World Champions!! 2021 Braves Beat Astros

Jorge Soler launches an out-of-the-park homer in Game Six.  This was the beginning of the end for the Houston Astros.  Soler would go on to become MVP for the series.

 

“The Atlanta Braves are in the World Series.”  Wow.  I got to say that over and over before the series started...and during.  I felt so elated from winning the NLCS that it just seemed that whatever happened next was gravy.  I didn't particularly care whether we won it or not.  I was just enjoying the moment with this team and thinking we had a good chance at winning if we could maintain momentum.  Fivethirtyeight featured an article where this was one of the closest match-ups in World Series history.

Also, no one has ever led-off a Game One of the World Series with a home run.   Playing in Houston, Jorge Soler, our Designated Hitter, became the first player to do that.  Amazing.  History on the first at-bat.  He went on to have a two-hit game, as did Ozzie Albies and Eddie Rosario.  Austin Riley provided an RBI double and Adam Duvall hit a two-run homer as the Braves jumped on the Astros early for a 6-2 Game One win.

Winning the first game of the series is always a big story.  But the biggest story of this Game One was the Braves lost their ace starter Charlie Morton in the third inning.  His injury actually occurred in the second inning when a sharply hit ball back up the middle struck Morton above his right ankle.  He finished that inning and came back out for the third.  He managed to strike out the first batter in the third but immediately started hobbling around the mound and was taken out of the game.

Morton's fibula was fractured.  It is incredible that he managed to hang in there for the rest of the second and go back out there in the third, striking out a batter with his leg broken.  Talk about a gutsy performance.  Nevertheless, probably our best starting pitcher would miss the rest of the World Series and that really sucked.  The Braves did not have a lot of depth in the starting pitcher position to begin with.  But, as they had all season long, they would have to somehow overcome yet another big injury.  Somebody would have to step up.  

That Game One win had me tasting victory again and it marked the end of my peaceful, nonchalant attitude toward the series.  There was blood in the water.  I wanted to win.  I wanted to be World Series Champions.  So, I was amped up for Game Two with Max Fried starting in Houston.  FOX announcer John Smoltz (strange to write that!) called the Fried versus the Astros line-up as “power on power.”  Fried was at his best when pitching inside.  Houston hitters were geared to hit inside pitching.

Fried lost the power battle, allowing 6 runs in 5 innings by the relentless Astros line-up.  They feasted on our inside stuff.  Our bullpen limited the damage after that.  Of note, Kyle Wright (a potential starter Game Five) came in the finish the game for us and struck out all three batters he faced on 12 pitches.  Impressive.  Houston beat Atlanta 7-2.

So far, Duvall and Joc Pederson were hitting .125 for the Braves.  Collectively, they struck out five times in Game Two.  That won't win the series.  Travis d'Arnuad, Dansby Swanson, Soler, and Albies were all hitting the ball well.  Rosario (leading off in Game Two) had cooled off as had Riley.  Freddie Freeman is playing solidly which was a good sign.

The Braves defense committed two errors in Game Two.  This is what happens when the momentum of everything shifts against you.  You don't play well in addition to the other team dominating you.  Nothing goes your way.  Every close call goes against you and the other team his riding the wave hit after hit and out after out.  

Momentum had clearly shifted toward Houston coming into Atlanta for Game Three.  Ian Anderson would start for the Braves.  Our “primary” bullpen was all rested because Game Two was finished by our “secondary” relievers.  I felt we still had a chance.  Our bats needed to give our young Mr. Anderson some breathing space.

It was raining that Friday night.  For that reason, there was no batting practice by either team before Game Three.  This likely was a disadvantage for the Astros.  Few of their players had ever seen Truist Park.  They had no ability to get out there a get a feel for the space.  The game started in a heavy mist that came and went throughout the course of the innings.  Even though it was only 50 degrees, it was a wet 50 degrees and pitchers on both teams were blowing into their hand to keep it warm so they could feel the ball.

Actually, both pitchers threw pretty well.  Houston's Luis Garcia only allowed one run through 3.2 innings but was pulled because of wildness.  He walked four guys (the Braves showed discipline at the plate) while giving up three hits.  Anderson also struggled a bit with control, walking three while striking out four through 5 innings.  What made Anderson's outing special is he did not give up a hit.

