Atlanta Braves Win Ninth Straight Game By Sweeping Orioles

The Atlanta Braves finished off a perfect road trip on Sunday, defeating the Baltimore Orioles by a score of 3-1.

At long last, the Atlanta Braves are playing more like the team we expected them to be heading into the 2021 season.

The Braves won their ninth straight game and 17th of their last 20 by completing a three-game sweep of the Baltimore Orioles at Camden Yards on Sunday.

The Braves got another strong start from Touki Toussaint, and trade deadline acquisitions Adam Duvall and Jorge Soler provided all the run support that Toussaint and the bullpen would need on Sunday.

Both Toussaint and Baltimore starter, John Means, got off to good starts, putting up zeroes through the first three innings.

However, with one out in the fourth, Jorge Soler took care of a hanging changeup and deposited it in the seats in left-center to give the Braves a 1-0 lead.

Following a Freddie Freeman double and a walk to Dansby Swanson, Adam Duvall came through with the decisive hit in the game, as he hit a bullet just out of the reach of Orioles center fielder, Cedric Mullins, driving in both Freeman and Swanson and extending the Braves lead to 3-0.

Toussaint gave up a pair of doubles in the bottom half of the fourth inning that plated a run for the Orioles, but that would be as close as Baltimore could get as pitching ruled the rest of the afternoon and the Braves finished up the road trip with a 3-1 win.

The Atlanta Braves have won thirteen straight road games and nine games in a row overall.

It might be easy for some to look at this current run that the Braves are on and dismiss it.  The Braves’ nine-game winning streak has come against teams that are not going to the playoffs and are a combined 87 games under .500 (47 of those games belonging to the Orioles).

But this is baseball and it is hard to win nine in a row against any set of opponents.

Just ask Philadelphia, who was swept by Arizona earlier this week.  Or St. Louis, who spent the weekend dropping two of three to the cellar-dwelling Pittsburgh Pirates.

The bottom line is that the Braves came to the ballpark ready to play and took care of business against teams that it may have been hard to get up for.

And that “one game at a time” mindset has reaped great rewards.

When this road trip began on August 13th the Atlanta Braves sat one game behind the Philadelphia Phillies.  They return home on August 22nd five games ahead of those very same Phillies.

The Braves will see just how hot they are on the upcoming homestand as they have five games against two teams that will most likely be playing post-season baseball this year.

The New York Yankees will be up first.  The Yankees — just like the Braves — are winners of nine games in a row and have really been coming on as of late.

After consecutive days off on Wednesday and Thursday, the Braves will welcome in the team with the best record in the majors, the San Francisco Giants.  The Giants are 80-44 this season and have won seven of their last ten games.

These two series should be a lot of fun and will provide the Braves a good litmus test of how they stack up to two of baseball’s better teams.

This Braves team isn’t perfect.  But they have a number of guys with big-game experience on their roster and are peaking at the right time.  And as the last three weeks have shown, this team is going to show up every night and battle until the bitter end.

And with all the adversity the Braves have dealt with this year, what more can we really ask for?