Deja vu: The Braves split a doubleheader after outfielder Ronald Acuna’s home run gave them a 1-0 victory in the nightcap.
Just like Sunday’s doubleheader against the Cardinals, the Braves dropped the afternoon game Monday against the Mets and won the second contest. Jacob deGrom was stellar in Game 1, leading to a 4-2 Mets win. In Game 2, Braves starter Ian Anderson logged 5-2/3 scoreless innings and Acuna hit a solo homer to win it.
Ultimately, the Braves ended their day at Citi Field at the same place in the standings: five games behind the first-place Mets.
Game 2 was largely a pitchers’ duel between Anderson and Jerad Eickhoff, the former Phillie who was pitching in his first game since 2019. Anderson, who didn’t log five innings in three of his past four outings, was in control. The Braves righty went 5-1/3 innings, allowing three hits. The final hit was Jonathan Villar’s double, which led Snitker to remove Anderson for southpaw A.J. Minter.
The Mets committed two base-running blunders to end the inning. Minter induced a grounder to short by Francisco Lindor. Pinch-runner Jose Peraza was thrown out at third. During the next at-bat, Lindor was thrown out trying to steal. The Braves escaped unscathed.
And in the seventh, reliever Will Smith pitched around a one-out, bases-loaded situation to record the save. Anderson became the first native New Yorker to defeat the Mets and Yankees on the road in the same season.
“That’s pretty cool,” Anderson said. “It’s always nice coming up here. I usually have some family in the stands and I get a ton of support up here.”
Braves outfielder Ronald Acuna’s 20th homer of the season came in the fifth, when he pounded a Miguel Castro slider over the center-field wall for the first run of the game. After homering to give the Braves a 1-0 win in Game 2 of Sunday’s doubleheader, Acuna did it again Monday. He became the second player in the modern era to homer for the only runs in consecutive 1-0 team wins.
The homer exited at 115.7 mph, making it the third-hardest hit home run of his career, per Statcast. As New Yorkers booed the 23-year-old, he held his hand to his ear and welcomed their dissatisfaction.
“I enjoy it a lot,” Acuna said about the New York crowd (via team interpreter Franco Garcia). “I feel like I’m getting booed every time I go out there and I’m getting booed on the field, so I think to myself, ‘OK, I’m gonna wait until I do something. I’m gonna say something.’ And then as soon as I hit it out, I didn’t hear anything, so it got pretty quiet. So as soon as I started around the bases, I just motioned like this (gesture) because no one was saying anything. It got real quiet after that.”
Acuna’s arm in right field also influenced the game. In the second inning, Mets slugger Pete Alonso tried to go from first base to third base on Dominic Smith’s single. Acuna prompted fielded the ball and fired to third, where Austin Riley tagged Alonso for the inning’s first out. Anderson retired the next two Mets to preserve the shutout.
In Game 1, deGrom allowed one hit while striking out six and walking two. He hasn’t allowed a run in his last 30 innings.
“That’s about as good as I’ve (seen), the last few years even,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said of deGrom’s recent dominance. “He’s on another level.”
Kyle Muller, the Braves’ towering lefty prospect, did about everything the Braves could’ve asked in his first career start, especially against deGrom. The Texas native held the Mets to one run on one hit in four innings. He threw 56 pitches, striking out three and walking two.
It was Muller’s second career appearance – he made his debut as a reliever last week – and he gave the Braves a shot against deGrom. He left the game in just a 1-0 deficit.
“I thought I did a way better job today than the other day at executing pitches with two strikes,” Muller said. “That was huge. I got behind a couple guys but I came back and made some good pitches, so that was also another plus I was proud of. I gave us a chance as long as I was in there.”
Snitker, who said the team entered the game hoping Muller would cover four innings, added: “I thought he did great. He threw the ball extremely well. Had a good breaking ball, kept his composure. Everything was really good.”
The Mets manufactured a run in the first despite not recording a hit. Villar drew a lead-off walk. Lindor surprised with a sacrifice bunt. Smith’s flyout advanced Villar, who scored on a wild pitch.
On the other side, the Braves didn’t have a baserunner until two outs in the third inning, when Muller drew an eight-pitch walk off deGrom. The righty followed by striking out Acuna on five pitches.
The Braves broke through with two outs in the fifth, but an unlucky break went against them to cost them a run. Outfielder Guillermo Heredia drew a four-pitch walk before catcher Kevan Smith hit a ball into the deep outfield.
Smith failed to locate the ball and it landed on the warning track for a base hit. Unfortunately for the Braves, the ball bounced high off the warning track and bounced over the wall for a ground-rule double, forcing Heredia to stop at third instead of scoring the game-tying run. One pitch later, pinch-hitter Pablo Sandoval popped out in the infield to end the inning.
In the next frame, the Braves’ bullpen couldn’t hold the Mets down. Shane Greene struggled in the fifth, hitting Mets catcher Tomas Nido with a pitch and surrendering a pair of singles. He left with the bases loaded and two outs.
Sean Newcomb entered to face Smith, a lefty hitter with reverse splits who was nonetheless 1-for-6 with four strikeouts against Newcomb. Smith ripped a two-out double into right field that cleared the bases. The Mets took a 4-0 lead. It became the third time in five outings that Greene allowed multiple runs.
It also continued Newcomb’s recent struggles. He hasn’t pitched a clean inning since June 1.
“That’s the tough part of all the doubleheaders, I just wanted (Newcomb) to pick an inning off because I wanted the other guys to be available to throw a complete inning,” Snitker said. “It’s like, if you’re behind, you warm somebody up, they get a base hit and it’s a 3-0 game instead of one. There’s a lot of things (at play). And (Newcomb) has good history against Smith. He had two strikes. I felt good with where we were right there.”
Smith’s bases-clearing hit proved enough for New York. Second baseman Ozzie Albies put the Braves on the board with a two-run homer on Seth Lugo, but the offense couldn’t find enough for a rally. The Braves relievers’ inability to hold the game to 1-0 in the fifth was the difference.
History in the first inning: Following a perfect eight-pitch frame – which include five pitches at 100-plus mph – deGrom became the first pitch to be checked for foreign substances under MLB’s new guidelines, which took effect Monday. Muller received the same check after the bottom of the frame.