Braves manager Brian Snitker pulled him after five despite the no-hitter.  Anderson became only the second player (after the great Don Larsen) to hurl five or more innings in a World Series game without giving up a hit.  This brought his postseason ERA down to an astonishing 1.26 over eight appearances, the third best all-time.  Legendary stuff.  But, the fact was Anderson pitched behind a lot of hitters and struggled more than his stats might indicate.  With his best bullpen specialists fully rested, Snitker made the right move.

A.J. Minter took 17 pitches to get two strikeouts in his scoreless inning.  Luke Jackson was masterful, needing only 11 pitches to carry the no-hitter into the eighth.  Tyler Matzek struck out one Astro and, unfortunately, had a badly hit bloop fly drop in for a hit.  Rosario probably could have caught it but apparently he let up on his hard run when he thought he might collide with Swanson, who was drifting back to also try to catch the ball hit so shallowly. Will Smith gave up another hit but finished the Astros off like clockwork otherwise to seal the 2-0 Game Three win for the Braves.  Our guys were ready and in control.  No walks over the final four innings.  Dominating.

I was completely wrong.  Apparently what we needed was incredible pitching, not great hitting.  It turned out we did not need to score a bunch of runs in this game.  We only needed one – and we got two.  Riley doubled in a run in the bottom of the third and d'Arnaud belted a home run to center to give Atlanta the only runs they needed for the win.  That was good enough.

d'Arnaud was batting .417 for the series.  Maybe he was going to be the hot bat we needed to step up.  Otherwise, the Braves struck out ten times in the game and managed just six hits.  No one else seemed hot for us at the plate.  We had a bunch of guys that were doing “good enough” but no one really shined with the bat.  Riley had gotten a big hit in Game Three but also struck out twice with runners on base.  He should drive those runners in.  That one thing would make a huge difference.  We are not closing the deal offensively when we have “ducks on the pond.”

Game Four was going to be our first of two consecutive “bullpen games.”  Now the loss of Charlie Morton came into play.  Without Morton to come back and start Game Five our bullpen would have to handle back-to-back games for us.  I wondered if back-to-back bullpen games had ever happened before in the World Series.

I was even more interested to see how Snitker would manage things.  I figured he would rest Minter so he could start Game Five and would probably go with the Chavez/Smyly combo in Game Four.  No matter what, I felt that our pitchers were locked-in. Possibly, Morton's gutsy yet tragic Game One performance inspired them.  We really needed to win both these games.  We didn't want to let the series go back to Houston.  Could these rancorous crowds make a difference?  Maybe it already had.  The Braves were 6-0 at home this postseason.  That boded well.

Make that 7-0 but it wasn't easy.  Snitker fooled the whole world by deciding to start Dylan Lee, a rookie who had pitched less than 5 innings of major league ball and had never started a game in the majors.  It was the first time in World Series history a pitcher made his first major league start in the WS.  It seemed ballsy to me.  Turned out to be exactly that, but not the way I thought.

Lee threw a bunch of balls and walked two batters, he struck one batter out and gave up a weak infield hit.  Suddenly, the bases were loaded with one out and Lee was wild.  Snitker pulled him for the guy I originally thought he might be grooming for the job.  Kyle Wright (who sucked so bad in Game Three of last year's NLCS) came in to this threatening situation and did what the Braves bullpen has done all postseason.  Slam the door with a strikeout.  The Braves won a thrilling Game Four 3-2.

Although one run scored then and another later, Wright went on to pitch an important 4.2 innings that saved Snitker using one or two more pitchers.  It meant Minter could rest for a possible Game Five start.  Wright was not commanding.  He allowed five hits and walked three batters.  He was constantly walking a tightrope of disaster.  But he manged to get the outs when he needed them.  

Chris Martin pitched around a base hit in the sixth.  After that it was Matzek, Jackson, and Smith.  Slam.  Slam.  Slam.  It was not an easy win at all.  And it took historic back-to-back home runs by Swanson and Soler (as a pinch hitter) to secure the win for us.  This was only the third game-tying and go-ahead back-to-back home runs ever hit in the World Series.  Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig did it for the Yankees in 1928 while Pedro Guerroro and Steve Yeager for the Dodgers in 1981.

