Braves Bullpen Woes Overshadow Ynoa’s Great Start in 5-3 Loss to Marlins

The Atlanta Braves lose 5-3 to the Miami Marlins in extra innings. 

The Atlanta Braves were given another great start by Huascar Ynoa in the first game in a four-game series against the Miami Marlins. Ynoa ended with 6.0 innings pitched, giving up 3 hits, 1 ER, and 1 BB. But get this… 10 SO for the kid!

(The 1 ER was given up via home run to Adam Duvall so that’s a bummer)

But anyway, Ynoa rightfully earned a second start for the Braves after his performance last week against the Washington Nationals, where he posted 5.0 innings pitched, with 2 hits, 0 ER, 1 BB, and 5 SO in the 2-0 win. Unfortunately, he did not pick up the win in that game.

Matching Ynoa’s great performance tonight was Ronald Acuna Jr. who ended 1-2, with 3 BB and scoring twice. Acuna Jr scored in the 1st on a Marcell Ozuna single and then in the 3rd on a spectacular heads-up hustle play on a soft pop fly to shallow center by Ozzie Albies, who ended with 2 RBI.

The kid has been playing out of his mind lately and if he keeps up this momentum, I definitely see a pretty nice award in the near future.

What seemed to be a good game quickly turned sour in the 8th. Of those in the bullpen, Luke Jackson, AJ Minter, Nate Jones, Will Smith, and Jacob Webb were the ones to make appearances tonight and only two managed to have clean innings, i.e. Jackson and Smith.

Both Minter and Jones struggled to get through the 8th, which resulted in the Marlins scoring 2 runs, tying the game at 3. Then, Webb struggled in the 10th, which saw the Marlins scoring another 2 runs to take a 5-3 lead (although one of those runs belongs to the awful extra-inning rule)…

All in all, a pitiful performance by the Braves bullpen gifts the opposition with a win and frankly, it’ll be a long season if this bullpen core is what we’ll have to depend on in tight situations.

Now, the bullpen hasn’t been incredibly bad, but the cracks are definitely starting to show.

Minter had a decent outing against the Phillies on Sunday, but could not get the job done tonight against the Marlins ending 0.1 IP, 3 BB, and 2 ER.

Jones meanwhile took over for Minter and proceeded to walk another 2 batters… it’s pretty surprising that only 2 runners managed to score in that 8th, to be honest.

It is a shame that the game ended the way it did because there were a pretty good amount of positives offensively plus the start by Ynoa, but I can’t seem to stop worrying about this bullpen. At some point, you have to stop and think how the Braves’ FO could look at the bullpen they compiled in the offseason and think that it was good to go.

Meanwhile, Mark Melancon has appeared in 6 games for the San Diego Padres and only given up a hit and if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times… Shane Greene is still available. Maybe that is for a reason, who knows.

You could think one way or the other about Greene, but he’s got to be better than half of the choices we have in the bullpen now, right? I surely think so.

I simply bring up Melancon and Greene to point out that the approach the Braves took toward the bullpen this offseason was not good and hopefully I’m wrong, but I could definitely see more nights like tonight repeating themselves as the season goes on.

The cheap bullpen approach was a bold choice… I will leave it at that.

In the end, the Braves still have three more games in the series against the Marlins with the top of the rotation coming up. So, buckle up guys, we’ve still got a lot of season ahead of us!