The Braves might’ve relinquished home-field advantage, but they flew to St. Louis bearing optimism – a borderline inconceivable notion after Game 1 of their National League Division Series on Thursday.
Mike Foltynewicz and Adam Duvall willed the Braves to a 3-0 victory Friday in Game 2, salvaging a split against the Cardinals at home. For St. Louis, it’s simple: Win your two home games and you advance. But that isn’t an easy task against these Braves, who’ve been road warriors for the past two seasons (their 47-34 mark this season was tied for best in the National League).
For the visitors, there’s a level of relief that they avoided the nightmare fallout. The Braves squandered a 3-1 lead in the eighth inning of Game 1, a collapse that cued negative storylines from the team’s offensive miscues to the bullpen disappointment to Ronald Acuna’s lack of hustle.
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Those bad feelings were almost single-handily erased by Foltynewicz, who dismantled a Cardinals lineup that produced 14 hits a day before. The right-hander held the Redbirds to three hits, striking out seven and walking none in the franchise’s best postseason start since Tom Glavine delivered eight shutout innings in the 2001 NLDS.
He was followed by Max Fried, who’s carving out a crucial high-leverage role in the bullpen, and Mark Melancon, who rebounded from a horrific showing in Game 1 to record the save.
The Braves held optional workouts Saturday in St. Louis, an off day before the teams play Games 3 and 4 at Busch Stadium on Sunday and Monday, respectively. All-Star Mike Soroka will oppose Adam Wainwright in Game 3.
Soroka boasted MLB’s best road ERA (1.55) in his first full season as a major leaguer. He was the team’s best starter from start to finish, earning a potential top-five finish in Cy Young voting. The Braves decided to start veteran Dallas Keuchel in Game 1 and save Soroka for the road game because of his success away from Atlanta.
The Canadian righty’s first postseason start will come in one of the sport’s toughest environments. While the Braves sort out their pitching, the Cardinals’ end is focused on their offense, which showed both ends of the spectrum through both games.
“They're strong,” Soroka said. “Everybody knows that. They've got some guys that have done some damage for a lot of years. Talking to Dallas and Mike about how they navigated the lineup and picking your spots to which battles you want to get into and where you don't want to get hurt.
“Little things like that that you've really got to pay attention to with this lineup. And then having faced them twice this year, we'll be able to go back and look at previous pitches, previous at-bats that we want to improve on and basically make a plan.”
» RELATED: Photos from Game 2
St. Louis will start Dakota Hudson in Game 4, but the Braves haven’t yet decided their direction. The options: Keuchel on short rest or start Julio Teheran, who wasn’t on the initial postseason roster but was added when Chris Martin was injured. Snitker didn’t show his hand as to where the team was leaning when he spoke with reporters Saturday afternoon.
“I would think it would probably be determined by (Sunday),” he said. “I've ran that through my mind, too, that it could be a bullpen day if we wanted to go that route. And somebody's got to get the thing off the ground. And then after that it's kind of all hands on deck again, that mentality.”
If the Braves are going to win their first postseason series in 18 years, it will either come in St. Louis or in a Game 5, which would be in Atlanta on Wednesday if the teams split their pair in Missouri. But first things first: The Braves are banking on Soroka guiding them to a 2-1 series lead Sunday.
