ATLANTA — Mitch Keller found some middle ground. The Pirates, meanwhile, are still searching for a way to shut down the home run happy Braves, as Atlanta powered its way to another victory, 6-1 over Pittsburgh at Truist Park.
The day after clobbering seven home runs, the Braves added three more Saturday. That total included two from switch-hitting second baseman Ozzie Albies, who hit one from each side of the plate.
Atlanta has now homered 12 times in the first three games of this series, with the finale coming on Sunday afternoon.
Keller, in his bad-good-bad-good season trajectory, was due for a bad start, although it wasn’t cataclysmic or anything like that. It was just kind of ... there. Atlanta did hit a pair of home runs, and he gave up five runs over five innings, striking out six. Keller wasn’t great, but he has certainly experienced worse, and shorter, outings.
Scoring runs once again proved problematic for the Pirates, who were limited to a solo home run by backup catcher Michael Perez in the third inning.
The Pirates, lugging around an MLB-low .622 OPS with runners in scoring position, have scored more than two runs in just seven of their 20 games so far this month.
Starting against the Pirates for the first time since 2018, when he tossed five scoreless innings in his MLB debut, Bryse Wilson was terrific for Atlanta. The right-hander worked 6 2/3 innings and allowed one run — on the Perez homer. He walked two, struck out four and singled in the fourth inning.
The night after they became the first team in baseball history to hit seven home runs and two grand slams in the same game, it didn’t take the Braves long to get going again on Saturday. One pitch, in fact.
Right fielder Ronald Acuna Jr., who had one of those two grand slams, whacked the first pitch out of Keller’s hand — a middle-middle fastball — over the fence in left-center field for a 1-0 Braves lead.
Nobody in baseball has more leadoff homers than Acuna (22) since 2018. He also owns the Braves’ franchise mark, which is ridiculous considering he’s still only 23.
Atlanta picked up another first-inning run when first baseman Freddie Freeman singled, stole second and scored on Austin Riley’s sharp single, the third baseman tagging a slider that Keller left up in the zone.
Freeman got the Pirates again in the second inning when he connected on a change-up middle-in for a single that scored center fielder Ender Inciarte before Perez hit his homer in the top of the third.
The Pirates’ backup catcher has been ice cold of late, going hitless in his first 26 May at-bats with 12 strikeouts before Saturday. His solo home run cut the Braves’ early lead to 3-1. Wilson threw a fastball at the top of the zone, and Perez sent the ball screaming out to left-center.
Albies made it a 5-1 game with his two-run homer in the fifth, turning on an inside fastball and sending it to the seats in right-center. The lead grew to 6-1 after Albies’ homer against Sam Howard, this one also coming on an inside fastball.
The Braves lead the majors with 75 home runs, and it’s been pretty easy over these past handful of days to see and understand why.
