the next game.
They took a 3-0 lead in the second inning Wednesday and led 4-3 entering the bottom of the sixth inning. But the Red Sox scored four timely runs in the sixth for a 7-4 lead, just before rain interrupted play at Fenway Park. Hours later, the loss snapped the Braves’ four-game winning streak, which had matched their longest of the season. They are 24-25, 1-1/2 games behind the first-place Mets in the NL East, heading into a three-game weekend series in New York.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
3. The Braves starting pitchers’ streak of completing at least six innings in eight consecutive games – the longest such streak in the majors this season -- ended when Drew Smyly lasted only 5-1/3 innings. He was charged with seven runs (all earned) on five hits.
“I’m not happy with the results,” Smyly said. “It’s pretty hard to give up five hits and one walk and seven earned runs, but I accomplished that tonight.”
It was only the fifth time in the past 21 games that the Braves didn’t get a quality start, defined as pitching at least six innings while allowing three or fewer earned runs.
4. The Braves’ early 3-0 lead was wiped out by a pair of two-out home runs against Smyly: Hunter Renfroe’s solo shot in the second inning and Rafael Devers’ two-run blast on a 0-2 count in the fourth, both against curveballs. Smyly has allowed a National League-high 13 home runs in 42-1/3 innings this season, but on Wednesday, the only hits he allowed through the first five innings were the homers.
5. After the Red Sox tied the game 3-3, Austin Riley crushed his 10th home run of the season -- his fifth in the past five games and seventh in the past nine -- to put the Braves back on top 4-3 against Red Sox starter Nick Pivetta in the fifth inning. But Smyly, trying to get through the Red Sox batting order for the third time, quickly got into trouble in the sixth and exited the game with one out, two runs in and two runners on base, both of whom scored on a two-out hit against reliever Luke Jackson. A Smyly wild pitch, which Contreras couldn’t handle, helped fuel the rally.
“He gave up, what, two hits (before the sixth),” Snitker said of Smyly. “If I’d known he was going to give up four runs (in the sixth), I probably would have kept him in the dugout, but I don’t have that ability to see that. He was throwing really, really good. ... It was a no-brainer for me (to have him pitch the sixth).”
By the numbers
200: Career extra-base hits by Ozzie Albies, including 25 this season, after his first-inning RBI triple Wednesday. Since his debut in August 2017, he has the seventh-most extra-base hits in the National League.
Quotable
“We’ll just kind of regroup here and see what we’ve got. The off-day (Thursday) will give us a little leeway to figure out what we’re going to do. I’m sure (general manager Alex Anthopoulos) is working on it now.” -- Manager Brian Snitker on how the Braves will adjust their outfield during Marcell Ozuna’s expected six-week absence with two fractured fingers
Next up
The Braves are off Thursday and will open a three-game series against the Mets in New York on Friday. The Braves’ scheduled starting pitchers for that series: Ian Anderson (4-1, 2.82 ERA) on Friday, Max Fried (2-2, 4.63) on Saturday and Charlie Morton (3-2, 3.98) on Sunday.
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