ATLANTA – Maybe he just needed a little home cooking. Reese Olson, who grew up some 54 miles from Atlanta in Gainesville, Ga., shook off whatever was ailing him in his three previous starts and in front of at least 50 friends and family members, spun a gem against his boyhood team Monday night at Truist Field. The Tigers’ right-hander pitched six scoreless innings, allowing just four hits with eight strikeouts. Five of the last six outs he recorded were strikeouts. But it had to feel like déjà vu for him. Earlier in the year, he made six starts where he allowed two runs or fewer and the Tigers lost all of them. Same story. Ozzie Albies sent a four-seam fastball from reliever Shelby Miller 407 feet into the second deck in right field in the bottom of the eighth, giving the Atlanta Braves a 2-1 win over the Tigers. Miller had retired the first two hitters in the bottom of the eighth but left the 1-1 heater up and in the middle of the plate. The ball left his bat at 108 mph. The Tigers (34-38) are 1-4 on this road trip. Former Tiger Joe Jimenez pitched a clean ninth for the Braves and earned his first save of the season. Olson, who had been tagged for 17 earned runs in losing his previous three starts, established both his four-seam and two-seam fastballs in the first inning and then proceeded to keep a talent-laden Braves lineup off balance with a well-sequenced blend of sliders, change-ups and knuckle-curves. He was varying the speeds on his slider, throwing as slowly as 82 mph and has hard as 87 mph. Rookie Forrest Wall, who would have his moment later in the game, felt the full effect of both pitches. Just called up from Triple-A, Wall saw four straight sliders from Olson and took a called third strike to end the second inning. Next time up, in the fifth, Olson started him out with a slider and then got two ugly swings at change-ups, a three-pitch punch-out. The Braves got runners in scoring position in the second inning (leadoff double by Austin Riley) and third (single and stolen base by Jarred Kelenic) but he stranded both. He struck out Adam Duvall and Wall to get out of the second, and the dangerous Marcell Ozuna with Kelenic at third base in the third. Olson set up Ozuna with 95 and 96 mph two-seamers and then got him swinging too soon at a changeup. The Tigers were having their own problems with Braves lefty Max Fried. He dominated them the first time through the order, collecting four strikeouts, three of them called third strikes. But the Tigers started driving up his pitch count. With two outs in the fourth, Riley Greene and former Braves prospect Justyn-Henry Malloy walked around a base hit by Gio Urshela. But Fried played on rookie Colt Keith’s aggressiveness, getting him to hit a first-pitch rollover grounder to second base.
