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PHILADELPHIA – It was Friday afternoon, a few hours before another important game against the rival Philadelphia Phillies, when Atlanta Braves manager Brian Snitker was asked about Matt Olson’s resurgence and what it meant for an offense that toggled between erratic and moribund for much of the season.
“Like when we started scoring runs there in Minnesota, he was a big part of that,” Snitker said, referencing the Braves’ three-game sweep against the Twins to begin the two-city trip, when they hit .278 with a .341 OBP while outscoring Minnesota 23-13.
“We’ll take it any way we can get it, any help we can get. Because we had been struggling to score runs,” Snitker said. “Hopefully this a sign that we’re going to get more consistent, and maybe some of these guys will get hot at the right time.”
Olson is finishing off easily his best month in a season that was shaping up as the worst of his career. But other Braves, too, are showing signs of being ready to produce at a higher level during the homestretch and playoff race than they did before their late-summer surges.
Players such as Orlando Arcia, whose two home runs Friday helped the Braves roll to a 7-2 win against the Phillies and Ranger Suárez, who lasted just four innings. Arcia homered off the lefty to lead off the third inning and added a 421-foot two-out solo homer off right-hander Max Lazar in the sixth.
🚨 NOT A REPLAY 🚨
Second homer of the night for Orlando #BravesCountry pic.twitter.com/D9ACnA2GVH
— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) August 31, 2024
In a matchup of All-Star pitchers, Atlanta’s Reynaldo López was far superior to his counterpart, working six innings of one-run ball and allowing four hits and one walk with six strikeouts while trimming his ERA to 2.00 —the lowest in the majors among pitchers with 100 or more innings.
López is 2-0 with a 1.06 ERA in three starts against the Phillies this season (all Atlanta wins), surrendering just seven hits and five walks with 22 strikeouts in 17 innings.
“Just got to lay off the slider, lay off that big curveball,” said Bryce Harper, who doubled in the first and third innings Friday and was stranded both times, then struck out to start the sixth in his last at-bat against López. “I think if we do that, we’ll take it to our advantage. He’s been really good all year. He’s done that to everybody. So just have to try to nitpick the best we can when we’re up there — look for our pitch to hit, get the one in the zone as much as possible. Lay off that slider or curveball out of the zone. Obviously, that’s tough.”
López has the lowest ERA against the Phillies in three or more starts in a season by any pitcher since Jacob deGrom, who allowed no earned runs in 18 innings against them in 2018.
The Braves are 7-4 against the Phillies and clinched the 13-game season series with the win. But they remain five games behind the National League East-leading Phillies with 27 games left for each team, including their last two head-to-head this weekend.
“I think there’s a little bit more of a sense of adrenaline when you’re facing that team,” López said through an interpreter about the Phillies, who’ve eliminated the Braves from the playoffs the past two Octobers. “They’re a good squad and it’s one of those things where you kind of know, to go through the postseason you’re going to have to go through them as well. That adds a little bit more enthusiasm and fun to the game.”
On Friday, López said his breaking ball and off-speed pitches were difference makers.
“Most teams, most guys are probably sitting on my fastball and my slider,” he said. “I think the last two times facing these guys some keys to success have been the curveball and the change-up, utilizing those pitches. It even took me by surprise how much the curveball was working, just getting some guys off-balance when I was throwing it, and especially keeping it low in the zone.”
Olson had a run-scoring double in the seventh inning to extend his streak to seven games with at least one extra-base hit, a career high. The big first baseman hit a majestic 450-foot drive over the center-field batter’s eye among his two homers in Thursday’s gut-wrenching 5-4 loss, when the Braves blew a 4-0 lead.
Arcia’s leadoff homer in the third inning Friday gave the Braves a 1-0 lead, one they wouldn’t relinquish. His two-out solo homer in the sixth gave Arcia his second career two-homer game and first since 2019, when he was with Milwaukee.
The third-inning homer was followed moments later by one from Sean Murphy, another 2023 Braves All-Star who’s struggled for much of the season, after straining an oblique on Opening Day against the Phillies and spending two months on the IL. Those back-to-back jacks took some of the gusto out of the leather-lunged denizens at Citizens Bank Park, at least temporarily.
They love to boo Arcia after last year’s postseason incident, when his “Attaboy, Harper” comment after Game 2 of the NLDS — a reference to Harper’s baserunning mistake on the game-ending double play — was overheard and reported by a media member, and led to stares from the Phillies star at Arcia as Harper rounded the bases after each of his two homers in Game 3 at Philadelphia.
“I like to think that I’m just a player who goes out there and tries to enjoy his game,” Arcia said through an interpreter. “If they boo me, I’ve still got to go out there and take those at-bats, so it doesn’t really change much.”
Asked if he heard the boos, Arcia laughed and said, “I think the whole world could hear it.”
Midseason pickups Whit Merrifield and Ramón Laureano have hit far better as injury replacements with the Braves than they did with teams that released them earlier this season, Merrifield with the Phillies, Laureano the Guardians.
But it’s the improvement of Olson and Arcia, both All-Stars a year ago when Olson led the majors in homers and RBIs, that gives Snitker and the Braves reason to believe the offense has turned a corner. Because they know full well what both players, each in the prime of his career, can do when on a roll.
Oly staying on it 🔥#BravesCountry pic.twitter.com/hMdcUrmlgN
— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) August 31, 2024
If they can keep Olson right where he is and have Arcia and Murphy produce close to the levels they did last year to become 2023 All-Stars, then the Braves might finally be a multi-threat offense again, after relying on Marcell Ozuna to carry so much of the load for four months.
Arcia has three homers, two doubles, eight walks and an OPS near .850 in his past 11 games, and in his past 40 games he’s hit .268 with an OPS approaching .800. If that sounds modest, consider that through his first 90 games, he hit .209 with a .576 OPS and was arguably the worst-hitting everyday player in the majors.
“It makes me really happy,” he said of his improvement. “That’s why you put in the work every day, to get those types of results. I just thank God for the way things have been going lately.”
While Arcia’s second-half decline last season made it a little less shocking to see him struggle this season, there was no harbinger of the decline that Olson would experience coming off the best season of his career, one that saw him bat .283 with an NL-best .604 slugging percentage while leading the majors with 54 home runs and 139 RBIs, setting Braves franchise records in both of the latter categories.
This season was four months of frustration for Olson, with only a one-week spurt here or two-week surge there breaking up the extended slumps. He was hitting .233 with 15 homers, a .395 slugging percentage and .697 OPS in 106 games through July 30 — more than 200 points below last year’s slugging and nearly 200 points below his .993 OPS from a year ago.
But then he got hot, and not just for a couple of series. In his past 29 games, beginning July 31, Olson has hit .282 with 20 extra-base hits, including 10 homers and 29 RBIs, while slugging about .650 and OPS’ing just over 1.000.
“Now it’s been going for a little while, so that’s a really good thing to see,” Snitker said. “Along with Marcell, and anybody else that wants to chip in, they’re more than welcome.”
Snitker added of his team, “These guys are fighting their rears off, man. We’re kind of in a day-to-day mode, where we’ve got to win today, regardless of series, we need every win we can get. It’s good to see them bounce back, that was a tough loss yesterday.”
(Photo of Orlando Arcia: Bill Streicher / USA TODAY Sports)
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Courtesy : https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5735452/2024/08/30/braves-reynaldo-lopez-orlando-arcia-phillies/