The Braves were terribly ungrateful hosts by any measure as they pulled off a big win on Friday night
The Braves were very rude on Friday night. The Marlins had the best pitching performance in MLB in June, but they’ll end the month a full .4 fWAR worse than they started, with badly damaged lines from three of the four Miami pitchers who showed up in this game. Beyond that, though, the romp got weird: The Braves hit so many home runs in that game that Friday night’s fireworks caused some sort of lighting issue that led to a long game delay in game seven. Then things got absurd as the Braves hit another home run and a puff of smoke billowed across the field. In the end, it was a dominant but silly 16-4 win that saw Michael Soroka last six innings despite conceding two homers that night.
Let’s talk about the exploits of our rude boys in causing Bryan Hoeing’s pitching stats to plummet. Hoeing came into play with a 2.31 ERA, 3.56 FIP and 4.45 score. As of tonight, he has a 3.72 ERA, 4.65 FIP, and 4.85 xFIP as the Braves tagged him for three runs in 3 2⁄3 innings. Things quickly got out of hand.
In the first run, Ronald Acuña Jr. hit an infield single and scored with Austin Riley’s RBI double to center. Matt Olson then hit a two-run home run; A few minutes later it was Eddie Rosario’s turn to score a two-run shot of his own.
After the Marlins tried to make it a game by scoring three runs early in the third period (more on that later), the brawlers roughly doubled their efforts in their Friday Reds to make it a laugh. Riley immediately started with a home run at the end of the third period, stayed tough on a two-strike count, and punished an inside edge slider instead of protecting the plate. Olson then somehow scored a triple, his third of his career (and second of the season), and scored with Sean Murphy’s sacrificial flight.
In the fifth set, with Hoeing long gone and replaced by Archie Bradley, Ozzie Albies doubled, Riley hit an RBI single, Olson cracked another two-run home run, Murphy hit a single, Marcell Ozuna hit a Bonkers grounder, which somehow bounced off shortstop Joey Wendle’s arm and slid into right field and Rosario had an RBI groundout.
In the sixth run, Olson drove into Acuña with a single after a hit-by-pitch, and then Murphy hit a two-run home run himself. And then, in the seventh, it was Acuña’s turn and hit a two-run thingy, this time against Steven Okert. The Braves scored to within three innings that game and hit six home runs in a game for the second time this year. Their first-inning home runs separated and then set the franchise record for home runs in a calendar month, but then they hit four more. I want to reiterate how surreal it was that they hit so many home runs that the lights didn’t work and smoke blanketed the field — no less than two separate events.
The other notable part of that game was Michael Soroka’s first start in Atlanta in about three years, and it fared much better than his other outings. Soroka had a tricky third game, missing a couple of secondaries and ending up throwing a massive two-run throw on Jesus Sanchez and then a crush job on Jorge Soler, but otherwise he criss-crossed. He finished the game with a K/BB ratio of 7/0 and made a crucial adjustment after the third pass, using his four-seater for jumps. By throwing backwards and ramming two different types of fastballs into the Marlins’ hitters, he got through the middle inning. When he took out Garrett Cooper with a slider at the end of the sixth round, the Marlins obviously didn’t know what they were looking for – not that that mattered, given the gargantuan lead the Braves had rudely built up by that point.
And so the Braves never even considered a Marlins challenge for their Catbird seat at the NL East tonight. They now have a seven-game lead and another six-game winning streak, making for an absurd tally from June 21-4. You’ll get a chance for more shenanigans when the series resumes tomorrow night. And hey, at this rate, you might not even need to catch fireworks on Tuesday, as the Braves have plenty for your viewing pleasure almost every night.
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