Atlanta Braves Swept By Blue Jays, Drop Fourth Straight

The Atlanta Braves sent birthday boy Ian Anderson to the mound on Sunday to try to end a three-game losing streak and salvage the final game of a three-game set versus the Toronto Blue Jays.

It wasn’t the best trip to Dunedin, Florida for our Atlanta Braves.  After getting bombed out of the park on Friday the Braves seemed set to even up the series with the Blue Jays on Saturday, only to fall in the 10th inning in walk-off fashion.

If that wasn’t enough, we learned today that Travis d’Arnaud was placed on the 60 day IL.  This is a huge blow for the Braves both behind and at the plate.  Backup catcher Alex Jackson was also placed on the 10 day IL so the Braves entered Sunday’s tilt with a new set of catchers.

William Contreras and Jeff Mathis will be the Braves catching duo for the foreseeable future, with Contreras presumably seeing the bulk of the playing time.

The Atlanta Braves head into May continuing to battle injuries and inconsistent play.

The Blue Jays defeated the Braves on Sunday, 7 to 2.  The game and the series were ones that Braves fans would like to forget and can really be summed up by a play that has really been a microcosm of Atlanta’s season to date.

In the 6th inning, Ozzie Albies led off and hit a ground ball to short.  Bo Bichette made the play, but with the speedy Albies running made an errant throw that first baseman Vlad Guerrero, Jr. couldn’t handle.  Apparently Albies did not see that Guerrero didn’t make the play and Ozzie made the turn to head back to the dugout, only to find himself in a rundown and be tagged out.

So instead of the leadoff hitter on in a two-run game, the mental mistake turned into nobody on and one out.  This pretty much summed up the game, series, and to a certain extent the season thus far for the Braves.

The Atlanta pitching continues to be an area of concern.

The pitching as a whole struggled mightily against the depth of the Blue Jays lineup, giving up 26 runs in three games.  And it is hard to imagine the pitching being better while working with unfamiliar batterymates over the next couple of months while Travis d’Arnaud recovers from his thumb injury.

Yes, it is true the Braves have some major pitching pieces currently on the IL,  but they need to start seeing some consistent outings out of someone not named Huascar Ynoa.  Even when Fried and Soroka come back, this pitching staff is going to need other people to step up and be consistent.  And if someone could let Drew Smyly know that he is going out to pitch major league games and not throw BP that may be helpful as well.

The loss of Mark Melancon, Shane Greene, and Darren O’Day from last year’s pen has left this current edition of the Atlanta bullpen with more question marks than answers.  When Chris Martin comes back from the IL maybe that will help solidify roles for the members of the bullpen and things will fall into place.  That may be wishful thinking but I tend to be a positive person so I am going to go with it for now.

And while I understand that the offense has issues of its own, we have all seen Freddie Freeman, Marcell Ozuna, Ozzie Albies, and Dansby Swanson play enough games to understand that at some point they are going to put it together.  And when they do it is going to be a lot of fun to watch this Braves offense play.  I just don’t have the same confidence in Luke Jackson, Nate Jones, Drew Smyly, Sean Newcomb, and Jacob Webb.

To be fair, it is May 2nd and there is a lot of baseball left to be played.  And as uneven and inconsistent as the Braves have been they currently sit just 2 games out of first place.  It is hard to be patient when expectations are sky high but the beauty of baseball is that it is a marathon and not a sprint and the core group of players that have won 3 straight NL East titles are still here.  Let’s see if we still have the same concerns at the end of May that we do now.