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With the series in hand, Grant Holmes got the ball to start this one hoping to make it three great starts in a row for the already injury-beleaguered Braves rotation. While Holmes wasn\u2019t horrible, this was definitely the weakest start of the three Opening Series starts for the Braves, as the Royals tacked on one run in the third, fourth, and fifth innings in order to have a somewhat comfortable cushion heading into the later portion of the game.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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It didn\u2019t help matters that the Braves had some really bad luck in this one as far as xBA is concerned. Atlanta had the five hardest-hit balls of this contest and four of the five longest-hit balls in this game as well. They also finished with an xBA of .314 to KC\u2019s .196 in this game as well. Usually that results in a win but instead, those long, hard-hit fly balls from the Braves ended up finding gloves instead of the seats while the Royals were able to dink-and-dunk their way into a comfortable lead.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Seth Lugo ended up tossing 6.1 shutout innings in this one and then the Kansas City bullpen came in and did an effective job. An eighth-inning Drake Baldwin home run off of John Schreiber made sure that the Braves didn\u2019t end up getting shut out on a day when they were hitting the ball really well but that was all of the substantial offense that Atlanta ended up getting in this one. Lucas Erceg got a double play ball to wipe out a one-out single from Yaz that could\u2019ve been the start of another magical ninth inning for the Braves. Instead, the dream of 162-0 died in the third game of the season for Atlanta.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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It also has to be noted that Didier Fuentes made his 2026 debut during this game. While he did end up conceding a run, he pitched the final four innings of this one and he looked a whole lot more confident in this outing than he did in his initial big league stint, so there\u2019s that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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While you always want to be greedy and pick up a sweep, the Braves still had a lovely start to the season with this series win. The first game in particular was very encouraging, as that game feels like the proof of concept of sorts when it comes to the style of play that Walt Weiss would like to see. I\u2019d imagine that if the Braves are going to be heading back to the Postseason, they\u2019ll have their fair share of wins that look like what happened on Friday night.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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They\u2019ll also have their fair share of losses that look like what happened on Sunday afternoon. Sure, it stunk to see Atlanta drop that one when the underlying stats suggest that they were the better team but I\u2019d definitely prefer to go down like that instead of looking completely and totally feeble at the plate like this team did for long stretches of the 2025 season. While you don\u2019t want to see the Braves drop too many games like that where they had everything going for them except the runs being put on the board, it\u2019s the type of loss that makes you think that this is going to be a very, very tough team to put away on most nights.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Lastly, this might be a nit-pick of sorts but there\u2019s still plenty of improvement to be made in the ABS department when it comes to this team picking and choosing the right time for challenges. We saw on Saturday night that the team actually ran out of challenges in the first inning. I\u2019d imagine that both Drake Baldwin and Ronald Acu\u00f1a Jr. got a bit of a talking-to when it comes to figuring out the right and proper time to pat the helmet and maybe this\u2019ll be something that will be more of a work-in-progress for the Braves than other teams. For now, there\u2019s plenty of space to improve.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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That\u2019s my only real quibble for what was a very good Opening Series for the Braves. They won in comfortable fashion, they won in dramatic fashion and they lost in one of the very few ways that you can find comfort in losing. They\u2019ll have a solid chance to keep things going in the right direction too, as they\u2019ll be staying at home for the next three games while the Athletics will be coming into town all the way from Toronto licking their wounds after starting their season off getting swept by the defending American League champions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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If things are going to keep going in the right direction, the bottom of the rotation is going to have to come up big with Bryce Elder and (maybe) Jose Suarez getting the ball before Chris Sale returns to the mound on Wednesday. Things may be fine if the offense continues to swing the bat like they have to start the season but it\u2019s clear that the pitching will need to continue holding up its end of the bargain if the Braves want to really get rolling to kick off the season. Let\u2019s see what happens, y\u2019all.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.batterypower.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The season is finally underway and it\u2019s always fun to talk about a winning series to get things going, right? It certainly beats the stuffing out of the way last season started, right? Anyways, it was truly exciting to be in the building for Opening Night on Friday and it was even more encouraging to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2350631,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[456118],"class_list":["post-2350630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-atlanta-braves-scores"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Braves-vs-Royals-series-recap-An-ideal-start-to-the.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2350630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2350630"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2350630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2350632,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2350630\/revisions\/2350632"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2350631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2350630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2350630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2350630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}