CINCINNATI – When Orlando Arcia grounded into a game-ending double play, the Great American Ball Park crowd erupted. The stadium felt like it shook.
Their Reds, after all, snapped Atlanta’s eight-game winning streak while stretching their own to 12 games.
The Braves lost, 11-10, on Friday in a meeting of the clubs with the longest active winning streaks in baseball.
And then there was one.
Five observations:
1. “Elly! Elly! Elly!”
The chants rained down after Elly De La Cruz – baseball’s newest sensation – tripled to complete the first Reds cycle since Eric Davis in 1989. And later on, when the game ended, fans spilled into the concourse and continued hollering.
This did not feel like a game in June. Not to these people, who were starved for a baseball team with signs of life at this point in the season.
And the game itself between two of the hottest teams in the sport?
It lived up to the hype.
“Wow,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said. “Kind of an exciting game. Both teams were banging the ball all over the place. I don’t ever come in here feeling like any lead is safe, and when we were down, I kind of still had a good feeling that with a couple of bats left that, even down four, that we had a chance. … (The Reds are) hot. Things are going good for them. They’re playing extremely well.”
The Braves led by five after a five-run first inning. They saw the lead evaporate in the coming innings, then found themselves trailing by four runs.
As they always do, they gave themselves a chance.
“I feel like we always have the confidence that we’re going to win the game until the game’s over,” Ronald Acuña Jr. said through interpreter Franco García. “We never hang our heads, we never get down on ourselves. We just keep competing. We played a good game, they played a good game. They just happened to win tonight.”
2. “He just has everything.”
Usually, someone says this about Acuña. This time, Acuña said it about De La Cruz, the 21-year-old who hit for the cycle in just his 15th game in the majors.
“Incredible. Tremendous ballplayer,” Acuña said. “I feel like I was lucky enough to see him kind of work his way up. He was a star even when he was playing in the Dominican Winter League. Just absolutely incredible.”
De La Cruz smoked a double off AJ Smith-Shawver in the second inning. In the third, he homered off Smith-Shawver. In the fifth, he singled off Collin McHugh. In the sixth, he tripled off Ben Heller.
Overall, De La Cruz drove in four runs and scored three.
“The kid’s an unbelievable talent,” Snitker said. “Holy cow.”
How rare is a talent like that?
“It’s rare enough that you haven’t seen that, other than Ronald, for a while,” Snitker said. “Just that total package like that.”
3. With the Braves trailing by four runs, Acuña homered in the eighth inning. Then Austin Riley and Matt Olson eventually went back to back with two outs.
Suddenly, the Braves were only down a run.
“We’ve been in that spot before and put up big innings,” Olson said. “Especially here, you feel like you’re in every game. We were able to put a few together and just came up one run short.”
In the ninth inning, Reds closer Alexis Diaz closed out the Braves.
“They may be one of the best couple of teams in the sport,” the Reds’ Joey Votto said of the Braves. “They put that pressure late on us. You could sense that they don’t really care. They’re not impressed and they’re going to keep coming.”
4. Sept. 6, 2021.
That was the only other time Smith-Shawver has allowed five earned runs in an outing in his professional career. Back then, he was in the Florida Complex League.
On Friday, he faced one of the hottest teams in the sport, in a hitter-friendly ballpark.
He surrendered five runs on four hits – three of them homers. He recorded only 10 outs.
“Just some bad counts, some tough misses,” Snitker said. “Just kind of never got into a flow right there with anything. You know what, he’s a young kid. It’s gonna happen. I told him: Every time you go out there, you learn something different. It just didn’t happen for him today.”
5. The Braves scored their 10 runs on 16 hits. All nine starters had at least one hit. Olson homered twice.
Atlanta played well enough to win – offensively.
Snitker went to his bullpen in the fourth, but the Braves couldn’t hold down the Reds. McHugh allowed four runs over an inning, then Heller surrendered two over an inning.
Stat to know
7 - Friday’s game marked only the seventh contest in MLB history to feature two clubs with winning streaks of at least eight games, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
Quotable
“As we kind of started our march toward where we’ve been, with our guys that we developed and bringing our young guys up, it’s very similar. This is a talented group that they’ve brought up there.” - Snitker on how the Reds’ current youth movement is similar to the 2018 Braves.
Up next
Left-hander Jared Shuster will start Saturday’s game for the Braves. First pitch is at 4:10 p.m.
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