The Atlanta Braves took down the Arizona Diamondbacks 2-0 in Phoenix\u2019s Chase Field on Friday night.<\/p>\n
Here is Today\u2019s Three Things from the contest.<\/p>\n
The only option here is to go with the top of the ninth. In a scoreless game, Arizona inserted closer Paul Sewald<\/a>, hoping to get through one last half-inning and then walk it off in the home half of the 9th. <\/p>\n That didn\u2019t happen. <\/p>\n Sewald gave up two solo home runs, the first on a belt-high fastball on the inner third to Ozzie Albies<\/a> and the second on an absolutely grooved middle-middle heater at 90.5 mph to Matt Olson<\/a>. Sewald stayed in the game long enough to pick up two outs before being finally lifted after 16 pitches, four batters, and one loss. <\/p>\n Fun fact, courtesy of<\/a> Braves analyst CJ Nitkowski: After tonight\u2019s game, Sewald has pitched 28.2 career innings against Atlanta and allowed 23 total runs and 10 homers. Not great! <\/p>\n With all due respect to Ozzie Albies, who had three of Atlanta\u2019s six hits, Grant Holmes<\/a> gets this one. <\/p>\n Grant carried a no-hitter into the sixth inning, ultimately surrendering a one-hit single to second baseman Ketel Marte<\/a> to save Kent Mercker<\/a> for at least one more night. Holmes finished six full innings with just the one hit and three walks allowed, striking out four. He finished with 14 whiffs and a 36% CSW, showing that he was not only able to minimize hard contact (only six hard-hit balls, one of which fell for a hit) but also miss plenty of bats. <\/p>\n Holmes wouldn\u2019t have finished the no-hitter, as his velocity was starting to drop in the 6th inning from his early-game average of 96 to more of the 93-94 range. <\/p>\n How soon before there are more tweaks to the lineup? <\/p>\n We saw Walt Weiss<\/a> show some impatience with his lineup tonight, pinch-hitting for catcher Jonah Heim<\/a> in the top of the 8th (and sacrificing his DH in the process). He\u2019s seemingly had a quicker hook recently with some of the platoon bats, pulling Eli White<\/a> in Monday\u2019s fifth inning for a pinch-hitter. <\/p>\n I\u2019m asking in the context of Austin Riley<\/a>. The third baseman was not only hitless with a strikeout in this one, but he also twice grounded out with runners in scoring position. While I don\u2019t expect the Braves to completely remove him from the lineup, I do wonder how long he\u2019ll be in the #4 (vs RHP) or #5 spot (vs LHP) like he was tonight. <\/p>\n Here\u2019s tonight\u2019s Postcast, where I went live over on Locked On Sports Atlanta to break down the win. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n Tomorrow\u2019s a fun one: Bryce Elder<\/a> vs Michael Soroka<\/a>. The broadcast is a national game on Fox, although with Brandon Gaudin doing the play-by-play, and the first pitch is scheduled for 7:15 PM ET. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Atlanta Braves took down the Arizona Diamondbacks 2-0 in Phoenix\u2019s Chase Field on Friday night. Here is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":662319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2394],"tags":[191,46,4166,5,192,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-662318","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-atlanta-braves","8":"tag-atlanta","9":"tag-atlanta-braves","10":"tag-atlantabraves","11":"tag-baseball","12":"tag-braves","13":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116344904058756202","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/662319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}