ATLANTA -- Two starts into his career, JR Ritchie has already experienced the thrill of benefiting from a walk-off home run.
“I was sitting in the training room,” Ritchie said. “I had just finished my arm care and I was watching the game on TV. What an unbelievable ending. … I didn’t really know what to do with myself. Those three minutes where the team was outside celebrating, I was running around high-fiving everybody. My hand hurt.”
Ritchie and the rest of the Braves were actually feeling no pain after Matt Olson drilled a two-run homer off Kenley Jansen to create a celebratory ending to a 4-3 win over the Tigers on Wednesday night at Truist Park. Olson’s fourth career walk-off homer was the first he has hit since joining the Braves before the 2022 season.
“I've talked about how when you have good years, you tend to have wins like that,” Braves manager Walt Weiss said. “You look back and there's 10 or 12 games that you won that you necessarily shouldn't have.”
Plenty of magic has surrounded the Braves as they have constructed MLB’s best record (22-9). The 1997 club was the only other in franchise history that collected 22 wins through the first 31 games of a season.
“Success is going to breed confidence, personally and as a team,” Olson said. “It’s nice when you’re playing winning baseball and you don't feel like you have to be the guy every single night. That takes stuff off your plate and it actually helps everybody in the lineup.”
Drake Baldwin, Michael Harris II, Dominic Smith and Ozzie Albies have helped the Braves score a MLB-high 175 runs thus far. But Olson has been the lineup’s most valuable contributor while hitting .306 with nine homers and a 1.017 OPS. His success has conjured memories of 2023, when he set franchise records for home runs (54) and RBIs (139).
“I want to be careful saying this is as good as I’ve seen him because in '23, he was ridiculous,” Weiss said. “But he’s swinging the bat really well. I mean, he’s hitting balls in the left-center-field gap. He’s hitting homers. He’s a really good hitter and man, that was a big at-bat against Kenley.”
Albies’ two-run homer off two-time American League Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal in the first inning accounted for the Braves’ only runs through the first eight innings. Ritchie pitched out of trouble in some spots but a two-out walk and two-out errant pickoff attempt hurt the 22-year-old hurler as he allowed three runs over five innings.
Dylan Lee, who missed Tuesday’s game while on the paternity list, kept the Tigers scoreless for 1 1/3 innings and Reynaldo López threw two scoreless innings in his first relief appearance since being removed from the rotation. This all set the stage for the dramatic ninth, which began with Albies drawing a walk off Jansen, his former Braves teammate and fellow Curaçao native.
“[Jansen’s] cutter is his best pitch,” Olson said. “I saw Ozzie swing over top of a couple of them. So, I was wondering if that pitch didn't get that same carry today. So, especially with [Albies] on first, I was trying to keep the double play out of order and set my sights a little higher than I typically would. He just left one out over the middle.”
As soon as the center-cut cutter was contacted, it was just a matter of if it would rise high enough to be a home run. The ball continued to sail until it dropped just over the edge of the right-center-field wall and into the Atlanta bullpen. It would have been a home run in just 12 of 30 ballparks per Statcast. But it was another of the many great moments the Braves have had through their first 31 games.
“That was really cool to watch,” Ritchie said.
Olson saw just one potential problem.
“That’s definitely going to get the juices flowing a little bit,” Olson said. “Of course, we’ve got a 12:15 [p.m. ET] game tomorrow. So, hopefully, it will die down and I can get some sleep.”