Braves throw eight no-hit innings, snap three-game slide

But in a 5-1 win at Truist Park, the visiting Cardinals made two errors. They hit three balls more than 95-mph off the bat – and none left the ballpark. When José Fermín led off the eighth in a 2-1 game and belted an 0-2 slider from Braves reliever Dylan Lee to deep left, Dubón was there on the warning track to leap and take away a game-changing hit.

The Braves invaluable utility man also made the last out of a game in which the Cardinals (44-39) went hitless over the final eight innings.

“Change a couple mindsets right now and everybody was good,” Dubón said. “Sometimes it’s baseball, sometimes you put too much thought into it. Just coming in here, have everybody loose and everything, relaxed. It’s just a matter of changing the mindset a little bit, get everybody loose.”

The Braves (50-34) had lost 13 of 17 before Wednesday. And one win does not set the ship back on the correct course.

But it can’t change the tides of fortune without one win, which the team so desperately needed on the first day of July after a wretched June. Perhaps the small séance in the clubhouse hours earlier set the tone for what was to come?

“I knew I smelled something,” Braves manager Walt Weiss said after Wednesday’s win about the fresh-scented home clubhouse. “These guys, since you play every day, it’s routine-oriented, which turns into superstitions, and turns into burning some sage or whatever it might be. You gotta find ways to let loose when it’s every single day.”

The victory didn’t begin great with Braves’ starter Reynaldo López allowing a first inning run on Jordan Walker’s RBI single. Yet Walker’s hit was the last the Cardinals would get all night.

López (4-1) pitched five sparkling innings and gave up that one run on two first-inning hits. He also struck six in his effort to reclaim a spot in the team’s starting rotation.

Second baseman Ozzie Albies drew the Braves square in the first with an RBI double off the right-field wall. Albies then hit a solo home run in the third, his 13th of the season and first since June 20 when he hit two against the Brewers.

He certainly bought into Dubón’s pregame sorcery.

“Sometimes in this game you go to change things up,” Albies said. “A little bit of change can change the whole vibe and bring the positive energy.”

From there the Braves held tight, turning to reliever Dylan Dodd, Didier Fuentes and Dylan Lee, respectively, to keep the score at 2-1. They finally got some breathing room in the bottom of the eighth with three runs on three hits, a walk, an error, a sacrifice fly, and a sacrifice bunt.

After Drake Baldwin started the inning by coaxing a free pass, Albies bounced a ball to third that Cardinals’ third baseman Blaze Jordan booted. Matt Olson’s sacrifice fly sent Baldwin to third and Baldwin jogged home on Michael Harris II’s looping RBI single to shallow left-center.

Dubón, facing reliever Gordon Graceffo who had just entered the game, squared at the first pitch he saw and pushed a bunt up the line to first that was probably turning foul. But first baseman Alec Burleson stabbed it and threw home to try to get Albies who scored on a head-first slide.

Austin Riley’s RBI single to left made it 5-1.

Closer Raisel Iglesias came in to pinch the ninth and polish off a game in which a lot of the breaks finally seemed to go the way of the Braves.

“Really kind of in Murphy’s Law here for a few weeks, but looked like tonight maybe it’s a sign of the tide turning a little bit,” Weiss said. “Things can snowball in this game, one way or the other, and it’s certainly snowballed in the wrong direction here recently. But some good signs, a lot of good signs tonight.”