​ST. LOUIS (AP) – Matt Olson, the first baseman for the Atlanta Braves, etched his name into franchise lore Friday night against the St. Louis Cardinals by extending his streak of consecutive games played to 741, surpassing Dale Murphy’s previous record of 740 set from 1981 to 1986. Olson, who joined the Braves as a free agent before the 2022 season after parts of six seasons with the Oakland Athletics, has started 740 of his 741 Braves appearances. The lone exception came on September 24, 2022, in Philadelphia, when he took the field in the bottom of the eighth inning as a defensive replacement.
“This is quite an accomplishment,” Braves manager Walt Weiss said. “This is a tough league. We play virtually every day, so to do something like that is mind boggling, really. The Ripken comparison is in another universe, but what Matt Olson is doing is really, really impressive.”
Olson’s current streak marks his 875 consecutive games overall, placing him ninth on the all-time MLB list. He is 20 games shy of matching Stan Musial’s 895-game stretch for the St. Louis Cardinals from 1952 to 1957. Cal Ripken Jr. famously logged 2,632 consecutive games for Baltimore from May 1982 through September 1998. Olson’s last absence came on May 1, 2021, when he sat out three games for the A’s after suffering a left eye contusion during batting practice on April 29.
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