Riley had two hits including a big one with two outs to drive in our badly needed first run.  He also made an outstanding lunging grab of a scalded drive headed down the third base line.  That saved a run from scoring.  The same can be said of Rosario who also contributed two hits, scored the game's first run on Riley's key hit, and contributed an outstanding catch on a well-hit ball to left which saved a double in a tight game.  
 
Freeman had a hit but it really didn't factor into anything.  He grounded into a double-play to take us out of an inning.  That wasn't the first time he'd done that this series.  Albies struck out twice and had not contributed offensively in awhile.  d'Arnaud struck out three times.  Soler was batting .333.  Swanson was at .250.  Duvall and Pederson looked anemic at the plate.  No one was really ripping the ball right now, but someone always seemed to step up and hit good enough to support this outstanding Braves bullpen.

The Braves never surrendered the momentum.  The crowd stayed active throughout the game with the chanting and chopping (which has nothing to do with racism, btw). Going into Game Five, I felt we were unbeatable at home this postseason.  Somehow, someway, we were going to close out the deal while our crowd was really in to it.  We clearly controlled the series momentum.

My World Championship cap from 1995.  I haven't worn it in years but I wore it today.

It was another bullpen game for Atlanta.  Thanks to Wright's good work, Snitker had a lot of options because his fine middle relievers were all rested.  I thought he would either go with Minter or with the Chavez/Smyly combo.  But what did I know?  He shocked the world with his choice of starter in the previous game.  Maybe he'd do it again.  He's got momentum.  It will work out well, no matter what he does.  I was that confident, the opposite of how I felt during the NLCS.

Once again, Snitker chose to go with unproven talent.  25-year-old Tucker Davidson, who had no record while starting four games for us in 2021.  It was a logical choice in one sense.  Davidson replaced the injured Morton on our roster and it was Morton's spot in the rotation.  So, another one of our seemingly endless supply of young lefties would get a chance to shut down the mighty Astros.

When Duvall hit a grand-slam in the bottom of the first inning I thought there was no way our pitchers would lose this game with the Braves up 4-0.  But that fleeting moment of triumph was soon deflated by the Astros line-up.  There were eight innings left to play and Davidson had nothing special.  He only managed six outs and soon enough the game was tied 4-4.  Freeman launched a homer in the bottom of the third to put us up by a run.

But Minter out of the bullpen didn't have it either, giving up 3 runs in the the fifth to put the Astros up for good.  Smyly allowed two more runs while finishing off the last three innings of the game.  Houston went on to an impressive 9-5 win in Game Five.  Their line-up was strong, scoring nine runs without a home run, a sign of very consistent hitting.  By contrast, all five of Atlanta's runs were the result of two home runs.  The Braves helped Houston by walking 6 batters and committing an error that ended up costing us two runs.

I could not help but wonder how things might have played out if Charlie Morton had been able to start.

Duvall's slam was fabulous in the moment, the stadium went berserk, but it meant nothing now.  Game Six (and Seven, if necessary) moved back to Houston.  Now the Braves would have to win it without that incredible crowd audibly behind them.  For the first time something occurred to me that I had felt throughout the NLCS.  We could choke.  Another big Braves mishap to add to a long history of sucking when it really counts.  My confidence wavered.  

But I was not afraid.  I was strangely at peace with Fried starting Game Six.  What worried me was we were not hitting very well.  Riley was batting .381 for the series, d'Arnaud at .350.  But, Albies, Swanson, and – despite the slam – Duvall were all being owned by Astros pitching. Everyone else was hitting just kind of so-so.  It just didn't feel that our line-up was hitting good enough to score many runs.  Instead, we would have to have great pitching, or we would let the triumph we felt in the moment of Duvall's grand slam slip away completely.  

Of course, the Astros clobbered Fried when they last met in Houston.  A fellow Braves fan was optimistic and reminded me that the Braves had not lost two consecutive games in the postseason.  That was true.  But it didn't seem to be important to me.  Momentum had swung back to the Astros at the precise moment we reached the zenith of victory.  

They had the advantage now and that meant Fried had to turn in a solid outing.  It would be whatever it would be.  That's why I was at peace.  Not because I thought we'd win but because I knew we were giving it all we had, after all we went through this season with injuries and losing most our games in the first half of 2021.  Back in June, I never thought we had the slightest chance of being here.  Yet, here we were on the greatest stage of baseball.  I was enjoying it.

