MIAMI – Brian Snitker stood in front of the Braves-themed backdrop as reporters gathered around him after a bad loss – another bad loss. There have been too many this season, and at this point Snitker must be having a difficult time trying to say the same things in different ways.
It is an unenviable task.
At a time when the Braves must win every game, they lost, 4-3, to the Marlins, who are one of the worst teams in the sport. On Friday at loanDepot park, a frustrating and familiar theme emerged.
The Braves could not get the big hit.
It has been the story of their season – a season that could soon be on life support if they cannot gain some momentum.
Five observations:
1. Here is the good news: The Mets lost to the Phillies, so Atlanta remains two games behind New York for the third and final wild-card spot instead of falling to three games back.
The Braves are scoreboard watching.
“Oh, absolutely,” Snitker said. “We’re down to, what do we got, eight games left. Damn straight we are.”
This is where the positives end for this night.
2. Ozzie Albies returned to the lineup for this game. Snitker put him in the two-hole and moved Jorge Soler, who had been batting second, down to fifth. The top five: Michael Harris II, Albies, Marcell Ozuna, Matt Olson, Soler.
The lineup looks longer.
“I told (bench coach) Walt (Weiss) that after we made it up and I saw it – I was like, ‘This thing’s starting to look good again,’” Snitker said before the game. “Getting a little longer. We don’t have a ton of speed on this club, and Ozzie, that’s another dimension that he adds, which is really good.”
Harris had three hits and Ozuna had two. Albies, Olson and Soler combined to go 0-for-10, though Soler drove in a run.
All night, it felt like the Braves would break through. Eventually. They had situations to do so.
“Well, we had the deck stacked in our favor a couple times, we just couldn’t get the big hit again,” Snitker said. “We pierce a gap (in) a couple different situations, it’s a different outcome, probably.”
The Braves went 0-for-3 with runners in scoring position. They stranded eight runners in a one-run loss.
Marlins starter Valente Bellozo held them to three runs over 5 1/3 innings. The Marlins’ bullpen – not the same after the trade deadline – did the rest.
“Yeah, I would just chalk it up to baseball being baseball,” Orlando Arcia said through interpreter Franco García. “Sometimes things are gonna go your way, sometimes things aren’t gonna go your way. I thought (Bellozo) was locating his pitches really well tonight. But what we have to do is just turn the page and come back ready to play tomorrow.”
Yes, sometimes baseball is just baseball. But this answer has understandably become frustrating for fans. The Braves have been depleted by injuries, but they have enough to win a low-scoring game against the Marlins.
This was another frustrating missed opportunity.
3. In the top of the third, the Braves had the bases loaded with one out. Soler stepped up to the plate against Bellozo.
He hit a deep fly ball to center field, but it was caught and went down as a sacrifice fly. They only scored one run.
In the top of the second, Arcia came up with runners on the corners and two outs. He struck out swinging – which continued a personal trend. Entering Friday, his .164 batting average with runners in scoring position was the 12th-worst mark among qualified hitters, and his .420 OPS was the sixth-lowest figure.
Arcia is the worst example of a team-wide issue. This club has fallen short in these situations for most of the season.
“I think like I’ve always said, I think we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna give our best effort regardless,” Arcia said. “Obviously when there’s runners in scoring position, we wanna do everything we can to drive them in. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. The only thing we can control is the effort and what we do, and come in every day and put in the work.”
No doubt, those spots are tough. It’s easy to pick apart those at-bats when you’re not the one facing the velocity and spin.
But the missed opportunities are far more difficult to swallow with this context: The Braves need every win.
“It’s been tough all year when we haven’t done that,” Snitker said. “We’ll get it going in spurts, but we just can’t sustain a drive or just get anything going consistently for an extended period of time.”
4. Charlie Morton gave up three runs in the first inning and one more in the fifth. The first three put the Braves in a hole.
“When you give up three runs in the first, that’s a momentum-killer,” Morton said. “And from there, (you’re) kind of clawing back.”
Morton felt he put an unfair burden on his offense with those three first-inning runs and another that scored on a wild pitch in the fifth.
He had a couple broken-bat hits and a couple balls flared into the outfield. But he also allowed the leadoff man to reach in four straight innings at one point.
“It wasn’t as bad as it seemed, I don’t think,” Snitker said. “The leadoff guys getting on are the big things. But you know what, he minimized damage. We gotta score. We gotta score. We can’t expect these guys to throw shutouts every night.”
That’s the biggest takeaway: The Braves’ lineup often doesn’t give its pitching staff any margin for error.
5. Ramón Laureano reached on an error to begin the eighth inning. With one out and Sean Murphy up in a one-run game, Snitker put Laureano in motion to stay out of the inning-ending double play.
Murphy struck out.
Laureano was thrown out at second.
Inning over.
“If he puts the ball on the ground, it’s a double play,” Snitker said. “If I don’t run him, you’re gonna sit there and ask me why I didn’t put him in motion because he hit into a double play.”
It was the correct move. It just didn’t work.
The Braves wouldn’t have needed it to work had they scored earlier. This has been the theme this season: This club has squandered one offensive opportunity after another.
It has put them in a clear spot with eight games left.
“We need to win the rest of them,” Snitker said. “We’re down to eight, so we just need to take care of business tomorrow.”
Stat to know
38-33 - The Braves are 38-33 against teams that are .500 and below.
Quotable
“It’s like I keep saying: We lose a game and we turn the page quickly and we come back with that same energy the next day.”-Arcia on how the team will respond
Up next
On Saturday, Max Fried will start for the Braves against right-hander Adam Oller and the Marlins. First pitch is at 4:10 p.m.
