Well, last night was fun. 15 to 1 laughers tend to be that way. Hopefully, this sets the tone for the remainder of the season. How about 5 barrels for the Braves and 1 for the Rangers? One of those barrels was Austin Riley’s home run off a catcher. Another hard hit ball was reliever Victor Mederos’ 103 MPH RBI single. Can we spend a moment watching this again?
That’s an 80.1 MPH swing right there. Eephus or not, that’s quite a rip. The Braves had 15 batted balls at greater than 99 MPH of exit velocity. That’s their second highest total this season and is tied for 11th in all MLB games. Maybe the message is out: swing hard at strikes and kill, don’t try to place it. It seemed to be on display last night, at least.
Yes, it’s one game. And Cal Quantrill was definitely trying to be a little too fine. That does play into the other Braves approach, which is to take until deep in the count. The Braves did pick up nine hits with two strikes. But also starter Quantrill only got to throw 3.74 pitches per plate appearance. I don’t have a z-swing percentage (swings at pitches in the zone) at this hour, but I’m gonna say it was really high.
So are the Braves seeking strikes to destroy now? Please, please, please make it so.
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