BRAVES POSTCAST: The Return of MVP Acuña leads Braves to win vs Philadelphia Phillies LIVE REACTION

0:00This is the Lockdown Podcast Network celebrating 10 years of your team every day. The Atlanta Braves beat the Philadelphia Phillies 5-4 to take the season series in folks. It looks like the MVP version of Ronald the Queenie Jr. just might be back. This is the Braves postcast. Your instant game reaction for the Atlanta Braves. Part of the Lockdown Podcast Network. More teams every day. Yes, welcome on into the Braves postcast. Now the number one sports podcast network. I'm your host Lindsay Crosby, author of the Braves today newsletter over at Braves today.com. He's Jake Masciani, host of Lockdown Braves. Special hello to our friends joining us from the Lockdown MLB YouTube channel.

1:04This episode is brought to you by our friends at CalShe for a limited time. Download the CalShe app, use code Lockdown to get $10 when you trade $10. There are a non-zero number of people in Braves country who have written off Ronald the Queenie Jr. Having a tough season, you did a whole show about he struggling with 14 fastballs. And we're going to get to the pitching, we're going to get to everybody else. But I regret to inform those people that the MVP version of Ronald the Queenie Jr. just might be back and we saw it in the A-thinning today. Time to reveal where the game was once or most. It's the turning point. Okay, so I didn't see Dylan Dodd giving up two home runs. The CalSheuerber one was, it's CalSheuerber. Pitch up in the above the zone. I'd amount of it at a great job on the broadcast explaining that's just a great swing by CalSheuerber. But when it land it comes out against Alex McFarland who's pumping 100.

2:06Mike Yostremsky one out single. Drake Baldwin hits a double to put him on second and third and I'm like okay, maybe you can do something here, right? Ronald the Queenie Jr. gets, make sure I have this one right, a 100.5 mile an hour fastball and just obliterates it. Like let me ask you something Jake. Just because a guy's been struggling with one specific pitch at times this season, is it a good idea to throw him seven in a row with six of them being pretty much the same location? No, it's feel like this has come up a lot lately. We talked about in that Dodd your series with Max Muncie where you kept, I think it was when Ted's where you just kept pumping fastballs, pumping fastballs like okay, when do you try to trick him and go with something different and you can kind of get in that zone because I understand like when a kune is going, you can't really throw a much of anything. But when he's had something he has struggled with so badly this year, if you got to make him beat you with it, you probably don't want it, not that it was down,

3:10it was still up, but you probably want that either in, up and in, a top to zone. If it's yeah, I mean it's hindsight obviously that's the pitch he's been struggling with, but at some point when do you try to throw a breaking ball up there and see if he flails at it? Glad he didn't and who knew who he was ready for it. Yeah, Ronald the Queenie Jr. pops that and it ties the game at four, sets the stage, for for the top of the ninth inning. Ozzy always lead off double moves to third on a Sean Murphy ground out. Min Austin Riley hits the triple, which ends up being the play of the game or sorry, the the winning run for Atlanta, Rysola Glacier, Slams the door shut in the ninth. Got a little hairy as it does at times, Bryson's got singles. He advances the second on a ground out. He moves to third on a pass ball, but Rysola Glacier comes through, get big line out to Mauricio DuPon for the second out. And Munozosa strikes out on some pretty good changeups below the zone for strikes two and three,

4:13took advantage of his aggressiveness there and got the thing. I want to talk about a lot of stuff here, right? I want to talk about Connor Malley, what he didn't do, which is a lower run today and everything else. The cleaning in from Dillingley. Before we do that, those of you here with us live, unlocked on Braves on that YouTube channel, the player, the game poll is out there. There are four choices because I just believe in giving people the freedom to choose, but I think we all know where it's going to go today. I want to ask you this, I know it feels like the offense is in a pretty bad place right now. And Matt Olson's kind of been the biggest culprit of that. We saw more of that today. But does that matter if you have this version of Ronald Likuni Jr. If you have the MVP caliber Ronald Likuni Jr. I feel like you have enough to at least be competitive. And then once these other guys come back around, which they have every time they've slumped this year, you're back to having one of the best offenses in baseball. Yeah, that's the hope, right? That you get all these guys going

5:18at the same time. Now that's hard to do. But I think what was supposed to be the the catalyst of this team is that you had a group of six or seven hitters in this lineup that are capable of carrying a team at any point. And then hopefully you got at least two of those three guys going at the same time. And it feels like this year it's been one guy going at one time and then another guy for a week and like you haven't had that two or three going at one time. Ronald can carry you like I'm not saying you can carry you two worlds here. He's going to need some help. But he drove in four runs today. He drove in four runs today. He is certainly capable of doing that when he is in his own like this. And again, you're going to need Matt Olsen get going. You're going to need Drake Paul when Tina do his thing. You're going to need contributions from Harris. You're going to continue to need Riley who again, give him credit for the big yet that he had there in the ninth inning against Durant. I mean, one of the best closures in baseball. That's that's something to get back into the Akunia bat because I can talk about it for the next 20 minutes. But yeah, to your point when we already kind of touched on