Apparently, Snitker was enjoying the moment as well.  When asked by the media before Game Six if the Braves felt any pressure to win the series, Snit philosophically replied: “The pressure is getting here.  We're in the World Series right now.  There's no pressure.  Like I say, it's pressure in the NLCS when you're trying to get here.  We all want to finish this thing off, but there's no pressure.”

Max Fried strikes out a Houston batter to open the bottom of the fifth.  He was in control and backed up by a great defense in Game Six.

The Braves dominated the Astros in Game Six with a 7-0 win.  Fried was superb, tossing six innings of shutout ball, no walks, and six K's.  The Astros lineup had the momentum back but Fried did what needed to be done.  He took it away from them.  The Braves defense made some great catches and turned two timely double-plays to help end a couple of Houston threats.  We played fine in every facet Game Six. 

Matzek came in and was truly dominating with four K's, including striking out the side in the bottom of the eighth.  Relief does not come any better than that.  He was so in control, Snitker wisely let him pitch two innings.  Smith closed the door.  Our second shutout of the series.  Against probably the best offense in baseball.  Incredible.

Tyler Matzek tossed two innings in Game Six, striking out the side in the eighth.  His total postseason performance might be the most impressive of any Braves player.

Fried took momentum away from the Astros but Soler grabbed it by the throat with an epic 3-run out-of-the-park homer.  Over 10,000 fans came into Truist Park to watch the game on “Bravesvision,” the gigantic multimedia scoreboard and, of course, the Battery was packed watching it on big screen as well.  Soler's monster 460+ foot homer sent them all to their feet screaming and jumping.   

Suddenly, we were back to where we were when Duvall hit his grand slam the game before.  The crowd in Houston became subdued while Atlanta exploded.  Swanson added a 2-run homer.  Freeman blasted a solo shot in his final at-bat of the series.  Earlier, he drove-in a run with a double and finished the series with a solid .318 batting average.    Riley ended at .320 but struck out three times in Game Six.  

Soler was named World Series MVP, batting .300 with three home runs and six RBI.  Each of Soler's home runs gave Atlanta the lead.  Huge.  He and Swanson had added critical home runs despite the fact that most of our line-up never really got hot during the series.  Power and pitching were more than good enough in Game Six.  We owned that game.  The way you score a lot of runs without getting a lot of hits is to hit home runs.  The Atlanta Braves had massive firepower throughout the series.

“The Atlanta Braves are World Champions!”  I have not gotten to say that too many days in my life.  But I am saying it today and I'll probably be repeating it until next October.   This is the rare, glorious summit of my baseball fandom.  I have been a Braves fan all my long life.  I have seen them lose so many games, but in the last 30 years they have won more than they have lost.  Until they got to the World Series.  In the 1990's I cheered for them through five World Series matchups.  They only won one of them, and that was so sweet.  Now, 26 years later Atlanta has two.

Fivethirtyeight featured another article today entitled: "The Braves Turned A Lost Season Into A Championship."  And that pretty much sums it up.  For the longest time we were neither good nor bad, just kinda blah as a team.  It turns out that time was the longest in baseball history.  According to the article, no team had ever been under .500 so late in the season and won the World Series.  

There were only 55 games left in the season when the Braves were still under .500.  After that it was pretty much lights out. We started kicking butt.  We were definitely a force to be reckoned with.  The Astros did not give us anything.  We took the series.  Dominating in the end just so there was no confusion about it.

It feels close to nirvana.  I am content with the team.  It's just like Snitker said.  “No pressure.”

Nothing beats winning a World Series.  Nothing.  It's true, the Braves have only four championships in their 170+ year history (1914, 1957, 1995, 2021).  But maybe we are coming for more.  Maybe with Acuna and Soroka returning strong and fresh in 2022 and hopefully with the resigned Freeman (he's now a free agent) along with the rise of Riley, the outstanding Albies, and the solid, surprising Swanson, and who knows who else, this franchise just might be getting started.

Braves manager Brian Snitker hoists the World Series Championship Trophy after telling his team "you guys are going to be world champions for the rest of your lives."  Let the champagne deluge begin!