3 Atlanta Braves Takeaways from a Friday night win at St. Louis

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ST LOUIS, MO – MAY 24: Mike Foltynewicz #26 of the Atlanta Braves delivers a pitch against the St. Louis Cardinals in the first inning at Busch Stadium on May 24, 2019 in St Louis, Missouri. (Photo by Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images) /

The Atlanta Braves continued a strong May road campaign with a dominant 5-1 victory Friday night. But that doesn’t tell the whole story.

Could Mike Foltynewicz back up his last start with a second consecutive strong outing? That was the big question as the Atlanta Braves rolled into St. Louis into the wee hours of Friday morning.

Such a travel scenario isn’t ideal, and often leads to a lethargic response for at least the 1st game of a series in which this happens.

Traveling East, the Braves also picked up 2 hours via time zones, so they had even less time to find their sea legs before hostilities commenced on Friday evening.

It didn’t matter.

Here’s 3 strong takeaways from this win, which allowed Atlanta to keep pace with the Phillies while both clubs extended margins back to the third place New York Mets.

3. Folty Strong

Mike Foltynewciz did indeed back up his work against Milwaukee with an excellent outing Friday night.

Here’s the numbers:

MIL (5/19): 6 IP, 3 hits, 2 runs (both earned), 2 HR, 3K, zero BB
STL (5/24): 6 IP, 5 hits, 1 run (unearned), 7K, zero BB

Contrast that with the prior outing, which came against these same St. Louis Cardinals:

STL (5/14): 4.2 IP, 7 hits, 8 runs (all earned), 3 HR, 4K, 3 BB

Big comeback.

This makes 12 straight innings without walking a single batter, but there was a more important takeaway from this game Friday.

Spin the dial to the 3rd inning. It started out this way:

Outfield error on Austin Riley (runner to 2nd base)
Triple to center field, scoring the first runner.

Now… there’s more to both of those plays (I’ll get to that), but in times past, Folty would often get ticked off whenever a ‘bad result’ happened behind him and innings have spiraled out of control.

That didn’t happen Friday: here’s what transpired after the above:

Harrison Bader (the guy who “tripled”), committed a TOOTBLAN*
P Miles Mikolas grounded out to third base
Dexter Fowler HBP
Paul Goldschmidt credited with infield single
Paul DeJong struck out

* TOOTBLAN – Thrown Out On The Basepaths Like A Nincompoop

Sure: the adversity continued a bit after the second out, with 2 more runners reaching base by something less than conventional means, but Folty stayed the course and got the inning-ending strikeout.

This bodes well for the rest of his season.

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