Braves’ loss Monday may have been worst of season
This might have been the Braves’ worst loss of the season.
It’s not a drastic call for the club to make roster changes or to summon FEMA. One defeat has to be the worst thus far, and this looked like it, a 7-6 loss to the Mets in 10 innings Monday night at Truist Park.
“It’s definitely a tough loss, but I like the way we’ve battled these last two,” first baseman Matt Olson, who contributed his third multihomer game of the season in the defeat, said. “Obviously, you want to be on the winning side of it.”
With a win on Monday night, the Braves would have won the four-game series against the Mets and left town for the final road trip of the first half with some momentum. They had lost six of the previous seven series before the Mets.
Instead, their come-from-ahead defeat, one in which they were two strikes away from victory with their All-Star closer on the mound, dropped them into a split and further drained the bullpen in the process.
“We haven’t been playing our best, but I’ve liked the way we’ve been playing the last week or so,” Olson said. “We’ve been fighting when we’re down, we’ve had some good pitching efforts, we’ve been swinging the bats a little better, some better situational hitting.”
And now it falls upon the Braves to show their mettle in the final six games before the All-Star break with a bullpen that has been heavily taxed in the past two days with only two losses to show for it. The next six games will finish a stretch of 13 games in as many days.
The Braves had lost in extra innings earlier this season. But they’d not lost in a situation like this, when they were in dire need of a momentum-generating win and had the opportunity to nail down a series victory with the absolute right player in position to deliver the final blow — and saw it slip away.
That was Monday night, as All-Star closer Raisel Iglesias took the mound in the top of the ninth, staked to a 3-2 lead. The Braves were 44-0 when entering the ninth with the lead. Iglesias had converted 35 consecutive save opportunities.
This was not a guaranteed win, but it was somewhere in the neighborhood.
“I feel good every time he’s in the game, regardless of the situation” manager Walt Weiss said. “He never gets rattled.”
Iglesias put runners on first and third while obtaining the first two outs before feared slugger Juan Soto came to the plate.
Weiss said he considered walking Soto but didn’t want to put the winning run on second base. (Weiss did say he probably should have walked him when the count went to 3-1.)
But he didn’t, Iglesias left a fastball over the middle of the plate and Soto ambushed it, crushing a home run that gave the Mets a 5-3 lead.
Even the Tarps Off crew in the left-field seats was stilled.
“Obviously, what happened (Monday night), that happens to anyone,” starting pitcher Reynaldo López said through team interpreter Franco García. “It’s baseball. These things happen. But he’s a tremendous pitcher.”
Olson’s two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth tied it at 5, and the Braves put the winning run on second with one out and on third with two out, but failed to score the walk-off run when José Azócar struck out in a pinch-hit role for Mike Yastrzemski for the last out of the inning.
They lost in the 10th inning when rookie Owen Murphy — the last man available in the bullpen, Weiss said after the game — was made to make his major league debut in that crucible and gave up two runs.
“I thought Owen did a great job being in a role he’s never really been in,” Olson said.
The Braves gained one back to close to 7-6 when Michael Harris II doubled in Azócar. Harris advanced to third with two out, but that’s as far as he got.
The Braves left 15 men on base — their most since a September game in 2023 — and were 4-for-18 with runners in scoring position.
Again, a rough loss.
“We had some opportunities earlier in the game,” Weiss said. “Just couldn’t get the big one early in the game.”
It’s one game out of 162, although it comes on the heels of another setback of a different stripe on Sunday, when the Braves were down 5-3 going into the top of the ninth, allowed the Mets to score five runs and then nearly came all the way back in the bottom of the ninth, only to lose 10-9.
Weiss’ team has lost 10 of its past 14 and is now 52-37, leading the NL East by three games. The Braves direly need to get to the All-Star break to rest and get healthy. The question is whether they’ll fall farther before the break comes.
“I think the culture’s always been here to turn the page after a tough loss like that,” López said. “I think fortunately we have that mentality to kind of just keep attacking and keep being strong as we move forward.”
In three games in Pittsburgh, the Braves will lean on scheduled starters Hurston Waldrep (Tuesday), Grant Holmes (Wednesday) and Bryce Elder (Thursday).
If they can chew up innings and contribute to wins, the page turning will go much more easily.
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