ATLANTA -- After eking out just five runs across their first three games in June, the Braves' offense finally broke out, scoring five runs in the third inning and taking a 10-4 lead into the ninth inning on Thursday at Truist Park.
But the Diamondbacks bit back with an even more potent seven-run explosion in the top of the ninth to hand the Braves an 11-10 loss. It was the first time the Braves blew a six-run lead in the ninth inning and lost since July 17, 1973, against the Mets, which snapped a string of 766 wins with a six-run lead after eight innings, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
“Six runs up in the ninth, you feel like you should win the game,” Atlanta manager Brian Snitker said. “It’s a horrible loss, and now we get to sit on it for five hours on the airplane. We’re all going to be miserable, and we should. We didn’t execute. We got to put the game away, and we didn’t do that.”
A day later, the Braves recalled former closer Craig Kimbrel and left-hander Dylan Dodd from Triple-A Gwinnett. The club also placed right-hander Daysbel Hernández on the 15-day injured list, retroactive to Thursday, with right forearm inflammation. Reliever Scott Blewett, who allowed five runs to the D-backs, was traded to the Orioles for cash considerations.
In 18 outings for Double-A Columbia and Triple-A Gwinnett, Kimbrel struck out 23 batters in 18 innings with a 2.00 ERA and three saves.
Kimbrel, who pitched for Atlanta from 2010-14 before he was traded to the Padres before the 2015 season, is the Braves' all-time saves leader with 186.
After a tough 2024 season with Baltimore, the 37-year-old right-hander signed a Minor League deal with Atlanta in March.
“We’re going to mix and match, and guys are going to get a lot more opportunities,” Snitker said of his struggling bullpen. “We’re going to have to make it work, because it’s what we got.”
Before the ninth-inning collapse, the Braves were on their way to a rousing offensive victory. Their five-run third inning helped them tie their season-high run total. Austin Riley, Matt Olson, Marcell Ozuna and Ozzie Albies all knocked in run-scoring hits to give Atlanta a 6-0 lead.
In the bottom of the sixth, Drake Baldwin blasted a no-doubt towering homer to the Chop House in right field one pitch after Ronald Acuña Jr. smashed Tommy Henry’s full-count curveball just over the brick wall in right-center field. The prior inning, Riley smoked a 113.1 mph liner to the out-of-town scoreboard behind the visitors’ bullpen off Henry, making it a solo shot apiece on the day for the first three batters in the Braves’ lineup.
The ninth-inning bullpen implosion began when Lourdes Gurriel Jr. deposited a high fly ball into his team’s bullpen beyond the left-field fence with one out, a solo homer off Blewett to make it 10-5 Atlanta. Blewett then walked Tim Tawa before allowing his third homer of the day to Alek Thomas, a drive to the top of the right-field stands.
After Blewett walked Jose Herrera on four pitches all over the place, Snitker called upon beleaguered closer Raisel Iglesias, who had allowed the opponent to score in seven of his prior 10 appearances. Corbin Carroll reached well below the zone to hit a double off the right-center-field wall before Ketel Marte and Illdemaro Vargas hit RBI singles.
“Honestly, [Iglesias] made some decent pitches at the end there,” catcher Drake Baldwin said. “The Corbin Caroll hit was below the zone on his best pitch. It’s a good piece of hitting, but some balls found holes as well. That’s baseball; stuff like that happens. Instead of that ground ball Marte hit, if it goes to an infielder, the game’s over then, and we win by a couple runs. So [there's] a lot of what-ifs, but that one didn’t go our way.”
Eugenio Suárez, who struck out to start the inning, found redemption in a go-ahead double lined into the left-field corner. Marte and Vargas scored to give Arizona its only lead of the game, prompting boos from much of the announced crowd of 33,902. The boos continued with a walk of Gurriel before Tawa flew out to center to end one of the worst half-innings in Braves fans’ recent memories.
“The beautiful thing about baseball is you get to do it all again tomorrow,” said reliever Aaron Bummer, who helped extinguish Arizona’s fourth-inning rally and pitched a scoreless top of the fifth. “You take whatever happened today with you into the shower, you wash it off in the shower, and you move onto the next. It’s obviously harder sometimes, but that’s where we have to be. We got to go out there and find a way to win a game tomorrow, and forget about today -- it’s honestly as simple as that.”