6:18the fact that he he knows what his struggles are and you know, you're getting those four Siemens and to foul those off. Like it's not it's not like he just got a four Seamer up and he just cooked it like very first time. They threw some up there that he had to foul off. He fell behind oh two on this one. He got a fastball in. He got another fastball with the top of the zone. Three straight or they were all four Siemens, but they are all really at the top of the zone like I was talking about. He got one four Seamer that was down in a way off the plate was a close pitch. But I mean, he had to he had to foul off some tough pitches and for he could get to that one. And the fact that it is just one of one like up in a way and he pull it to left field like that is just insanity to me. So yeah, you started out the show with the haters out there. There are brave fans that just hate Ronald like no matter what doesn't matter what he does. They're just going to hate him. I don't understand it. The guy is incredible. And you've probably filled with these questions I have to we need to just cut Ronald. He needs to go. I'm sorry man when Ronald is on

7:22and I understand it's frustrating. He gets injured. He's frustrated by it too. I promise you he does not want that for himself. Yeah. But when he is on it is slow until watch. I mean, just beyond the rest of this lineup right now is not incredibly fun to watch. But when Ronald isn't a group like this, you got to be up there. And on the hills of the comments from Zach Will yesterday, which were blown a little bit out of the proportion because it was just clip, you know, the one part that he said, but still on the hills of that. And then coming through and doing that while he's getting booed like rising to the occasion, the clutch moment, just so fun, so great to see Ronald being able to do that after what's been a frustrating year for him. And when you go, when you listen to the whole thing, we learned when it a little bit more on Ronald too. But yeah, I mean, it was it was Philly media trying to start something and the thing that I that I appreciated with the way Ronald handled that. And we're going to break it in a second. I would is he didn't do anything different in this home run trot that he's done the rest of the time. Now maybe he did it a little bit slower or a lot slower. Yeah. He did take his time. But he didn't really actually do

8:26anything different. There was the euro step that you should on this one. Sorry to me to cut you off. But this was a game tying home run. Yeah. The one yesterday, I get it. You're down three. Oh, it's a solo shot. This is one. If you're going to party it up a little bit, this is the time you do it. Yeah. And then of course they didn't do it. I'd be curious to see if he gets thrown at tomorrow just because that feels like a thing Philly would do. All right. Would we come back? I want to give some brief flowers to Mikey Stremsky. And then we will talk about the pitching here. We will talk about Tyler Mallee. We'll talk about Dylan Lee's cleaning in Rise of a Glacier. We'll do all of that next right here on the Braze postcast. Can we talk about one of the more underrated organs in your body? It's your liver. That's your body's filter processing everything you consume and performing more than 500 functions every day to involve in things like energy production, digestion, fat metabolism, and vitamin storage. So it's doing a lot of work behind the scenes. And that's why given your liver daily support can be an important part of building healthy habits. Dose for your liver is a clinically backed liver health supplement designed to support that we live a function.

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10:32premium comfort, performance, and durability designed for whatever your day brings. Use promo code locked on it. Check out for 20% off your purchase stance, the official sock partner of Major League Baseball learn more at stance dot com. If you have a sweet tooth, you know how tough it is to find the perfect treat without all the sugar. That's why the fruity rainbow five hour energy shot brings that nostalgic flavor back in a whole new way. Fruity rainbow five hour energy shots treat your taste buds to an explosion of fruity flavor with a tasty caffeine kick. It's a quick easy way to satisfy that sweet craving while keeping things simple and on the go. Get candy flavored chaos with five with fruity rainbow five hour energy shots available online at fivehourenergy.com or Amazon. All right, Jake, you there was a point that you wanted to make about the the Acunia home run before we move on real quick. Yeah, like I said, I can talk about this at that for 20 minutes, but the fact that you have a struggling Olsen on deck, which is maybe a storyline we can, I know we talked

11:35about a lot yesterday. You had first base open. You could have pitched around a Ronald Ronald walked Ronald. Olsen wasn't going to hit on there with the way that he's been going lately, but they decided to pitch to him and challenging with those four seamers, which again, I just think is another great indication of where Ronald is right now that they've been Phillies probably felt pretty confident with Ronald struggles against four seamers and you got a guy that's throwing 101 that you felt confident enough with a struggling hitter on deck and a guy that is red hot at the play in Ronald. Like if that's on the other side in Kyle Schwarber is red hot and Harper's on deck and there's first base open in near the braves. Are you pitching to Schwarber in that spot? Like, I don't think so. I don't know. It's a three-run game at that point, but that was a decision there that I thought while Ronald was round on the bases like, hey, first base was open and Matt Olsen was on deck. It may be met with a lefty. Maybe it's a different story too, right? But yeah, just another little thing in that at that. There you go. Before we get to Tyler Malley real quick, a little bit of

