Braves Report: Nats series postmortem

It’s AJ Willingham, host of A.M. ATL and bench woman for Sports Daily, in for Tyler. I’m also a Nationals fan, though that’s far from a threat these days. Good thing we have the Nationals series to unpack.

HOMESTAND TAKEAWAYS

The Braves are back at .500 after besting the Washington Nationals three games to one in a four-game series this week. After an admittedly dismal spring, it feels like the reset the team needed. A brand new season, if you will.

⚾ The best of the series:

• AJ Smith-Shawver: The righty allowed just two hits in six strong innings Thursday, winning his third decision in a row. Remember, he also brought the Braves close to their first no-hitter in decades earlier this month.
• Michael Harris II: Harris seems to be a single-man microcosm of the Braves season so far. He started in a slump, and has since become a more-than-reliable hitter in the five spot. He had four hits over the four-game series, and has made some dazzling plays in center field.

⚾ The worst:

• Pen problems: I’m not going to make a bummer joke. But in an otherwise solid series, the Braves pen put together some truly ugly innings. Aaron Bummer’s two unearned runs in the 7th and Enyel de Los Santos’ lead-losing 8th aren’t landing on any highlight reels.
• The cruel tease of .500: A day after finally breaking even, the Braves dropped one to the Nats, a team bound by statistics to get at least one win at some point. (Washington has lost seven of their last eight.) If they don’t rise above .500, or at least comfortably stay there in the next few games, I worry for everyone’s sanity.

NEXT STOP: SHIPPING UP TO BOSTON

🥊 The Braves play the Boston Red Sox at Fenway this weekend. I’ll let Tyler tell you more about that tomorrow.

Boston is futzing around in the middle of the AL East and, at 22-23, will be ravenous to get back to .500. Sound familiar?

Boston boo-boos: RHP Tanner Houck (flexor strain, unclear), RHP Walker Buehler (shoulder problems, will just miss the Braves series)

LET’S TALK TRIPLES

I was in the stands for Wednesday night’s game, so if you heard a little gremlin screeching when the Braves pen unraveled in the 7th and 8th, it was probably me.

That also gave me a great view of some really questionable officiating, namely a clear home run* from Michael Harris II that donked off the top of the right field wall and, after an excruciating video replay back-and-forth and a few 90-foot jogs, was ruled a triple.

I love triples! That was exciting. “Think of the content for the Braves Report,” I told my Braves fan husband. “But what if we lose by a run,” he said. To be very honest, if you have a guy on third with no outs and don’t score him, that’s on you.

I wasn’t worried for the Braves, who nullified the nonsense when Harris promptly scored on a Fairchild hit.

*We can fight about this over email.

🧮 Anyway, to the numbers!

• The Braves have hit six triples this season: Three from White, two from Harris and one from Fairchild.
• Meanwhile, they’ve smashed 44 home runs. Austin Riley leads the team with eight. No surprise there.

There’s a larger pattern here, though. League-wide, the number of triples a season has been on an intense and steady decline since the 1980s.

• Number of MLB regular season triples in 1983: 1,033
• Number of MLB regular season triples in 2024: 697

Why? I consulted the lore (a 1989 Baseball Research Journal article, a 2017 Posnanski write from MLB.com and my own loose patchwork of pattern recognition). The 1989 lamentation on the death of triples was especially interesting, since triples were about to get a lot more scarce in the coming decades.

• Home runs and the general proliferation of power in the modern baseball era
• Faster outfielders (also a byproduct of more power)
• Conservative base running. According to MLB.com, even speedy dudes like Trea Turner admit they like to stick to second.