CINCINNATI – The Braves raced out to an early lead, then held it for two-thirds of this game. They seemed on their way to a bounce-back victory and a positive start to this road trip.
And then, they melted down. They misplayed a couple balls. One of their best relievers gave up a home run. The offense stopped scoring.
The Braves saw a four-run lead turn into a 6-5 loss to the Reds on Tuesday at Great American Ball Park. They’ve lost all four games with the Reds thus far.
The losses all sting at this time of year, but this one came with added consequences that made it more crushing: The Braves fell to two games behind the Mets and Arizona for the National League’s third and final wild-card spot.
“You just can’t think about it,” reliever Pierce Johnson said about being two games behind New York and Arizona. “You just gotta come in and do your work every day. That’s something we can’t control. So you just gotta control what you can control, and go out there and play hard every day, and do your best.”
Atlanta has 11 games remaining.
Five observations:
1. To a team in the Braves’ spot, all the losses feel devastating. They are even more debilitating when the context is this:
The Braves led, 3-0, after the top of the first inning and the Reds’ starter departed after 1 1/3 innings due to injury, which forced Cincinnati into a bullpen game. The Braves led, 5-1, after the top of the fourth inning. Grant Holmes preserved the lead by giving up only two runs over four innings, all while throwing 78 pitches – more than the Braves expected. Atlanta eventually had one of its best relievers on the mound in Johnson. The Braves left 14 men on base.
“Well, we kind of shot ourselves in the foot a couple of times,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said. “And this is one of them places, too, man: You’re never safe here. I mean, you gotta keep scoring. But there were just a couple plays that probably could’ve been better executed, I guess.”
Before the Reds scored twice in the sixth inning, Gio Urshela dropped a soft liner with two outs that allowed the inning to keep going. And in that sixth inning, Michael Harris II committed an error when trying to cut off a ball from rolling into a gap, which allowed a second run to score on a double. In the seventh, Johnson served up a go-ahead homer.
But the Braves’ offense had chances. This could’ve been a different result. This team, though, hasn’t played good baseball consistently all season.
With the way this offense is performing, the pitching has no margin for error.
“You don’t,” Snitker said. “When we’re not scoring a lot, they don’t. In the past, we’d just outslug everything that we would do. But we’re different right now. … Pierce gave up the two runs, but when you look back on it, that shouldn’t have been the difference-maker.”
Let’s go through all this.
2. Jesse Chavez would’ve made it through two scoreless innings had Urshela or Orlando Arcia caught a soft liner toward short. It would’ve almost certainly been an out if the Braves were aligned normally. But they were shifted.
Arcia was behind, and to the left of, second base. Urshela was shifted to the left. Both men converged on the ball. Urshela took charge but it went off his glove.
“Yeah, I thought that I was close,” Urshela said. “I was just trying to get the ball.”
Did Arcia’s presence distract him?
“No, no,” Urshela said. “I should’ve got it.”
The Reds scored two runs in this inning.
3. In the seventh inning, Johnson saw a curveball – his best pitch – land in the seats for a two-run shot that gave Cincinnati the lead. The pitch was low and away, but in the zone.
“I mean, look, I’m trying to put it down and away and off the plate. It was a little on the plate,” Johnson said. “I still thought it was a decent pitch, but wrong guy. Really good player. He capitalized on it, and my mistake.”
Spencer Steer hit it out. It meant the Braves needed one run, and had six outs with which to play.
The issue: They missed so many opportunities. They left tons of runs on the board. They stranded the tying run on second base in the ninth when Harris struck out to end the game. They left a man at third in the seventh, and a man on base in the eighth. They could’ve scored more in the first and second innings.
“That situation would already be tough, and then when you wanna be the guy, you kind of add some more pressure to yourself and come up short in those situations,” Harris said. “It’s just kind of taking a load off ourselves and relaxing in those situations.”
4. The Braves had two hits with runners in scoring position in nine opportunities. One was a well-placed infield single that scored a run. The other was Harris’ single to left field that didn’t score Urshela from second base with two outs.
Third base coach Matt Tuiasosopo put up the stop sign for Urshela on a flare into left field. On the broadcast view, it looked like this could’ve brought home Urshela. But subsequent angles showed that Urshela probably wouldn’t have scored. And he never really began sprinting, perhaps because he was held at third. Plus, the left fielder was playing shallow.
“Yeah, I was ready to score on that play, yeah,” Urshela said. “But I think that he was playing shallow and that’s why (Tuiasosopo) stopped me, I guess.”
Asked about the play, Snitker said Urshela’s recent groin tightness didn’t factor into it: “I don’t know that Gio runs well when he’s running well, quite honestly.”
He continued.
“We have a couple guys that probably could score, one of them’s on the IL right now with a bad knee,” Snitker said, referencing Ronald Acuña Jr. “He might be the only guy on our club that scores on that ball, really. I thought (Tuiasosopo) did a great job. … (Urshela) not gonna score on that ever.”
5. Each year, Snitker says there’s a guy who makes an unexpected impact that you couldn’t have predicted in spring training.
Holmes wins that one this season.
“It’s been great,” Snitker said of watching Holmes’ emergence. “And there’s always somebody that stands out when you go north that you’re not expecting. You could probably say he’s been that guy this year. He’s done a great job for us.”
He did it again Tuesday, but the Braves crumbled after he left the game.
Now Atlanta must try to respond – again.
“I mean, I feel like we have no choice but to (do so),” Harris said. “So, we gotta go out there tomorrow and flush this game and move on to the rest of the season.”
Stat to know
33-31 - The Braves are 33-31 against teams with records of .500 and below this season.
Quotable
“Yeah, it’s kind of been uphill all year, honestly. It’s kind of been the next-man-up mentality and everybody’s done a phenomenal job of filling in where they can. I’m proud of guys and how hard they’ve fought, and sometimes the ball just doesn’t go your way. We just gotta forget about tonight and continue tomorrow.” - Johnson on the climb the Braves face
Up next
On Wednesday, Spencer Schwellenbach will try to halt the three-game skid. The Braves will see Reds right-hander Jakob Junis. First pitch is at 6:40 p.m.
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