ATLANTA — In the middle of every fifth inning at home, the Braves roll out a promotion in which a fan races “The Freeze,” a sprinter in an ice-blue bodysuit. The fan gets a head start to run around the perimeter of the outfield, but soon enough, the Freeze starts hunting. On Tuesday, a fan in a Ronald Acuña Jr. jersey outran The Freeze for a surprisingly long distance … but eventually face-planted on the warning-track dirt just as The Freeze cruised past him to victory.
As metaphors for the Braves’ 3-1 NLDS Game 3 loss to the Dodgers go, it was pretty on the nose. With everything set up in its favor — a split on the road, ace on the hill, full home stadium on a perfect, 74-degree night — Atlanta slipped just once and was lost.
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Diagnosing what went wrong in this game for the Braves, who now face elimination on Wednesday, isn’t hard. Starter Chris Sale made, by his estimation, two bad pitches, both of which ended up in the Truist Park seats. The Braves’ key hitters weren’t able to match the Dodgers’ fireworks, perpetuating a run of ice-cold hitting that’s now threatening to end their season.
“We’ve just got to get some key hits in key moments and get guys comfortable. It’s as simple as that,” Austin Riley said after the game in a quiet Braves locker room. “We had some opportunities tonight and just didn’t get it done.”
Sale, fresh off a dominant bookend performance in the wild-card series victory over Philadelphia, took the mound on full rest on Tuesday. And while he struck out seven batters over five innings, he had to go deep into the count on virtually every batter.
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“They did a nice job of really grinding the at-bats and passing the baton,” Braves manager Walt Weiss said postgame. “He had to work hard. He had to work hard to get the outs that he got.”
You see that many pitches, and you start to pick out some favorites, and by the fourth inning, the Dodgers did exactly that. Kiké Hernandez rifled a 92-mph inside changeup 406 feet, scoring Andy Pages. Two batters later, Freddie Freeman turned on an inside sinker to put the score at 3-0 — a Dodgers run total that would hold up the rest of the game.
“One bad inning ruined the whole game,” Sale said. “Yanked a changeup to Kiké. We all know what he can do in October when the lights are bright. Actually made a pretty good pitch to Freddie, but he was either looking for it or saw it out of the hand.”
One inning later, with 95 pitches in the books, Sale was cashed. “Getting Chris Sale out of the game after five innings,” Freeman said later, “is a huge win no matter what the score is.”
The Braves probably could’ve weathered a subpar — by Sale’s standards — outing from their ace. But the vibes were off all game for Atlanta, both in the field and in the stands. The fans made the wrong choice in the cap shuffle game. The stadium PA tried to fire up the fans with “make some noise!” blasts, which really shouldn’t be necessary in October. And, of course, there was the guy in the Acuña jersey walking away from his race against The Freeze with nothing but a mouthful of dirt.
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That guy was only mirroring the struggles of the real Acuña, who’s now 3-for-21 — with three singles — in this postseason. In Game 3, he had his moment teed up — the bottom of the fifth, two men on, down 3-1 — but Acuña could only ground out, killing the Braves’ best scoring chance of the night.
An Ozzie Albies double to start the ninth gave the Braves one last chance at late heroics, with the tying run at the plate and no outs. But three batters later, Atlanta was done. And the questions about the Braves’ offensive whimpering only gained strength.
Afterward, Weiss pushed back on the idea that Acuña, Drake Baldwin (3-for-23, six strikeouts this postseason) and Matt Olson (4-for-23, 1 homer, 9 strikeouts) are mired in unbreakable slumps.
“Those guys have been our aircraft carriers all year,” he said. “Every time one of those guys steps in the box, I think something good is going to happen. Those guys, they’re always one at-bat away from changing a game.”
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He’s right. The Dodgers are relentless, yes, but also beatable. Any one of the Braves’ big hitters could have tied this game — or won it — with a single timely swing. The problem is they didn’t, and now there aren’t that many at-bats left for the Braves to salvage their season.
“We’ve had our back against the wall before,” Sale said. “We’re a resilient group. We have confidence in ourselves and each other. So, yeah, we’ll take this one off the chin and show up [Wednesday] ready to win a game.”
Braves fans (and the tight surrounding buildings) can make Truist Park one of the loudest in baseball, but the fans are also a trailing indicator of the team’s performance; they need to see some results before they truly commit to cheering. (One of the loudest spontaneous reactions of the night: the boos for former hometown hero Freddie Freeman. Nothing but love between Freddie and the Atlanta fans, but this is October.)
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With grinding patience, Los Angeles was able to take Sale out of the game and the fight out of the crowd on Tuesday, and neither the Braves nor their fans could get up off the deck. Now everyone in a Braves uniform — both on the field and in the stands — will have one more chance to extend this season, one more chance to avoid an offseason of second-guessing and what-could-have-been.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: Sports.yahoo.com
