Spencer Schwellenbach’s most recent start prior to his shellacking by the Blue Jays on Saturday night was a real kick in the proverbial nards: he danced through the raindrops despite a lack of whiffs and strikeouts, and was ultimately done in by balls finding grass in a close game his third time through — the Phillies later walked off the Braves and mostly put the NL East to bed in the process. Schwellenbach had a chance to right the ship today, but instead, the opposite happened: his lack of strikeouts persisted, and he was tormented by Spencer Horwitz, suffering one of the worst starts of his young career.
Recapping this one in terms of sequence is pretty pointless, because it was over pretty quickly. Schwellenbach hung a 1-2 slider to the lefty-hitting Horwitz to start the second, and the pitch was destroyed to center field to give Toronto a 1-0 lead. After some more successful raindrop-waltzing in the third, Horwitz hooked a four-seamer from Schwellenbach on the low-and-inside corner for another solo homer. That also stopped the waltz: after a single and a double play ball, there was a weird misplay by Luke Williams at second base that apparently (after review, too!) pulled Matt Olson off the first base bag. The Jays followed with back-to-back doubles, and the Braves were in a 4-0 hole.
And, honestly, with the lineup they’re running out there these days, and the fact that Jose Berrios, Toronto’s starter, has been on a roll that wasn’t upended today, and that was that. Horwitz barreled another ball off Schwellenbach — another hanging slider in the exact same location that led to his first homer of the game — for a double that made it 5-0, and then the Jays tacked on a sixth run as well.
The Braves, meanwhile, were just your usual injury-depleted sad lads lineup. The premise these days is that Marcell Ozuna and/or (preferably and) Matt Olson have to do something (preferably hit multiple homers), but neither did. Travis d’Arnaud, hitting second as the Braves try to flail their way to staying afloat (it’s not working), had a double in the first, but Ozuna struck out, and so did Ramon Laureano after Berrios walked Olson. (Laureano hitting fifth because d’Arnaud isn’t is a great meta-commentary on the Braves these days.) Ozuna also failed with a runner at second and two outs in the third, and the Braves got their only run off Berrios thanks to a single, a groundout, and a Michael Harris II single where Harris got thrown out at second (maybe), but not before the run scored. The Braves couldn’t even challenge it, due to losing their challenge earlier in the game. Ozuna also hit into a double play in the eighth, so the game was basically toast.
Hilariously, the Braves managed to score four runs in the ninth, in the sort of thing that will make their September offensive stats look marginally better even though it was garbage time and the guy they roughed up, Luis Frias, was booted off Arizona’s roster earlier this year for being the bad kind of pants for parts of four straight seasons. However, when the Jays removed Frias, the next pitcher actually managed to record two outs and end the game. Scoring four runs in the ninth could’ve actually been exciting when you think about the fact that Schwellenbach was charged with six runs and the Braves got a singleton off Berrios… but now is the part where I tell you that Grant Holmes bled three runs in the ninth, so instead of the Braves having the winning run on base in the ninth, it was just pure garbage time all the way.
Speaking of Holmes, he’s now turned what was a great story into a living nightmare, with absolutely awful everything in his past five outings. Since being removed from the rotation, he had that one nails-esque outing against the Phillies with two outings of relief, and now it’s just full pumpkin mode, even though we’re still about a month away from October. It was fun while it lasted, I guess.
More importantly: Spencer Schwellenbach needs to get the strikeout stuff back. You can live with the homers sometimes, and you can live with the BABIP if a bunch of his PAs are ending in strikeouts. But you can’t live with homers and BABIP on a bunch of PAs, even if he’s not walking anyone. There was a point in this game, after he had already fallen behind big, where it seemed like he had made the adjustment to stop hammering the zone given that the Jays were ready to make contact, but then Horwitz’ spot rolled around again and the mechanics just didn’t comply.
Even more importantly: the Braves are now one game back of a playoff spot for the first time in roughly forever, as the Mets won 4-0. The only silver lining, such as it is, is that the Diamondbacks already lost and the Padres are losing at the time of writing, but honestly, that’s a pretty garbo silver lining. The Braves are paying the price for basically everything that’s gone wrong this season — not all of it self-inflicted, but definitely some of it — and now they have the unenviable and maybe not even all-that-likely-to-be-achieved task of chasing down (rather than defending) a playoff spot while their active 28-man squad looks more like a zombie B-movie cast than MLB’s-best-roster-on-paper.
Also, the Braves asked Aaron Bummer to get three outs while down by five runs; Bummer had 1.1 fWAR, a 51 FIP-, and a 62 xFIP- coming into this game. The Braves will ask Chris Sale, who has Bummer-esque numbers as a starter, to try and get them a share of a playoff spot tomorrow, provided that the zombies can actually rise up on a Sunday afternoon. Stay tuned for that, I guess.
