Three Braves takeaways: Profar's return from PED suspension, offensive malaise, Strider improving

New York Times

5 hours ago

ATLANTA — These Atlanta Braves do barely enough to make the optimistic portion of their fan base hold out hope for another midseason turnaround and postseason drive like others the team has had in recent years.
But Atlanta lost 2-1 at home Sunday to the Philadelphia Phillies in the rubber game of the series, which left the Braves 7-6 after 13 NL East games in 13 days, a stretch they had said would be important. They are in the same position they were two weeks ago.
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It's not a good position — seven games under .500 with the fifth-worst record (38-45) in the NL. Sitting third in the division, 10 1/2 games behind the Phillies and nine behind the New York Mets.
'We've still got a lot of room to improve, myself especially,' said Braves starter Spencer Strider, who pitched well enough to win Sunday if the bats provided more than a modicum of support. 'Right now, we're not sitting anywhere near where we want to be or where I think we should be. I think everybody feels the same way.
'There's a lot of confidence that we're going to continue to improve. We've just got to do the work for it.'
They went 5-2 against the Mets in the past two weeks, but 1-2 each against the Phillies and the fourth-place Miami Marlins, who are just one game behind Atlanta.
'We've played some really good baseball, and then I think we left a few games out there that I think we could have won,' said third baseman Austin Riley, who had a leadoff single in the fourth inning and was still at first when the inning ended. 'Left a few out there. And with where we're at, you've got to capitalize on those moments.'
Sean Murphy's 451-foot homer in the second inning was his second mammoth shot in as many days, after a 455-foot grand slam Saturday, and gave the Braves a 1-0 lead.
Sean Murphy takes off 😤
It's the @Braves first GRAND SLAM of the season! pic.twitter.com/M3FnC58zb0
— MLB (@MLB) June 29, 2025
But Phillies starter Ranger Suárez otherwise handled them with ease for the second time this season, limiting the Braves to four hits, one run and one walk with eight strikeouts in seven innings, after pitching six innings of a May 27 shutout against them at Philadelphia. The Phillies went 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position Sunday, but the Braves didn't even advance a runner to second base until the ninth inning.
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The Braves are off Monday before a three-game home series starts Tuesday against the Los Angeles Angels, when left fielder Jurickson Profar will be back in Atlanta's lineup after serving an 80-game PED suspension.
Profar, the Braves' only significant free-agent signee last winter, played just four games before being slapped with a suspension after testing positive for a banned substance.
He's coming off a career-best season in which he hit .280 with 24 homers, 85 RBIs and an .839 OPS for the San Diego Padres, more than 100 points above his career .725 OPS. He did that at age 31. So, between the spike in power in his 11th season and the positive PED test, no one seems to know quite what to expect from Profar, other than he'll almost certainly provide more offense than what the Braves have been getting from platoon left fielders Eli White and Alex Verdugo.
'Hope so. We'll see,' Braves manager Brian Snitker said. 'Again, he's had a lot of time off. He's getting the reps and all that (at Gwinnett), and we'll plug him in there Tuesday.'
Asked if adding one player could make a significant difference for a struggling lineup, Snitker said, 'Yeah, I think so. It's happened before. One established guy that can lengthen your lineup can be a big deal. Especially him being a switch hitter and the matchup thing.'
Profar was 0-for-5 with two strikeouts Sunday for Triple-A Gwinnett, but has hit .326 with three homers and a .991 OPS in 12 games, with eight walks and six strikeouts.
Riley said Profar would help lengthen a lineup that's been getting a lot of production from leadoff man Ronald Acuña Jr. and Matt Olson, but no one else consistently.
'Obviously, he's a talented hitter,' Riley said of Profar. 'Especially when you've got a guy like Ronnie (batting leadoff) and Oly (batting second), flipping that to get them more ABs in situations that are big — that can help a lot.'
After saying two weeks ago he intended to bat Profar second, Snitker changed his mind due to the good results the Braves are getting with Olson behind Acuña.
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'I think we can move (Profar) around in kind of the middle of the order,' Snitker said. 'The fact he's a switch hitter and all that's gonna work out good. Because I do kind of like the Olson thing behind Ronald, I think that's real. (Profar) is gonna have to get out here and put your eyes on him, let him play a little bit, see where he's at.'
