Atlanta Braves: Pablo Sandoval goes deep, bullpen impresses despite loss

Welcome back, Atlanta Braves fans! It was a fun but tough Opening Day loss for the Braves in Philadelphia.

The Atlanta Braves 2021 season is finally underway as the best day of the year has arrived for baseball fans.

After a shortened season in 2020, it’s nice to see baseball back in a fairly normal capacity.

The Braves have high hopes that this team will go the distance and bring home a World Series trophy when it’s all said and done.

Thursday had about everything you’d expect from an Opening Day game. Mistakes, drama, and a whole lot of fun. Oh, and did I mention, extra innings?

Max Fried took the bump for Atlanta in his first Opening Day start and had a fairly decent outing. While he wasn’t as sharp as we would have liked, he kept the game close and made good pitches when he needed to.

Fried finished the day after 5 innings allowing 2 runs on 6 hits with 2 walks and 8 strikeouts.

He struggled a bit with location every now and then but that’s to be expected during the first game of the season.

The most important thing is that Max never lost his composure and gave Atlanta a chance to get back in the game. And boy, did they get back into the game in an impressive way.

Cristian Pache earned his first hit of the 2021 season with a double down the left-field line in the 7th inning.

With the pitcher due to bat next, manager Brian Snitker went to his bench. First up for Snit? None other than the Kung Fu Panda himself, Pablo Sandoval.

Sandoval had an impressive .400 average in 40 spring training at-bats. That earned him a deserving spot on the Atlanta bench.

He decided that he’d carry that over into the regular season as he launched a no-doubt home run into the right-field seats. If anyone had Pablo Sandoval hitting the first Atlanta Braves home run of 2021, congratulations because I surely did not.

The wind robbed a few people of home runs on both sides today. Dansby Swanson, Freddie Freeman, and Bryce Harper all had would-be home runs blown back into play by the wind.

I guess they were just missing that panda bear strength.

The Braves hit into a bit of bad luck most of the game. Hard hit balls going right at Phillies defenders. Ozuna missed a hit down the line to score two runs on an impressive leaping catch by Alec Bohm.

The Atlanta bullpen was very impressive today as well. Matzek, Minter, Martin, and Smith all combined to allow just 2 hits through 4 innings of work. They issued 1 walk and struck out 5 batters.

Smith’s slider was especially impressive as it had lots of movement and his fastball is much improved from last season. It seems a full spring has allowed him to come into the season much more prepared.

Nate Jones looked decent in his outing despite allowing the winning run to score. He had good velocity on his fastball and was able to get the ball on the ground.

Unfortunately for Nate, with two outs in the bottom of the tenth inning, he allowed a ground ball base hit to Jean Segura which bounced well over the head of Austin Riley and scored Bryce Harper to win the game for Philadelphia.

This was an unearned run since it came from a runner being placed on second base with the game being in extra innings.

Not my favorite rule but both teams are allowed the same advantage.

Atlanta had an opportunity to score the go-ahead run in the top of the 10th inning but Ozzie Albies was thrown out at the plate on a fly out to shallow centerfield.

I don’t know if it was a bad send by Ron Washington or if Ozzie hesitated a bit running towards home plate. That’s just how it goes sometimes, I guess.

It’s always tough to lose the first game of a season, especially to a rival. However, it was a good game at the end of the day.

There were a lot of encouraging things to take away from today and I’m very excited for the next 161 games.

Atlanta has an off-day tomorrow and then resume the series with the Phillies on Saturday at 4:05 pm EST as Charlie Morton makes his Braves debut against Zach Wheeler.