So many things happened in the Braves’ 9-5 nightcap loss to the Cardinals on Saturday that it feels like the game wasn’t nine innings played over two-and-a-half hours, but maybe an entire geochronologic era. In the end, though, the Braves proved unable to overcome a .500 BABIP by the Cardinals despite four homers of their own and a bunch of barreled outs by their opponents, settling for a split of the doubleheader.
The game got out of hand pretty early. Masyn Winn started the game with a triple and scored on a sacrifice fly, The Braves tied it up with a leadoff triple by Jarred Kelenic that came as a result of a terrible route and nowhere-near dive by Lars Nootbaar in right field, and an Ozzie Albies single through second baseman Nolan Gorman. It looked like they might get even more against Cardinals starter Sonny Gray when Austin Riley nearly hit a homer down the right-field line, but after review, the blast was ruled foul, and Riley later struck out.
The tie didn’t last long, as Gorman hit a one-out, one-on homer off a hanging Bryce Elder slider into right-center. That one had no chance of being ruled foul, and the Braves were down 3-1 instead of up 3-1. But then, things got even worse, as a walk, a steal, a slow roller single, a seeing-eye roller single, and then a more traditional hard-hit grounder single made it a 5-1 game before Elder could escape.
From that point on, it felt like it was going to be all Cardinals for a while. For the next eight batters, the Braves got just a single off Gray, and that single was immediately erased on a double play ball. Meanwhile, Elder kind of went ham peripherals-wise with the game in blowout mode, striking out five straight batters at one point. Things looked marginally brighter when Marcell Ozuna took Gray deep in the fourth, but after his fourth and fifth consecutive strikeout, Elder gave up a homer to Brendan Donovan to keep it a four-run affair.
Elder ended up having a really weird outing, with a 10.80 ERA, 5.37 FIP because of the two homers, but a 1.65 xFIP because of the 9/1 K/BB ratio. It probably felt worse than it was because of the timing of the runs allowed and the fact that his carving up of Cardinals hitters came in what was effectively garbage time, but it’s something to build on… ish.
