Monday night left the Braves with plenty of blame to spread around, but Walt Weiss drew his share because the game slipped away in spots where a manager can still steer the wheel.
Atlanta’s extra-inning loss to the Mets was messy from the jump. Raisel Iglesias made a disastrous pitch choice against Juan Soto.
Owen Murphy, making his major league debut, hung a curveball just as he seemed close to escaping trouble. And the offense did its part to waste chances, finishing 4-for-18 with runners in scoring position while Joey Bart and Austin Riley both came up short in key spots.
The Braves scored six runs and still walked away with a loss they should have had in hand.
Even with all that, Weiss had chances to keep the night from turning ugly.
The biggest one came in the ninth, when Iglesias clearly didn’t have his best stuff and Soto was looming. Weiss needed to make the call early to avoid letting Iglesias pitch to him, whether that meant an intentional walk or a hard stop on anything in the strike zone.
By the time the count reached 3-1, the situation had already tilted too far. Weiss may not have liked the idea of adding baserunners, but the alternative was exactly what happened: Soto getting a pitch he could hammer.
The Mets’ last-out blast only made the rest of the decisions look worse. Turning to Murphy for his debut in extras was a tough spot to put a young arm in, even if he mostly handled himself well.
Nobody is pinning the go-ahead runs on him forever, but debuts are supposed to be set up for success, and this one wasn’t. Weiss also managed the lineup so tightly that Atlanta ran out of flexibility once the game moved deeper into extras, leaving the Braves with a less-than-ideal setup simply because there was nobody left to use.
To be fair, the Braves had plenty of chances to erase all of it. Any number of players could have delivered and changed the story.
And Weiss didn’t exactly have a loaded deck to work with, especially with the outfield and bullpen limitations on this roster. Still, there were moments when the right move was there to be made, and he missed them.
On a night like this, that mattered.
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Braves Quietly Got Back A Bullpen Arm They May Desperately Need
For most of the season, Atlantas bullpen has looked like one of the clubs quiet advantages, but the last stretch has brought a little more unease. Raisel Iglesias has blown a save, Dylan Lee has had shaky outings and Didier Fuentes is nearing the break, which has made the relief picture feel less settled than it did a few weeks ago.
Into that mix comes Danny Young, the left-hander the Braves have quietly gotten back after his injury layoff. His early work this season has been encouraging enough to give Atlanta another option for mid-to-high-leverage spots against left-handed hitters, and perhaps a way to ease the load on some of the other arms that have been asked to carry more lately. The bigger question is how quickly the Braves lean into that role, and whether Young can turn a useful return into something more than just a temporary fix. [Read more 🡒]
Braves Cant Afford Another Quiet Deadline From Alex Anthopoulos
With the trade deadline approaching, the Braves look like a club that cannot simply sit back and hope the rotation and outfield sort themselves out. ESPNs latest best-fit rundown had Atlanta attached to 17 of the top 25 deadline candidates, which is a pretty clear sign that the market sees a team with real needs and a front office that should be active. Starting pitching remains the obvious priority, and the list of names floating around ranges from Tarik Skubal and Joe Ryan to Sonny Gray, Reid Detmers, Casey Mize, Jose Soriano and Freddy Peralta.
The outfield search is a little murkier, with Taylor Ward looking like the most realistic target if Atlanta wants to add a bat without emptying the system. Shortstop is another area worth watching, but the price tag on the top names would be steep enough to make any deal complicated fast. For Alex Anthopoulos, the pressure is less about making a splash than avoiding another deadline that leaves the roster looking almost exactly the same when the dust settles. [Read more 🡒]