​Let’s begin with one image. It’s the only image you truly need: in a tie game, over the course of three batters, Michael Harris II launched a ball screaming at more than 105 mph. The combination of that velocity and the angle gave him a hit roughly 60 percent of the time and would have been a home run in 26 of MLB’s 30 ballparks. That ball, though, was caught at the wall. Then pinch-hitter Jimmy Crooks sent another ball screaming over 102 mph, with a similar velocity-angle mix that produced a hit about 60 percent of the time and would’ve cleared fences in 24 of MLB’s 30 parks. That one wasn’t caught at the wall and instead landed as a game-ending homer.
As I’ve been mulling this for over a month, I keep thinking, “This is why the Braves built that cushion.” Yet even with that cushion, the feeling isn’t comforting when moments like this unfold. Add to that the Braves’ stubborn commitment to give their preferred “good relievers” as much rest as possible, and it’s no surprise we stayed up until around 1:30 a.m. ET dealing with this.
This game once belonged to Chris Sale. He had a rough previous start but opened strong, fanning five through three innings before rain curtailed his night. There was a hiccup in the third—an accompanying double and a walk—but Ivan Herrera did nothing consequential with a hanging first-pitch slider. The night’s narrative also featured Kyle Leahy, for a time the Braves’ opponent on the mound. Leahy retired eight Braves in a row to start, yielded a single to Jim Jarvis, and then escaped a jam when JJ Wetherholt snagged a Michael Harris II liner, a play that came with a big signing announced today.
Then the skies opened and the rain delayed play for nearly three hours, turning Busch Stadium into Busch Lake. When play resumed, both sides seemed to be fighting sleep. Mike Yastrzemski opened the fifth with a double, moved to scoring position on a grounder from Austin Riley, and eventually came home on a hard grounder back up the middle. That was the Braves’ lone run of the night, a tally they might have added to if Wetherholt hadn’t snagged another liner for the third out of that same inning. In the sixth, Drake Baldwin nearly delivered a two-run homer, though his blast bent just foul at the last moment.
Victor Mederos delivered two shutdown innings after the rain, but Didier Fuentes let the lead slip away: a one-out walk, a slow, seeing-eye single that found the “waste” part of the plate, and a hard-hit liner the other way by Jordan Walker. Fuentes and the defense managed to keep the tie intact, and Tyler Kinley erased a leadoff walk with a double play in the seventh. That set the stage for the eighth, and the moment captured in the image above. Harris didn’t homer, Danny Young—no, not Dylan Lee—entered and watched Jimmy Crooks launch a sweeper into the stands. That swing essentially sealed the result for the night.
For an extra sting of “you’ve kept me up past 1 a.m. for this?” Baldwin followed with another deep drive off closer Riley O’Brien, a moment not quite optimized for search engine optimization, but another reminder of the night’s back-and-forth drama. The longer arc remains this: a cushion that was supposed to provide security, tested by late-inning heroics, and a reminder of how quickly momentum can swing on a single, perfectly measured swing.