CHICAGO - The Braves made a small move with Ozzie Albies on Tuesday, and it paid off in a big way.
After 151 games of keeping Albies near the middle of the order, manager Walt Weiss dropped him to eighth for the first time this season, hoping a different spot might ease some of the pressure on a player who had been slumping. By the end of the night, the change looked sharp.
In the seventh inning, Albies turned on an 85.1 mph changeup from Cubs reliever Jacob Webb and drove it 396 feet to right-center for a two-run homer that put Atlanta ahead in a 6-3 win. Two innings later, he added a single and came around to score on Drake Baldwin’s 24th homer of the season.
It was just one game, but for a Braves team trying to move closer to clinching a postseason berth, it was exactly the kind of night they needed from Albies. He entered Tuesday hitting 7-for-53 over his previous 14 games, and the swing that has defined so much of his nine-plus years in Atlanta showed up again when it mattered.
“He was an All-Star this year, so we all know what type of player he is,” Baldwin said. “Him doing what he did today was huge and definitely changed the momentum there and got us back in that game.
It’s fun to see. He’s the same guy every day, so we’re all rooting for him.”
Wrigley Field has been a comfortable place for Albies throughout his career, and Tuesday only added to that track record. After his two-hit night, he is batting .376 with eight home runs, 19 runs and 19 RBIs at the ballpark.
Among hitters with at least 100 plate appearances there, that batting average ranks second in Wrigley history, behind Eddie Murray. Against the Cubs overall, Albies owns a career .358/.410/.642 line.
There’s a chance Chicago could be waiting for Atlanta in October, but the Braves don’t need the matchup to understand what they’ll require from Albies if they want a long run. The version that showed up Tuesday is the one that changes games.
“Hopefully this is the night that (I) keep it going all the way,” Albies said. “So it definitely felt great.”
That kind of response fits the arc of Albies’ career. He has spent years proving people wrong, including the doubts about whether his smaller frame could limit him. Atlanta never bought into that concern, and the organization invested in him until he became the 15th player born in Curaçao to debut in the majors.
Tuesday also showed how dangerous the Braves can be when more than one of their core hitters gets rolling at once. Ronald Acuña Jr., Albies’ close friend, also went deep with a two-run homer, his 18th of the season. For a night, it felt a little like the old days, when the two of them were bursting onto the scene in 2018 and 2019 and often homering in the same game before they had a World Series title to their names.
That’s the version of Atlanta Weiss knows is in there.
“(Albies) has obviously been really impactful for us for several years now,” Weiss said. “And we got several of those guys that when they get going and swing the bat, we’ve seen our offense be the best in the game, and we’ve seen it struggle. But we know it’s in there because we did it for a couple of months (when) we were one of the best offenses in the game.”
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