Braves vs. Diamondbacks series recap: Braves avoid brooms with big hit from Matt Olson

Sometimes you roll snake eyes and the Atlanta Braves very nearly did end up doing so against the Snakes, themselves. The Arizona Diamondbacks may have been coming into town following a series loss to the Colorado Rockies (in Arizona, mind you) but they were entering this series with two monsters getting starts for them in their rotation. Brandon Pfaadt and Eduardo Rodriguez have both been lights-out recently and Michael Soroka has also been very solid as well.

As such, this wasn’t going to be an easy task for the Braves — especially after they completed the monumental task of finally beating the New York Mets in a three-game series. As such, a bit of a letdown was always on the cards and that’s what happened in this particular series. Fortunately, some timely hitting from one of baseball’s top power hitters helped Atlanta avert a disastrous sweep. Let’s get into how everything went down over the weekend, shall we?

Friday, August 14

Diamondbacks 2, Braves 0

So this was one of those games where there wasn’t much the Braves could do — the Diamondbacks and their pitching was just too much to handle. Brandon Pfaadt has been on a heater since late-July, as he hasn’t given up an earned run since the first inning of his start against the Cardinals back on July 22 — and funnily enough, his current teammate Lars Nootbaar was the one who brought in that run against him.

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Anyways, Pfaadt was absolutely nightmarish for the Braves to deal with and this one was essentially set in stone once Arizona managed to take advantage of some shaky defense from Atlanta in the first inning in order to plate the only run that Chris Sale ended up surrendering. Once Pfaadt was done, Arizona called upon both Juan Morillo and Brandyn Garcia to finish things off and they’ve both been lights out on the road lately so the Braves were essentially walking into a snake pit (for lack of a better term) in this situation. Atlanta only mustered up three hits and this was pure dominance from Arizona’s pitching staff.

Chris Sale was excellent, as usual, it must be noted. Despite the fact that the Braves once again had a tough time dealing with the other team’s top guy in this matchup, Sale remained upbeat about things and even expressed a bit of excitement about matchups like this when I asked him about it after the game. “You take this one on the chin,” explained Sale. “What these guys have done throughout the year and what they’re going to continue to do, you certainly don’t expect that. But it happens — I’ve had blow-up starts where I’m sure they thought they were going to get six innings of one-run ball and it’s not. We pick each other up and we keep moving forward.”

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Saturday, August 15

Diamondbacks 10, Braves 3

This time, Arizona’s lineup asserted dominance. Despite the fact that Ronald Acuña Jr. led things off with a home run and the Braves got out to a two-run lead after one inning, things went sideways from that point forward. Grant Holmes ended up having his worst start of the season, as he couldn’t even get through four innings as the Diamondbacks tagged him for three runs in both the second and third innings. Nolan Arenado’s two run dinger in the third put Arizona up 6-2 and they didn’t look back from there. In fact, Arenado made it a two-homer night later on in the seventh as his solo shot off of Brent Suter made it 7-2.

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Danny Young then got the ball for the top of the ninth inning and that ended up being ugly as well, as Ildemaro Vargas capped off a great night at the plate for Arizona with a three-run shot on a hanger from Young that made it 10-2. This only notable thing that happened for Atlanta outside of the first inning was when Ha-Seong Kim came in as a pinch-hitter and promptly picked up his fourth (4th) RBI of the season (on August 15) on a productive out. Progress!

Other than that, Eduardo Rodriguez also proved to ultimately be too tough for Atlanta to handle and Arizona’s bullpen dominated once he left the game ahead of the seventh inning. Once the smoke had cleared, the Diamondbacks now had a five-game winning streak at Truist Park and had won seven of their last ten games here in Cobb County. Oof!

Sunday, August 16

Braves 5, Diamondbacks 3

The task for Atlanta didn’t get much easier in the series finale on Sunday, as the Braves were set to do battle against old friend Michael Soroka with Bryce Elder looking to stop the bleeding. Fortunately, Elder returned to form after getting demolished by the Mets earlier this week and he bounced back to the tune of tossing six innings with just one run allowed. Unsurprisingly, the sole run came on a dinger but outside of that, Elder once again managed to deftly make his way through Arizona’s lineup and bring them back down to Earth following their extremely productive Saturday performance.

Once Elder was done, the Braves were holding on to a slender 2-1 lead after Drake Baldwin’s RBI single in the third put them ahead and then Ronald Acuña Jr.’s double down the left field line with two out in the fifth put them back in front after that solo homer from Gabriel Moreno had tied things up again. Michael Soroka pitched well but he found himself facing a recorded loss once he stepped out with two outs in the fifth.

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The seventh inning proved to be the decisive one, though. That was when Arizona once again tied things up after Ildemaro Vargas got a favorable pitch from Didier Fuentes on a 3-1 count and bopped it on top of the right field fence and into the Chop House for a solo shot. Fortunately, Atlanta got to work quickly in their half of the second as Austin Riley doubled to lead off the seventh and then Drake Baldwin joined him on the basepaths with a walk. Matt Olson eventually came to the plate with two out and Brandyn Garcia finally had a road slip-up while facing Olson. Garcia threw Olsona. sinker that didn’t sink enough and Olson crushed it to dead-center for a game-changing three-run dinger that put Atlanta back in front.

Raisel Iglesias got the ball for the ninth inning and while he took us all on another rollercoaster ride that saw a balk and Arizona scoring a run to cut the lead to two, Iggy was able to eventually get the three outs that Atlanta needed to at least avoid getting swept in their own building. Phew!

With the way that both Brandon Pfaadt and Eduardo Rodriguez are currently going, I don’t think that there’s a team in baseball that is really looking forward to any series where both of those guys are going. Their performances helped propel them to a series win over the Dodgers last weekend and they played a major role in keeping Atlanta quiet for the first two games of this series. Sometimes you just run into a buzzsaw and it was Atlanta’s turn to face the blade.

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The good news is that the Braves were at least able to avert disaster with a win on Sunday. Bryce Elder’s been good more often than he’s been bad lately and his performance on Sunday is the type of start that Atlanta’s going to need from him as they continue to get closer and closer to the home stretch of the season. Matt Olson has also continued to heat things up at the plate and his dinger on Sunday was another example of Olson coming up big in big situations.

The rest of the weekend series was pretty rough but ultimately, averting a sweep at this stage in the season is still worth something. With that being said, it’s especially nice that the Braves are getting on the plane on a winning note because they have an insane week coming up ahead of them. THey’ll start in Minneapolis, head to Chicago for a make-up game, head to Milwaukee for two games and then finish the Brewers series in Williamsport for the Little League Classic before coming back to Atlanta for a much-needed off day. Things are about to get really hectic in terms of travel and this’ll certainly be a test for the Braves following an even-steven homestand. We’ll see what happens!