The Atlanta Braves dropped their series opener against the Los Angeles Angels 6-2 in Angels Stadium on Monday night.<\/p>\n
Here is Today\u2019s Three Things from the contest.<\/p>\n
Chris Sale<\/a>\u2019s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad 4th inning. <\/p>\n He started the game off poorly, giving up a leadoff home run to shortstop Zach Neto<\/a>. That seemed to just make him angry, though, as Sale struck out four of the next six batters and retired nine straight Angels. <\/p>\n He hit Jorge Soler<\/a> with a pitch to open the 4th, though, and things spiraled from there. A 66-mph Jo Adell<\/a> single. Back-to-back walks of Jeimer Candelario<\/a> and Logan O\u2019Hoppe. Another hit by pitch, this one of Jo\u00e1n Moncada, that brought in LA\u2019s third run of the inning. A 92 mph infield single by #8 hitter Bryce Teodosio<\/a>. By the time Sale finally got a strikeout to end the frame, he was visibly frustrated. <\/p>\n After his first two pitches of the 5th inning were hit for a single and a home run, Sale was pulled with a final line of 4+ innings pitched with six runs on five hits, two walks, and two HBP. He struck out seven thanks to 12 whiffs and a 32% CSW, but the runs are all he\u2019s going to think about as that fourth inning got away from him. <\/p>\n Drake Baldwin<\/a>, yet again. <\/p>\n The sophomore backstop hit a first-inning homer off of the flamethrowing Jos\u00e9 Soriano<\/a> – fouling off an elevated 98 mph fastball for the 2nd strike of the inning, he read it out of the hand when Soriano went back to that same spot two pitches later and deposited the ball in the right-center field seats. It\u2019s Baldwin\u2019s fifth homer of the season, tying him for the MLB lead with two others (both in the American League).<\/p>\n Baldwin added a line drive single in the 9th, pushing reliever Chase Silseth<\/a> into an eight-pitch at-bat. After Austin Riley<\/a> walked behind him (on a nine-pitch at-bat of his own), pushing Silseth\u2019s pitch count perilously close to 30 in the frame and putting the tying run on-deck, LA was forced to go back to the pen. Closer Jordan Romano<\/a> came in for the final out of the inning, throwing just three pitches, but that\u2019s now his third appearance of the last four days and he might only get up one more time in this series. <\/p>\n Given that I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any long-term concern with Chris Sale, the discussion likely goes back to the offense here. <\/p>\n After Matt Olson<\/a>\u2019s two-out single in the first inning, Jos\u00e9 Soriano buckled down to get out of the inning and then put it into cruise control. He ended up going eight innings, allowing just one more hit and walking no one while striking out ten. At one point, Soriano had retired nineteen consecutive Braves hitters, finally allowing a baserunner on a leadoff single in the 8th inning. <\/p>\n But as good as Soriano was, Atlanta\u2019s offense just felt deflated in the middle innings, like they were going through the motions. That\u2019s not very statistically-backed analysis, but it was another quiet night for the offense that too often failed to push Soriano in any way. He got through the 2nd inning in 9 pitches, the 3rd in just 8, and wasn\u2019t challenged by Braves hitters until the very end of his outing. <\/p>\n It was a frustrating night for both the offense and those of us watching. <\/p>\n Here\u2019s tonight\u2019s Postcast, with me and Locked On Braves host Jake Mastroianni, as we went live to break down the win\/loss. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n The Braves are back to hopefully even up the series. Reynaldo L\u00f3pez<\/a> takes on lefty Yusei Kikuchi<\/a> at 9:38 PM ET. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Atlanta Braves dropped their series opener against the Los Angeles Angels 6-2 in Angels Stadium on Monday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":667746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2394],"tags":[191,46,4166,5,192,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-667745","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\/116361784759028914","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667745","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=667745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/667746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=667745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=667745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=667745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}