The Braves had one job in Game 2: let the bullpen be the thing that holds. Instead, the one unit Atlanta has trusted all season cracked at exactly the wrong time.
The collapse started in the eighth inning with a 3-1 lead in hand. Walt Weiss went to Dylan Lee, and on paper it made sense with Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper due up.
The matchup turned into a disaster fast. Schwarber and Harper each launched a home run off Lee to erase the lead and drag the game into a new fight.
That wasn’t the end of Atlanta’s problems. Didier Fuentes came on to try to finish the ninth and helped push the game to extras. He stayed in for the 10th, got the first two outs, and then Alec Bohm sent an opposite-field homer just over the wall for the go-ahead run and the eventual winner.
The Braves bullpen, usually the club’s stabilizing force, blew the one game it could not afford to lose.
Lee’s outing was ugly because the pitches were ugly. The two homers he allowed came on bad mistakes, and he has looked shaky almost every time he’s taken the mound. Fuentes got a little unlucky on Bohm’s ball, which didn’t even come off the bat at 100 MPH EV, but he also didn’t look sharp in Game 1 and appeared rattled after the homer.
Atlanta still has a chance to salvage the series. The Braves can win Game 3 and move on, though Cristopher Sanchez was always going to make that a difficult ask.
But this one should never have reached extras, and the offense deserves plenty of blame for that. Atlanta had chances to put the game away earlier and didn’t.
Now the Braves are left with less margin for error, one less day of rest at best, and a bullpen that suddenly looks hard to trust. Weiss has also gone through two straight high-leverage games without turning to Robert Suarez, which says something too.
Even if Atlanta gets through the Phillies, the bigger question hangs over everything: can these relievers really hold up against the Dodgers if the matchup gets that far? Right now, that answer feels very much in doubt.
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