The Braves started the season with 13 games in 13 days and with questions about whether their injury-depleted pitching staff could handle such a daunting stretch. Not only did the staff handle it just fine, it ended it with the best ERA in the Majors.
Atlanta's 8-2 win over the Angels on Wednesday in Anaheim gave it an 8-5 record and secured another series win. It also lowered the team's ERA to an MLB-best 2.03, a number secured in large part by three shutouts.
Righty Grant Holmes didn't throw a shutout Wednesday, but he delivered 6 2/3 strong innings, holding the Angels to two runs on five hits and three walks while striking out six batters in his longest outing of the season.
Those results seemed unlikely in the bottom of the second inning, when Holmes squandered a 2-0 Braves lead after a leadoff homer by Jorge Soler preceded three walks and a single to the next four batters, culminating in a bases-loaded walk to Logan O'Hoppe that tied the game. Holmes settled down after that, retiring 17 of his final 20 hitters.
The Braves’ offense gave Holmes plenty of cushion, highlighted by Matt Olson’s two-run go-ahead homer in the third. Other contributors included Mauricio Dubón, who drove in two runs with a fifth-inning double, and Drake Baldwin, who collected his MLB-leading 15th RBI with a single in the sixth.
The length Holmes gave the team Wednesday proved pivotal, as manager Walt Weiss said after the game that "half the bullpen" was unavailable after a heavy workload in recent days. Weiss hoped to use the game as a "reset" for his 'pen, and Holmes delivered that opportunity after overcoming his shaky second.
"Outstanding job by Grant to get it together, minimize the damage that inning and end up going 6 2/3," Weiss said. "Just a tremendous performance, exactly what we needed."
Holmes attributed his second-inning struggles to "overthrowing" and "middling." After he escaped the inning with the game still tied, his mindset changed. He focused on "filling up the zone” with strikes and trying to give the team as many innings as possible.
"It was just, 'Here's my stuff and hit it if you can,'" he said.
Starters coming up big has been a theme for the Braves in the early going, with Holmes, lefty Chris Sale and righties Reynaldo López and Bryce Elder each providing multiple solid-to-strong outings so far. That Sale's 3.94 ERA is the highest of the group speaks to the nature of the results.
It's been a welcomed development for a team that started the season with injuries to key starters Spencer Schwellenbach (elbow) and Spencer Strider (oblique), as well as potential fifth starter Hurston Waldrep (elbow). Not to mention questions about the effectiveness of López, who missed most of last season with a shoulder injury, and Elder, who's been durable but has battled inconsistency since an All-Star season in 2023.
Even with lingering questions about the future of the No. 5 spot -- occupied so far by José Suarez and Martín Pérez -- the Braves are more than pleased with what they've seen from the rotation so far.
Those efforts, combined with an offense that had produced a .750 OPS entering Wednesday -- the fifth-highest mark in the Majors, despite cold starts from Ronald Acuña Jr. (.575 OPS) and Austin Riley (.552 OPS) -- gave Atlanta the fuel it needed to power through the early gauntlet.
With three series wins in their first four, plus a four-game split with the Diamondbacks last week in Arizona, the Braves will enjoy their off-day on Thursday before starting a three-game series Friday at home against the Guardians.
"Thirteen games in a row to start the season, I've never seen it before," Weiss said. "We talk about confronting the challenges of a Major League season, and we got one right out of the gate with that schedule.
"The guys met the challenge head-on. ... Just a hell of a job."