Braves blank Buccos as Grant Holmes pitches five shutout innings

Despite getting completely and totally blanked for the first six innings of this contest, the Atlanta Braves eventually broke through and ended up pulling off a 3-0 victory in an excellent pitching performance from Grant Holmes and Atlanta’s bullpen.

It would be an understatement to call this one a pitchers’ duel, as both starters were dominant for the period of time where they were out there. Grant Holmes successfully navigated his way through two trips through the order as he finished with just three hits allowed and one walk conceded across five innings of work and five strikeouts. The slider and cutter were both working pretty effectively for Holmes — everything was working, really, as Holmes picked up two strikeouts on the four-seamer and three on the slider.

The only time that Holmes ran into trouble was in the third inning, which is when he found himself with two runners in scoring position with two outs after he led off the inning hitting Henry Davis and then gave up a two-out single to Bryan Reynolds. Fortunately, Holmes was able to get Esmerlyn Valdez to pop up on a four-seamer and that was that for the scoring chance. That was as close as Pittsburgh got to scoring off of Holmes before he eventually exited the game with 90 pitches after five innings.

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As good as Homes was, Jared Jones was better. Jones was just about untouchable against the Braves tonight, as he struck out eight batters without giving up a hit or a walk through six innings of work. Atlanta’s lineup couldn’t handle him at all, which is why it was probably a huge relief for the Braves once they saw Mason Montgomery walk out for the seventh inning.

The crowd in Pittsburgh disagreed with the decision and they voiced their disapproval after Ozzie Albies ended the combined perfect game bid with a looping single out to left to give the Braves their first hit and baserunner of the game. While Jones has been kind of easing back into things following elbow issues, it certainly took a lot of the neutral intrigue out of the game once it was clear that the Pirates weren’t going to let him go for the perfect game.

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Either way, the Braves were unable to do anything with the baserunner in the seventh inning as Montgomery sat down the Braves in short order after the hit. However, Atlanta’s fortunes improved once the eighth inning rolled around and an old friend of Pittsburgh’s got a chance to do some damage against his old club.

Earlier in the game, Joey Bart came the closest to getting the Braves on the board after he hit a deep fly ball in the third inning that only made it to the warning track. The funny part is that despite the hard contact, Bart busted it out of the batter’s box because he knew this ballpark and knew that he probably didn’t get enough of it for a dinger. This time in the eighth inning, he did, in fact, get enough of it. Bart followed up Mike Yastrzemski‘s double off the wall in right field with a 422-foot shoot to left-center in order to finally break the deadlock and put the Braves in the lead.

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Thanks to Didier Fuentes and Dylan Dodd keeping the Buccos quiet once they entered in relief of Grant Holmes, that set the stage for Dylan Lee to enter the game and deliver another strong performance out of the bullpen. That set the stage for the Braves to add on some more insurance as Michael Harris II led off the ninth with a double and then Drake Baldwin cashed in Money Mike with an RBI knock to make it 3-0.

With the lead at three runs, it was now up to Raisel Iglesias to make it stick and get a tiny bit of redemption following his rare blown save on Monday. The first batter for Iggy is always crucial and this time, Iglesias struck out Esmerlyn Valdez to get the inning started on the right track. While Iglesias did end up walking a batter, the Pirates weren’t able to even get the tying run aboard and the Braves ended up taking the 3-0 shutout victory.

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For a while, this sure seemed like teh Braves were going to be on the wrong side of history for a second night in a row. Instead, Atlanta took advantage of the pitching change and did enough damage to Pittsburgh’s bullpen while the Braves’ bullpen was back in great form as well. Grant Holmes pitching five great innings sure helped matters as well and the Braves were able to snap their losing streak at the earliest point to where you could call it a losing streak.

It’ll be a quick turnaround for everybody involved as the rubber match takes place tomorrow afternoon at 12:35 p.m. ET. The Pirates will turn to Mitch Keller while Bryce Elder will be making his return to the rotation for the Braves. Hopefully he can pick up where Grant Holmes and the rest of Atlanta’s pitching staff left off and we’ll see the Braves pick up a much-needed series win after a nice win on Wednesday evening.