UnsplashFour Homers and One Real Hit Is Not an Offense Waking Up
The Braves won Friday on four home runs and one single. That's not a revival. That's a slot machine hitting four times in a row.
The Braves won 5-3 tonight. They got five hits. Four were home runs.
Read that again.
Five hits. Four left the park. One didn't. They went 1-for-28 on everything that wasn't a home run.
I'm supposed to feel better about this? Olson launched two. Harris launched one. Albies launched one. All four moonshots, all four decisive. The bats looked alive for exactly four swings.
Four swings out of 33 at-bats. That's a 12% success rate on contact that mattered. The other 88% produced nothing.
This is not an offense waking up. This is an offense that found four lottery tickets on the sidewalk. You don't build a financial plan around finding lottery tickets.
The Mets got ten hits tonight. Ten. The Braves got five. The Braves won because their five hits traveled an average of 411 feet. Distance is doing all the work. Sequencing, baserunning, situational hitting — none of it showed up. Just raw exit velocity and favorable launch angles.
Win's a win. Record says 51-35. I'm not giving it back.
But if you're telling me this is the lineup turning a corner, I need to see more than four homers and a single. Show me a seven-hit inning. Show me a rally that doesn't require a ball clearing a wall. Show me an offense that can score without an accident.
Until then, this was a nice night. Not a trend. Not a fix. Not a reason to relax.
Tell me I'm wrong.
The Tilt
A team that can only score by leaving the yard is a team one cold stretch away from another 72-run month, and tonight proved it more than it disproved it.
— Dex Ponce
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Dex Ponce
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