There’s at least one benefit to starting a season with a 5-13 record. Every win is savored, especially when they’re like Friday night’s.
With one out and no runners on base in the bottom of the eighth, the Braves trailed the Minnesota Twins by three runs. But they finished the game 6-4 winners, delighting a near-sellout crowd at Truist Park.
For a team that even in mid-April is facing increasingly long odds of making the postseason, it felt pretty good. After the game, I asked manager Brian Snitker if the comeback felt even better in the dugout in light of the team’s struggles.
“Oh, absolutely,” he said. “I’m not going to sit here and say it doesn’t.”
Is this the turnaround point?
Is this when the Braves start to play like we’ve expected them to?
It doesn’t really matter at this point.
No one knows, starting with the Braves.
Just try to win Saturday’s game against the Twins to improve to 7-13 and go from there.
Getting to .500 doesn’t matter. The playoff streak is irrelevant. Just worry about the next game.
And one way to do that is to remember how Friday night’s win was generated, which was by a method the Braves don’t normally lean on.
The Braves were down 4-1 in the bottom of the eighth. There was no one on base. MLB.com gave the Braves a 5.4% probability of winning after Austin Riley led off with a strikeout.
But Marcell Ozuna walked. Matt Olson singled. Ozzie Albies legged out his second infield hit of the game. Sean Murphy milked another walk. The Truist Park crowd roared with each development.
On the mound for the Twins, Cole Sands replaced Griffin Jax.
In a pivotal at-bat, Michael Harris II singled to score two and tie the score.
Then Harris stole second base. And pinch hitter Drake Baldwin singled to score two more for the final 6-4 lead.
In the five-run eighth, there was not a single extra-base hit for the team that set the MLB single-season record for slugging percentage two seasons ago.
“It’s been a little tough for us this year because I just feel like everybody has tried to be the hero in certain situations and (Friday), we weren’t doing that,” Harris said. “We were just trying to get the next man on, get him over.”
The numbers would bear out Harris’ observations about his team trying to play the hero and failing at it. Before Friday’s game, the Braves ranked 28th in on-base percentage with runners on base (.281) and 29th in what FanGraphs deems high-leverage situations (.221).
This pressure to try to change games in grand fashion is not dissimilar from the temptation to think that each win represents the turning point. It’s trying to pack too much meaning into each moment.
Just like they’re bound to fail at the plate when swinging for the fences, the Braves are better off when just focusing on the small picture when looking at the standings. They’ve yet to win two games in a row. They can accomplish that by winning Saturday.
Harris was a star Friday. He started the game hitless in his previous 15 at-bats. His average had dipped to .179. He was a hitter who was in need of help but who had apparently found something before the game.
“I’m just working through some things to get back to where I know I can be and just see where it goes,” he said before the game.
He came to the plate in the bottom of the seventh with his hitless streak now at 16 at-bats. But he lined a single to center to end his slide. He came to bat in the bottom of the eighth with the Braves down 4-2. The bases were loaded with one out. He smashed a 1-0 fastball from Sands to right field to tie the score at 4-4.
Rather than be a hero, Harris just tried to be a cog in the machine.
“Just having a short swing, not trying to hit the ball 500 feet, just getting a guy over, getting him in and scoring multiple runs,” he said.
After the game, he revealed the mechanical adjustment.
“It was really just being in a better spot to, I guess, be able to fire, to be able to hit, be ready to hit,” Harris said. “I felt like, I guess the past week or so on that road trip, I was a little late and wasn’t in the best spot to be able to make contact with the ball or actually see it as long as I can.”
Baldwin, pinch hitting for Nick Allen, followed with a single through a drawn-in infield to score two more.
“Obviously, he’s been hitting the ball all season, hitting the ball hard all season and hasn’t had the best luck,” Harris said, accurately. “Luckily, the infield was in right there. If they were back, he probably would have found a way to get out somehow. Just glad he was able to come through in that position to get two RBIs.”
Saturday, Harris will try to have a second consecutive game with a hit. The Braves will go for their second win in a row.
All Harris can have is a two-game hit streak and all the Braves can be by the end of the day is 7-13.
That’s good enough.
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