Atlanta Braves Drop Series Finale in Philadelphia

The Atlanta Braves dropped the series finale in Philadelphia on Sunday, losing 2-1 to the Phillies.

The good news about Sunday’s game is that the Atlanta Braves got a fantastic pitching performance from Touki Toussaint.  The bad news is that Aaron Nola was just as good and the Braves came out on the losing side of a 2-1 game.

Touki continued to build off of his strong start against San Diego as he threw seven brilliant innings, giving up just one run on five hits while striking out ten.

And even more encouraging was the fact that he did not walk a single batter in his seven innings of work.

The lone run that Toussaint gave up was on a fourth-inning solo home run to Jean Segura on a splitter that hung up in the zone.  Segura continued his good work against the Braves by not missing the Toussaint mistake and depositing it into the left-field seats.

Chris Martin came into the game to start the eighth and gave up what proved to be a costly solo home run to Ronald Torreyes, pushing the Philadelphia lead to 2-0.

Aaron Nola carried the 2-0 lead into the ninth and came within a strike of completing the game.  Austin Riley laced a 1-2 fastball the opposite way into the right-center seats, getting the Braves on the board and bringing the tying run to the plate in the form of Dansby Swanson.

The Phillies elected to pull Nola from the game at that point and bring in Ranger Suarez to try and get the final out.  Suarez earned his fourth save of the year by striking out Dansby on a 1-2 changeup and the Braves came up just short in a game dominated by great starting pitching.

The Atlanta Braves head to New York to start a 5-game series with the Mets.

Whatever happens over the next five games in four days may go a long way to determine what the Braves front office does in the 24 hours after.

The Braves/Mets series should end around 4 pm EST on Thursday and the trade deadline is set for 4 pm EST on the very next day.

If the Braves can go into New York and get a decisive series win and pull within two games of first place, you will most likely see the front office add pieces in an attempt to win this year.

If it goes the other way and the Braves leave town eight games back then it may be time to see what sort of return the Braves can get back for the likes of Charlie Morton, Drew Smyly, Will Smith, and Travis d’Arnaud.

But the way this Braves team has played this year the more likely scenario is they will figure out a way to win three of the five games, leave New York trailing the Mets by four games, and making the decision to buy or sell that much tougher for the front office.

The 2021 Atlanta Braves have failed to live up to expectations.

It is a bit surreal looking back on the expectations that so many people had for this team heading into the season.

Coming off of three straight division titles and being so close to representing the National League in last year’s world series, it was natural to expect this club to take the next step in their progression.

But we all know that baseball is a marathon and not a sprint (last year’s season notwithstanding).  And the Braves just seem to be stepping in every single pothole on the racecourse in 2021.

With all that this team has dealt with this season, it would be easy to say it just isn’t the Braves’ year, and let’s sell off some pieces and begin to make plans to come back strong next season.

And while it may be an unpopular decision, if this team is going down I want to see them go down swinging.

My hope is that Alex Anthopoulos and the front office are aggressive at the deadline.

That coupled with Travis d’Arnaud, Ian Anderson, Tucker Davidson, and Huascar Ynoa coming back from injury and the emergence of Touki Touissant should be enough to get it done in a division that has been open for the taking all season long.

It won’t be easy.  That much is clear.  But why would the 2021 version of the Atlanta Braves make anything easy now?