Resilient Braves make history in win over Diamondbacks

No way there would be a fourth, right?

But it happened: Iglesias threw a four-seam fastball over the plate on the sixth pitch of the at-bat, and Suárez hammered it to left field for his fourth home run of the game. All of them landed in similar spots.

The fourth tied the score 7-7.

The final score: 8-7 Braves, in 10 innings.

“Exhausting,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said.

“Exciting,” Matt Olson said.

“I’m gonna go rub on Suárez, tomorrow,” Austin Riley joked. “I mean, that’s impressive. I feel like most of the time when a guy hits four homers, the opposing team, most of the time you’re probably not winning that game.”

For the first time in franchise history, the Braves won a game in which an opponent hit four home runs. And for only the second time in modern-era history (since 1901), a team won when an opposing player hit four home runs. (The other time: July 6, 1986, when Montreal defeated the Braves despite Bob Horner mashing four homers).

“Yeah, we were wondering if it had happened at all,” Olson said. “Obviously we want to come out on the winning side. He had a hell of a day at the plate, but putting one in the win column is more important.”

Before Saturday, two Braves opponents — Gil Hodges in 1950 and Willie Mays in 1961 — had hit four home runs in a game. But the Braves had lost both of those games. In fact, before Saturday, they had not even won a game in which an opposing player homered three times since 1987, when they defeated Montreal despite Tim Wallach blasting three homers.

In the eighth inning, the Braves scored three two-out runs to stun the Diamondbacks, whose bullpen has let them down often lately. Ozzie Albies hit a run-scoring single before Michael Harris II lined a two-run double to center that gave the Braves a one-run lead. After Suárez tied the score in the ninth, Olson scampered home on a wild pitch in the 10th to give the Braves a lead that Dylan Lee preserved with a scoreless bottom half.

This was one of those potential season-defining wins — the ones you remember months down the road. It was exciting and exhilarating. And perhaps most important, it continued the Braves’ upward trend as the team continues to prove its recent offensive success is no fluke. This was a game the Braves were losing earlier in the season.

But they won it.

“That’s what it’s all about up here,” said Holmes, who gave up three of Suárez’s four homers. “Didn’t have the greatest outing, but we came back and put some runs on the board and we got the W. That’s really all that matters when you’re up here.”

The Braves’ comeback gave them a third consecutive series win and an opportunity to sweep with a victory Sunday, when Spencer Schwellenbach will toe the rubber. The Braves, now 12-14, have won seven of their past eight games. On Saturday, they once again looked more like themselves.

Before Saturday’s game at Chase Field, Holmes had allowed only two home runs over 401 pitches across five starts. In this loss, he served up three home runs in eight pitches to Suárez.

“I felt like my stuff was good enough to get him out, but I feel like those hitters every now and again have those kinds of nights where they hit everything, whether you make your pitch or not,” Holmes said. “They’re just on a different planet.

When Suárez went up to the plate for the third time, Holmes sat at 92 pitches. Snitker decided to stick with him. You now know how that decision played out.

But incredibly, the Braves won despite the 17th four-homer game in modern-era history — the first since Sept. 4, 2017, when J.D. Martinez did it for Arizona. Braves hitters have two of those four-homer games: Joe Adcock in 1954 and Horner in 1986.

Before Saturday, there had only been 27 instances of a Braves opponent hitting at least three home runs in a game — achieved by 23 different players. The Braves had won in only eight of those 27 games, but neither of the two games in which an opposing player hit four home runs.

So Saturday was a first for the Braves, and a second for baseball.

“That was really fun,” Harris said.

After falling behind by four runs, the Braves stormed back. In the seventh inning, Eli White, using the torpedo bat that’s currently all the rage, blasted a two-run homer to continue his wonderful week. In the eighth, Olson and Sean Murphy drew back-to-back two-out walks against lefty Jalen Beeks to set up Albies (a run-scoring single) and Harris (a two-run double).

Until these moments, the Diamondbacks had control for a few innings. On the back of Suárez, they were four outs from evening this series.

In the second inning, Suárez ambushed a first-pitch fastball at the bottom of the zone for his first home run off Holmes. It came with two outs, and it brought Arizona within a run. In the fourth inning, Holmes threw Suárez a full-count fastball at the top of the zone — the sixth pitch of the at-bat — and Suárez hammered it 411 feet for a two-run shot. It pushed Arizona’s lead to three runs.

Then came the sixth inning, when Snitker left Holmes in the game to face Suárez a third time. It backfired as Suárez deposited yet another baseball into the seats.

“The scouting report was heaters up,” Holmes said. “The first one, I was just trying to obviously throw a first-pitch strike and he got a hold of that one. The next one, I went up and he got that one. The last at-bat, I was just trying to get ahead of him with a slider and he got that one too.”

Holmes’ teammates had his back, though. Multiple times over the last week, the Braves have shown an ability to score — and score a lot — late in games. This is a dynamic they’ve featured in previous seasons, but one that hadn’t shown up much before their last homestand.

Now, they’re doing it with regularity.

“I think it’s good,” Olson said. “I think it’s a good confidence boost to know we’ve put up some late-inning rallies and feel like we’re in every game. Regardless of the score, even if you’re not getting to the starter, you’ve got that ability to come back and stick with it. So, we’re going to keep riding that.”

“Yeah, it’s big I think, for your psyche and your confidence as a club,” Snitker said. “As a collective whole, you get down a little bit, you just kind of think, ‘Well, we just gotta stay after it and maybe something good might happen.’ And it has lately. We just kind of keep riding that crest. Because it’s good. I think the guys are in a good place right now.”

In the bottom of the ninth, Suárez walked up to the plate for his fourth at-bat. The previous three were homers. This time, he saw Iglesias staring back at him.

Pitch around Suárez?

No, the Braves couldn’t do that. They had a one-run lead.

“I’m not gonna put him on and put the tying run on. Because that’s all he could do, was tie the game — and he did. If we would’ve put him on and the next guy would’ve homered, then the game would’ve been over,” Snitker said. “Hats off to him for hitting four homers. I don’t know that there was any situation that we couldn’t have went after him and tried to get him out.

“We couldn’t get him out, and thank God we won the game in spite of that great night that he had.”