PHOENIX \u2014 Ozzie Albies and Matt Olson opened the ninth inning of Friday night’s game at Chase Field with back-to-back home runs, sending the Atlanta Braves to a 2-0 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks.<\/p>\n
Atlanta right-hander Grant Holmes held the Diamondbacks to one hit through six innings, matching zeros with Arizona starter Eduardo Rodr\u00edguez.<\/p>\n
Albies and Olson connected off reliever Paul Sewald (0-1), helping the Braves improve to 6-2 a year after opening 0-7. They sit alone atop the National League East, the division they have won a record 18 times, including six straight seasons from 2018-23.<\/p>\n
Atlanta reached the playoffs via a wild card in 2024, then missed out last year after finishing fourth in the division at 76-86. First-year manager Walt Weiss is 2-0 on his first road trip after winning back-to-back three-game series at home.<\/p>\n
The Diamondbacks, who dropped to 3-5, have scored a combined three runs in their past three games.<\/p>\n
Robert Suarez (1-0) pitched a perfect eighth inning for the win, and Raisel Iglesias worked a 1-2-3 ninth for his first save this season.<\/p>\n
Albies, who had three of Atlanta’s six hits, drove an 0-1 pitch from Sewald over the right-field fence for his second homer of the year. Olson sent Sewald’s next delivery to left for his second home run as well, doing so a night after he got his first in Atlanta’s 17-2 rout to open the four-game series.<\/p>\n
In the early innings, both starters were in command. Holmes didn’t give up a hit until Ketel Marte singled on a sharp line drive to left with one out in the sixth. He walked three batters and struck out four.<\/p>\n
In his only two previous starts against the Diamondbacks, both last year, Holmes allowed nine runs in nine innings.<\/p>\n
Rodr\u00edguez tossed seven strong innings of his own, scattering four hits while walking one batter and striking out three. It’s the first time the left-hander has opened a season with consecutive scoreless starts.<\/p>\n
The scheduled starting pitchers for Saturday night’s game are right-handers Bryce Elder (1-0, 0.00 ERA) for Atlanta and Michael Soroka (1-0) for Arizona.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX \u2014 Ozzie Albies and Matt Olson opened the ninth inning of Friday night’s game at Chase Field…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":662366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2404],"tags":[146,22,4314,5,38,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-662365","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arizona-diamondbacks","8":"tag-arizona","9":"tag-arizona-diamondbacks","10":"tag-arizonadiamondbacks","11":"tag-baseball","12":"tag-diamondbacks","13":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116345091349145842","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662365","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=662365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/662366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}