Atlanta Braves: Austin Riley, Freddie Freeman help take down Pirates 12-5
By Steven Teal
The Atlanta Braves headed into Tuesday’s game with hopes of gaining ground on the NL East-leading Phillies. The offense absolutely exploded in the late innings as they took Game 1 from the Pittsburgh Pirates.
With the Philadelphia Phillies in the midst of a 5-game losing streak, the Atlanta Braves headed into Tuesday’s matchup with the Pirates just a half of a game back from first place in the National League East.
Atlanta is currently in a 15-game stretch against teams with losing records. The results have been mixed as the Braves dropped the first three games of this journey but have responded nicely by winning three in a row.
The offense has continued to impose its will on opponents and Tuesday evening was no different.
Max Fried took the mound for the Atlanta Braves and sought to win his eighth game of the 2019 season. Fried was coming off of his worst start of the season, which saw him allow 4 earned runs on 9 hits to the Nationals.
Unfortunately, Fried continued to struggle a bit with his command on Tuesday. The Pirates would tag him for 5 runs on 9 hits across 4 innings of work.
The Braves found themselves down 5-3 as they entered the top of the 6th inning. They had slowly chipped away at the Pirates lead but couldn’t find that big hit.
Enter Austin Riley, who decided enough was enough as he launched an opposite field 3-run home run in the top of the 7th to give the Braves a lead that they wouldn’t relinquish the rest of the game.
The Atlanta Braves offense would add on runs in the 8th and 9th innings as well. Those innings were highlighted by a 3-run homer by Josh Donaldson and a 2-run blast off the bat of Freddie Freeman.
Atlanta’s offense scored 10 unanswered runs across the final 4 innings of the game.
This was one of the best games that we’ve seen from the Braves offensively in 2019, so far.
Let’s get into a few takeaways from Tuesday’s electric win in the Steel City.