Braves takeaways: RISP woes in 0-7 start, Marcell Ozuna’s walks, Nick Allen’s rise

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LOS ANGELES — Atlanta Braves manager Brian Snitker has managed to retain a sense of humor, or maybe laugh to keep from crying, during his team’s awful season-opening losing streak.

Like Wednesday, when asked before the series finale at Dodger Stadium about a revamped lineup he was going with against left-hander Blake Snell, with Marcell Ozuna moved up to the second spot and nearly half the order comprised of backups Nick Allen, Stuart Fairchild, Chadwick Tromp and Eli White.

“What are we gonna do, not score?” Snitker said, then smiled. It was a reference to the Braves having scored just nine runs in their first six games, including two in their past four games before Wednesday.

A few hours later, the Braves had a relative hitting eruption, scoring five unearned runs in the first two innings to take a 5-0 lead. And still it wasn’t enough.

The Dodgers remained unbeaten, roaring back to defeat the Braves 6-5 on a walk-off home run by megastar Shohei Ohtani.

With one out in a tied game in the ninth, Ohtani crushed the first pitch he saw from closer Raisel Iglesias, a hanging changeup that Ohtani lined over the center-field fence to send a crowd of more than 52,000 into a frenzy, many holding aloft Ohtani MVP bobbleheads from Wednesday’s promotional giveaway.

“He’s the best player in baseball,” Braves third baseman Austin Riley said. “So, you make a mistake, and more than likely, you’re going to pay for it.”

The Braves, the majors’ only winless team, completed one of the worst trips in franchise history, an 0-7 debacle with a four-game sweep by the San Diego Padres and three more defeats against the World Series champions.

Atlanta was in a position to win what had figured to be its least winnable game of the trip, with Bryce Elder facing Snell. Elder was recalled from Triple A to replace the injured Reynaldo López, who’ll have arthroscopic shoulder surgery next week and is out indefinitely.

Elder gave up a two-run homer to Tommy Edman in the second inning on a sinker over the middle, after being staked to a 5-0 lead. He also served up a solo homer to Michael Conforto on a hanging slider in the fourth inning.

Elder lasted four innings and didn’t give up any more runs, leaving with a 5-3 lead. But Elder could only watch as the Dodgers came back to beat the Braves for the seventh consecutive time at Dodger Stadium, where Atlanta has a 6-21 record since 2018.

Asked if he ever would’ve believed the Braves would start 0-7, Elder said: “I wouldn’t have, and I don’t think anybody else would have. But the reality of it is we’re here. So we’ve got to figure out a way to get up, win ballgames and get going. And we look forward to it.

“You can sit and look at it like we’re 0-7 and it’s a big hole to dig out of. But at the same time, we’re going to play until the end of September. You need to look (at it) as, ‘Keep grinding and having no quit.’ I think that with the leadership we have in here, I think it’s going to be good for us in the long run because it’s kind of testing right now.”

The last team to start 0-7 and make the postseason was the 1995 Seattle Mariners. No team has made the postseason after an 0-8 start.

“I don’t wish this on anybody, honestly,” Snitker said. “In a competitive arena and what we’re going through, it’s tough. Very tough. And everybody knows it, that’s the thing. Those guys in there are more aware of it than y’all are, and they feel it more. And it’s hard. And there’s nothing you can do but just continue to fight your way out of it.”

The Braves have Thursday off before a three-game home series against the Miami Marlins, whose 4-3 record is surprising, though not as surprising as Atlanta’s 0-7 record. The homestand concludes with three games against the NL East-leading Philadelphia Phillies.

Iglesias: Blown save, loss

Riley and Snitker said it was unfair to blame Iglesias, who was in a difficult position and pitching for just the second time in 10 days. Snitker brought him in with one on and one out in the eighth inning — after rookie Daysbel Hernández fell behind in the count 2-0 against Will Smith — hoping Iglesias could get a five-out save.

Iglesias walked Smith and gave up a tying two-run double to Max Muncy two batters later. Then, in the ninth, after striking out Andy Pages to start the inning, his next pitch was the game’s last. Ohtani saw to that.