12:36love for Mike Ystremsky. He goes one for three. He draws a walk. He scores both times. He gets on but his strikeout in the third inning. Fourteen pitches. Aaron Nola was absolutely cruising in this game and at one point like half the pitches he had thrown in the day were all two Mike Ystremsky because Ystremsky just kept making him work and kept making him work and kept making him work. All right. Tyler Malley gets tagged for two runs in the first inning. It's because of the rare defensive error from Mauricio Dubon. He did not allow any earned runs today. So six innings, four hits, one walk. He only strikes out three and this is something where it felt like they were really kind of comfortable with his with with the limited pitch selection that he had. But Tyler Malley, 142 ERA for the Braves. You heard CZ mentioned on the broadcast. It's been a very great talking point of his. Just like it's been one of mine. Best ERA of any starter traded at the

13:38deadline. He had 12 whiffs today. 20 balls in play but I think eight of them were hard hit. Average exit velocity was below 90 miles an hour. And I think he got something like eight ground balls in the outing. You really can't ask for much more from Tyler Malley than to do it against Philly. And now that we've seen him do it against a team like the Philly's, it's hard to imagine him faltering to get some lesser opponent you'd face in the playoffs, right? Yeah. This was the big test for him because I mean, he very clearly is a number two starter composes in time. So to be able to do this on the road in Philly, after you give up two or unernd runs in the first inning and fall behind to be able to rebound from that. Keep your team in the game. Just excellent job. Tyler Malley is really not much else you can say about him at this point. I mean, he is again, don't question AA again. I'm just kidding. There's certainly time if you can do that. But yeah, I mean, he continues to make us look stupid with this move. And I said this in 2021, there's no way AA thought that those three guys were going to go off the

14:42way they did. There's no way you thought Tyler Malley was going to pitch to a one four two ERA either. Like it's it's an incredible stretch. But clearly, there's something that they saw in him that they thought would work well and it is right now. So gotta give him a lot of credit there. Little things. DuBon's error. Sean Murphy letting that ball pop away from in the night then the ball the runner getting over to third. There was one other thing I wanted to mention, but I forgot. But there were some little things in this game too that would have made this a much easier win for the Atlanta race. Gotta clean those things up in these games. But yeah, Malley, start at Philadelphia like this. This was a huge test for him in the past. Yeah. And I do want to real quick. There was a situation with Tray Turner on third. Luis Arise on first. And Arise went to to Steel Second. Sean Murphy throws down Ozzy makes the catch. Arise stops. And he's trying to start a rundown. And I want to a lot of people on social media were confused by this. Ozzy did the right thing to not try and pursue the rundown. Tray Turner scores from third if you

15:42throw that ball to first base. And it was a little weird how Ozzy kind of like immediately throttled down. He wasn't like doing the thing where he's holding the ball up all like he's going, I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you. But the fact that Ozzy did not let Philly bait him into the rundown and let the run score from third. Like that's one of the little things that did go in Atlanta's favor. But I think you're right that there's been a lot of this. A lot of the little things they're winning despite some of those things not being correct or not being done right and they've got to clean that up. But at the end of the day results right they won the game at Atlanta now has the season series over Philly. Meaning that for for how close this division is you can add an additional game to the standings because if Philly ties Atlanta they don't win. The Braves are officially up five games now and it's effectively six because Philadelphia has to finish a game ahead of Atlanta to take the East. Yeah, this is a huge swing game. I mean one of

16:47these you had to win one of these games in Philadelphia but it was a huge swing game in this series because I don't love the matchup on on Monday. Well, maybe we could touch on in a moment. But to be able to come back and win this one we talked about a games one and three in this series were the ones where you circled the set. I feel like we got a good shot there with our two best starters and they were able to get it done and this was the way you did it too. You know with the big homeron coming back late just a huge swing game in this series and perhaps the Braves sees it in terms of winning the division. Yeah. All right, so real quick. Not like there's any controversy to this. Let's go ahead and officially announce the player of the game. This is the lock done player of the game. 546 votes 95% of the vote was Ronald the Cun you junior. I feel bad for Drake Baldwin. Nobody voted for Drake Baldwin. He's 0% of the vote. But Ronald obviously makes a ton of sense. He's going to win player of the game for this. That is more than more than deserved here. And now really interesting setup tomorrow. Grant Holmes versus Hazelus Luzardo. 105 were back on Braves'

17:49vision. We are done with the whole the whole national broadcast and less somethings take. I think we have one more. They're allowed to take one more game at some point in time in September. So maybe something gets moved. But right now, Holmes versus Luzardo. Final thoughts on tomorrow. Can the Braves win this series? Or are you kind of resigned to a split here? Yeah. Like I said, I didn't love this match up. Luzardo has probably been their best pitcher over the last month. Huge strikeout guy. So I don't I don't love this one. Not necessarily anything against Grant Holmes, but I think this is going to be a really tough one for the Braves to win. That's why I thought Sunday was so huge. You go ahead and guarantee yourself a split. You've done what you really needed to do. You out there and win this series. You know, it's obviously a lot more baseball to be played, but you feel really great about your chances. Because as you said, now that you own the tiebreaker, you're an extra game up. Yep. All right, Braves 1, 1 and 3. Maybe they can win 4. We'll be back tomorrow to break that whole thing down for Jake Masteryani on Lindsey Crosby. This has been the Braves postcast.

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