d’Arnaud’s dual dingers defeat drag (and Padres) in 6-3 win

On an afternoon like many others during the 2024 season, when the fly balls had just enough ennui to morph into outs rather than homers, Travis d’Arnaud connected for two absolute moonshots, helping the Braves earn a 6-3 victory and take the series against the San Diego Padres.

While the expectation in this one tilted heavily towards the Braves due to a Chris Sale-Randy Vasquez matchup, in reality, Sale ended up being a little worse than the mind-boggling, insane video game numbers he has posted this season. He lasted just five innings and finished with a 4/2 K/BB ratio; three of those strikeouts came in the same inning. Meanwhile, Randy Vasquez was quite good with a 5/1 K/BB ratio of his own. It was a bit of a turnaround from when these two hurlers last squared off in Atlanta in May, where Sale dominated the Padres and Vasquez was kind of meh and gave up a longball. These things, combined with what very much appeared to be the higher-drag baseball, meant that there was not too much offense in the early going.

Ozzie Albies had a one-out double in the first, but Matt Olson struck out to leave him stranded. The Padres then responded with soft contact theatre against Sale: Donovan Solano and Xander Bogaerts each had sub-80 mph liners to score a run, aided by Manny Machado’s much more well-hit single through the infield in between them to put Solano on third with one out. After a comebacker for an out, Austin Riley bailed out Sale with a diving stop and successful throw to first on a 50-50 grounder from Ha-Seong Kim.

After that, there were basically just a bunch of outs, with a streak of 13 straight outs snapped when Sale uncharacteristically issued a two-out walk to Manny Machado, but then got a weak groundout to send the game to the fourth. Part of that streak, though, featured two barreled outs: Orlando Arcia and Jurickson Profar both demolished balls to slightly left of center, but neither got anything for their efforts. The Braves managed to tie it up in the fourth as Albies hit a leadoff barreled single off the wall in the right-field corner, stole second on an Riley strikeout pitch, and scored on Olson’s hard grounder single. Marcell Ozuna, though, hit into an easy double play to cut off any further rally. The bottom of the fourth was when Sale struck out the side, though he also issued a walk in the process. At one point, Sale issued just six walks in nine starts, but he has issued 13 walks in his last six outings.

Travis d’Arnaud worked a leadoff walk to start the fifth, and then wonder of wonders, caught everyone napping by stealing a base on the next pitch. A groundout moved him to third, and Duvall hit a super-hard liner over the infield to give the Braves a lead. Sale then made the lead stand up, as he allowed a single to Profar but immediately got a double play ball to end his afternoon with five innings complete.

Stephen Kolek relieved Vasquez in the sixth, and ran into trouble: Riley flared a one-out liner for a single, and Ozuna later followed with a mashed single in the gap. That brought up d’Arnaud, and, well, boom.

Pierce Johnson then threw a seven-pitch inning, and the Braves looked like they were on their way to coasting to a series win. But, things got a little more dicey late. First, the Braves didn’t manage to pad their lead against Sean Reynolds, a 26-year-old with horrible minor league numbers making their MLB debut, though they did put two on against him. Then, A.J. Minter came on for the bottom of the seventh, and his HR/FB issues continued: after a leadoff single by Kim and two outs, pinch-hitter Luis Campusano jumped on an up-and-away fastball from Minter and killed it into right field for a two-run homer. Minter now has a 20.7 percent HR/FB this year, when the balls seem to be highly affected by drag, after a seven percent HR/FB rate for his career leading up to 2024. Sometimes, the universe decides to correct itself all in a hurry, I guess. Things only got tighter (and not in the 90s, TOIGHT! way, either) from there, as Minter gave up a hard-hit single and then a four-pitch walk. That was enough to get the Braves to deviate from their pre-ordained pitching plan, as Joe Jimenez came on to face Manny Machado. Machado hit a flare that usually goes for a hit, but I guess Eddie Rosario was playing in or something, because the soft liner ended up nestling in Rosario’s glove rather than creating yet another headache for Atlanta.

Jeremiah Estrada quickly dispatched Olson and Ozuna via the punchout to start the eighth, but then d’Arnaud victimized him as well, for his second dinger of the day:

Then, things got a little silly. Jimenez stayed in for the bottom of the eighth, and had a seven-pitch inning that featured a leadoff single and three very deep flyouts, including a barreled out that would’ve tied the game had it sailed over the fence. That barreled out came on an 0-2 fastball basically down the middle; the next deep fly was on an 0-1 hanging slider, and the last one was on a first-pitch get-me-over fastball. Thanks, draggy ball. May we never see you again this season, now that Jimenez survived that eighth.

The Braves did nothing against Yuki Matsui in the ninth, but that was just fine, as Raisel Iglesias threw a perfect bottom of the inning to seal the victory. In pretty crazy fashion, the last two outs against Iglesias each came on balls with a hit probability over 90 percent, but again, the Braves were apparently playing in enough in the outfield to cut these balls down. If deliberate, great job, whoever does the positioning for the Braves. If accidental, well, better to be lucky than good.

In any case, the Braves take the series from the Padres and head into the All-Star Break with a 53-42 record, eighth-best in MLB. That seems about right for a strong-rostered team with so many injuries that’s also been incredibly unfortunate on the batted ball and sequencing side of things, but there’s hope that those things improve for the remainder of the season, because having the worst xwOBA underperformance in baseball by a mile since the start of May is rough. On the plus side, a bunch of relevant teams lost today, so the Braves increased their lead over the Cardinals, Padres, and others in the Wild Card standings with the victory.