The Atlanta Braves took down the Miami Marlins 6-3 to win the series on Wednesday night in Truist Park.<\/p>\n
Here is Today\u2019s Three Things from the contest.<\/p>\n
Top of the 6th inning. <\/p>\n
Bryce Elder<\/a> came into the inning red hot – he had allowed just three hits and no runs to that point of the game, with the Braves leading 2-0. But Otto Lopez<\/a> got a line drive single to center on an elevated slider to open the inning, and Elder had traffic to work through. <\/p>\n He responded by doing what he does best: getting groundballs. <\/p>\n Elder erased Lopez by getting catcher Liam Hicks<\/a> to beat a slider into the ground for a force out at second base. He then erased Hicks with a sinker that righty Connor Norby<\/a> pulled to third base, with Austin Riley<\/a> throwing to second to get the lead runner. But with slugger Owen Caissie<\/a> coming up, Walt Weiss<\/a> didn\u2019t want to risk it. He came out and got Elder, explaining after the game<\/a> that he would have let Elder work out of the jam if not for the game situation. \u201cI just felt like, if it wasn\u2019t the tying run (at the plate), I wouldn\u2019t have done it. Caissie\u2019s a dangerous hitter.\u201d <\/p>\n To Weiss\u2019 point, in the previous at-bat by Caissie, he hit a 109.1 mph rocket to right-center that tied up Michael Harris II<\/a> for a moment before he made the catch. <\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t just the threat of Caissie in that spot that made Weiss pull Elder, however. He admitted that going to Lee at that exact time was also a bit of gamesmanship on his part, as well, trying to cement an advantage for his team in the late innings. \u201cAlso, I figured they\u2019d pinch hit there, and then you\u2019d get a right-handed run for the back of our bullpen.\u201d <\/p>\n Weiss was right. Austin Slater<\/a> came in to pinch-hit for Caissie and that same string of hitters came to bat in the 8th inning, although Osvaldo Bido<\/a> couldn\u2019t take advantage of the right-on-right matchup. <\/p>\n Back to the 6th, though: Lee walked Slater, although he then froze Heriberto Hern\u00e1ndez<\/a> with an elevated slider – I don\u2019t think that was the target, but the miss worked in his favor because Hern\u00e1ndez clearly was looking down in the zone – to get out of the jam and preserve Elder\u2019s line. <\/p>\n Bryce Elder.<\/p>\n Elder was one out shy of a quality start, allowing no runs and only four hits across 5.2 innings, striking out seven with two walks. The slider was the star of tonight\u2019s show, with Elder picking up nine whiffs on it plus four additional called strikes. Across seventeen swings on the slider, just six were put into play, and only two were hard-hit – the only hard-hit balls allowed by the sinkerballer in the entire outing. <\/p>\n Elder was manipulating the velocity a bit on the slider tonight, picking up some horizontal sweep at times in exchange for a few ticks of velocity. Here\u2019s his standard slider, thrown to Heriberto Hern\u00e1ndez at 84.5 mph but with the standard gyroslider vertical break.<\/p>\n And here\u2019s the other, laterally-moving version he broke out at times, punching out Otto Lopez at 83 mph. <\/p>\n Filthy. <\/p>\n I\u2019d argue that this was one of the best versions of Elder that we\u2019ve seen in Atlanta. While we\u2019re in no way saying he is now a mid-rotation starter, it\u2019s clear that he\u2019s a different pitcher since both his biomechanical work over the offseason and his time spent with Greg Maddux<\/a>. <\/p>\n Atlanta\u2019s offense. <\/p>\n Eight of Atlanta\u2019s nine starters had hits tonight as part of an 11-hit effort. Michael Harris II, the lone starter to not record an official hit, still reached via force out and stole a base, although Atlanta wasn\u2019t able to bring him around to score.<\/p>\n Three Braves had home runs tonight, with Ozzie Albies<\/a> (4) taking Marlins starter Chris Paddack<\/a> deep and both Matt Olson<\/a> (5) and Austin Riley (his first!) doing it off of the Miami bullpen. Those insurance runs were crucial, as Miami got three runs in the top of the 8th off of longman Osvaldo Bido to force a save situation and Atlanta\u2019s use of the high-leverage relievers. <\/p>\n Amazingly, not only did every Braves starter have a hard-hit ball (95 mph or harder) tonight, all but two of them had multiple hard-hit balls. Atlanta finished with eighteen, including three each by Riley (2-4, HR, 2B) and Olson (1-4, 2R HR). <\/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 heading to Philly tonight for an off day tomorrow before Friday\u2019s opener versus the Phillies. Manager Walt Weiss confirmed after the game that Atlanta\u2019s starter for game one will be Mart\u00edn P\u00e9rez<\/a> (0-1, 3.14), who is set to take on Taijuan Walker<\/a> (1-2, 7.36) at 6:40 PM ET. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Atlanta Braves took down the Miami Marlins 6-3 to win the series on Wednesday night in Truist…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":676709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2395],"tags":[5,1816,778,58,4171,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-676708","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami-marlins","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-marlins","10":"tag-miami","11":"tag-miami-marlins","12":"tag-miamimarlins","13":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116412433526995573","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676708","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=676708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/676709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=676708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=676708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}