Assault and (rout at the) Battery: First inning from hell sinks Braves (full coverage)
Fans arrived fairly early, considering the 5:02 p.m. start.
Bad move.
The St. Louis half of the first inning took 28 minutes. And four mound visits. And 14 batters. And one pitching change. And all sorts of craziness after the second batter made the first out.
The second out came 10 batters later, St. Louis up 9-0. The third out came mercifully soon after, three batters – and another run – later.
The disaster of Atlanta’s 13-1 loss to St. Louis in the deciding game of the NLDS in front of more than 43,000 took a merciful three hours and 17 minutes.
Mike Foltynewicz lasted one out, three hits, seven runs, and three walks. Six pitchers followed, starting with Max Fried, who gave up four runs in 1.2 innings. Sean Newcomb had the quality effort, such as it was, with three strikeouts in two innings.
St. Louis set a record for the most runs in the first inning of a playoff game, tying the record for the biggest postseason inning. That mark? Set in 1929, 1968, and 2002.
The game was more than a reversal of Game 2, when Foltynewicz was solid against Jack Flaherty.
So stunning was the game that the Braves’ Twitter feed, normally overlflowing with a Tweet or GIF or picture or video for virtually anything and everything that happens, went silent from 5:01 p.m. to 8:19 p.m. Nothing from start to finish (unless there were deletions).