Strider allowed five hits and two runs in seven innings, his longest start since September 2023. He had three walks and four strikeouts, the first time he recorded fewer than six strikeouts in nine career starts of seven innings or more.
While he's not blowing away hitters with upper-90s heat at the top of the strike zone like he did before April 2024 elbow surgery, Strider has improved steadily with his fastball velocity while honing secondary pitches.
He has a 2.25 ERA in his past four starts — an MLB-leading 33 strikeouts in 24 innings during that span — after posting a 5.40 ERA in his first five starts. That's especially important now, with ace Chris Sale not expected back before mid-August after fracturing his rib cage on June 18.
The Braves need Spencer Schwellenbach and Strider to be at their best at the top of the rotation, because the back end is highly suspect.
Most of Strider's swings-and-misses Sunday came on sliders, and he induced a slew of groundouts in innings other than the fifth. That's when the Phillies scored twice on an Otto Kemp RBI double, followed by the go-ahead run on a sacrifice bunt and sacrifice fly – the kind of run Atlanta rarely manufactures with its poor situational hitting.
'I didn't execute well enough,' said Strider, always his harshest critic. 'I don't think there's any more nuance to it than that. I simply did not execute as much as I needed to.'
Of the Braves' just-completed stretch against NL East teams, Strider said: 'I think we had some great moments, and I just think the consistency, if you ask anybody, is the thing we're still searching for. There's no excuses, and I don't think you're going to find any. The belief that we are a better team is in the clubhouse for sure, at least I hope so with everybody in there. And at some point, that's gonna have to translate into results. That's the nature of the business, everybody knows that.
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'That's myself more so than anybody. I've lost six games now, I think, so I've certainly not kept up my end of the bargain here. But I know everybody in there wants to be the guy and wants to help the team win, and I think that they're going to exhaust everything they have to try to get that done.'
The Braves were in third place in the division and eighth in the NL wild-card standings on June 16, before the last 13 games. And they are third in the division and eighth in the wild-card standings today. They were 7 1/2 games out of the third and final wild-card spot on June 16, and eight games out of that final wild-card spot after Sunday's loss.
'We're still hanging in there,' Snitker said. 'I looked at where we are; we're still giving ourselves a chance. We just need to continue to try and win series. We haven't been eliminated yet or anything. Still, a lot of good can happen. I'm a firm believer in that.'
Plenty of their fans believe, or hope, the Braves can turn things around like they did in 2021, when they were 52-55 on Aug. 2 and went on to win the World Series, or in 2022, when they were 10 1/2 games behind entering June and won a sixth consecutive NL East title. But this feels different.
This team doesn't exude the kind of confidence and swagger that those Braves teams did before those turnarounds, when they had some big personalities on the roster and the coaching staff, with the boisterous and revered former infield instructor and third-base coach Ron Washington.
These Braves haven't teased with a significant stretch of high-scoring, power-surging games that hint at a breakout to come. And an offensive outburst is what it's going to take to get this Braves team into the thick of the playoff race with a sustained stretch of winning.
The Braves were tied for 24th in scoring average in June and had 10 fewer runs than the Colorado Rockies in the same number of games. And that's with 22 of the Braves' 104 runs for the month coming in two games — a disastrous 11-10 loss to Arizona in which they blew a 10-4 lead in the ninth inning on June 5, and a 12-4 win against those Rockies during a home series where the Braves won the first two and got embarrassed 10-1 in the finale.
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Besides those two double-digit scoring games, the Braves averaged 4.3 runs in their other 24 June games, including seven in which they scored one or no runs, three of those in the past four days. They were tied for 24th in homers in June with 23 in 26 games, barely half of the 45 apiece for the Mets and Chicago Cubs, and 18 fewer than the Angels.
The Braves were 25th in average (.234) for the month and 28th in OPS, ahead of only the Chicago White Sox and Cleveland Guardians. Think about this: The Pittsburgh Pirates (.677) had a higher slugging percentage in June than the Braves.
Why, Riley was asked, do the Braves still believe they can turn it around?
'This game will knock you down if you keep letting it,' Riley said. 'You gotta keep pushing back, and guys are gonna do that.'
(Top photo of Spencer Strider: Mady Mertens / Imagn Images)