“I figured he could come in there and get a groundball,” Snitker said of going to Iglesias in the eighth. “He’s well rested. It’s something that he did a lot last year. I didn’t want to do something like that this early, but it’s kind of like, I wanted to try and go after this game, and he’s our best pitcher right there.”

The RISP thing

Snell lasted just four innings and was charged with five hits, four walks and five runs, all unearned after an error by Muncy in the two-run first inning and another Muncy error to start the three-run second inning.

Though the errors certainly aided them, the Braves helped themselves with a few big hits. They were a majors-worst 1-for-35 with runners in scoring position — including an astonishing 0-for-27 since their only such hit — before Allen’s two-out lined single to left field drove in the second run of the first inning.

Their second RISP hit was a one-out bunt single by White in the second inning.

With runners on the corners after White’s bunt, Ozzie Albies lined a fly ball to the wall in center field, a catchable ball that turned around Pages for an RBI double.

We take those 🙌#BravesCountry pic.twitter.com/45FX4oVpGv

— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) April 3, 2025

Two batters later, Matt Olson hit a two-out, two-run double over Conforto in left for a 5-0 lead. In two innings, the Braves had four times as many hits with runners in scoring position as they had in their first six games. But in other big moments Wednesday, they again floundered in RISP situations, finishing 5-for-15.

“We have yet to play the complete game,” Snitker said. “We scored a few runs and had potential for a lot more, really. But we’ve got to play 27 outs, and we’re having a hard time getting that done.”

Riley popped out foul after Ozuna walked to load the bases with one out in the second.

“It’s tough, it really is,” said Riley, speaking of the team’s struggles and his .111 average and .431 OPS, including going 0-for-6 with RISP. “From a personal standpoint, it’s honestly embarrassing what I’ve displayed offensively, and I’ve got a lot of work to do. From an offensive point, there’s no excuses. It’s embarrassing.”

Ozuna taking his walks

Three walks in his first three plate appearances raised Ozuna’s majors-leading total to 13, five more than anyone in either league and one shy of matching the MLB record for walks in a team’s first seven games.

He’s hitting .188 (3-for-16) with no extra-base hits, but Ozuna has a .552 OBP that’s the fourth highest in the majors. With the Braves getting such anemic production from hitters behind Ozuna when he was in the cleanup spot, Snitker decided to try him in the two-hole in front of Riley and Olson.

Allen’s stock rising

Snitker made most of the lineup changes to get more right-handed hitters against Snell.

Fairchild, acquired in a Monday trade with the Cincinnati Reds after Braves left fielder Jurickson Profar’s 80-game PED suspension, started in right field Wednesday in place of Jarred Kelenic. White was at center field in place of Michael Harris II, and Tromp caught instead of rookie Drake Baldwin.

But Allen starting at shortstop instead of Orlando Arcia was another matter. Both are right-handed, and Allen could begin to see more playing time if he continues to outplay Arcia, as he did all spring and has so far in Allen’s three shortstop starts, including the past two games.

He went 2-for-4 with an RBI and a stolen base Wednesday, and Allen has hit .364 (4-for-11) with an .819 OPS and two steals in three games, after hitting .359 with an .883 OPS in 43 plate appearances during spring training.

Arcia is 2-for-13 with two singles and a .308 OPS in four games, after hitting .135 with a .368 OPS in 43 spring plate appearances.

“He’s probably had some of our most consistent at-bats in the games he’s played,” Snitker said of Allen before the game. “He can steal a base. He’s got great range at short. He can do a lot of things. So I just kind of like the looks of that, too. We’ll try and get him in there, and hopefully, he can do some things to help us.”

Afterward, Snitker said: “(Allen) was really good. Just what he’s bringing right now is the defense, the at-bats, being able to steal a bag. That’s something that’s probably the positive of this road trip, is him.”

(Photo of Nick Allen hitting an RBI single in the first inning: Gary A. Vasquez / Imagn Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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