Braves' bullpen meltdown, big nights for Joey Wentz and Ozzie Albies, Marcell Ozuna's status

New York Times

20-07-2025

ATLANTA — The Atlanta Braves' once-solid but increasingly shaky bullpen must be reinforced if they're serious about overcoming already extremely long odds to make a postseason push.
But it remains to be seen if they'll be buyers or sellers at the July 31 trade deadline, and after Saturday's bullpen meltdown in a 12-9 loss to the New York Yankees, one wonders if they might be leaning more toward the latter.
Advertisement
The bullpen spoiled a four-inning scoreless start by Joey Wentz and a five-RBI night from Ozzie Albies, with Braves relievers allowing 12 runs in the last five innings.
'It was just our inability to close out innings,' said manager Brian Snitker, whose team has to go 45-20 the rest of the way to win 88 games, which still might not be enough to win a wild-card spot. 'We were scoring some runs. I felt good last weekend in St. Louis; I saw signs of life with the offense, and we played some really good baseball.
'(The Yankees are) a really good club. I mean, it's 27 hard outs against a team like this, and we just couldn't close innings off after the fourth.'
The decisive blow was Trent Grisham's tie-breaking ninth-inning grand slam off potential trade candidate Raisel Iglesias, who hadn't allowed a run in 15 appearances but has a 5.12 ERA in the final year of his contract.
Five of six Braves relievers gave up at least one run, including Anthony Volpe's homers off Wander Suero and Dylan Lee and a Cody Bellinger homer off Pierce Johnson.
The Braves were 4-for-10 with runners in scoring position, but after loading the bases with one out in the seventh inning, they left them loaded when Michael Harris II struck out and Nick Allen popped out. The Yankees tied it 8-8 an inning later on Volpe's homer on a two-strike hanging slider left over the middle by Lee.
Albies had another encouraging game for the Braves, to say the least, driving in five runs, including his second three-run homer in two nights against the Yankees.
OZZIE WE LOVE HIM@ozzie | #BravesCountry pic.twitter.com/3iX3xu2G0D
— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) July 20, 2025
It was his ninth of the season and 150th of his career, and like his homer in Friday's 7-3 win, it was just inside the right-field foul pole and came with Sean Murphy and Drake Baldwin on base. Albies added a two-run single in the fifth and has nine RBIs in the first two games of the series, after driving in two runs in the last 22 games before the All-Star break and posting a .506 OPS in that span.
Advertisement
He said his swing began feeling better in the Athletics series at Sacramento in the final week before the break.
'I kept working hard, and it's paying off,' he said.
All nine of the switch hitter's homers have been from the left side. Albies missed two months last season with a fractured left wrist and hit from the right side only upon returning in September. He didn't take batting practice from the right side for six months but said the wrist was strong during his struggles this season.
'I cannot use that as an excuse,' he said. 'The strength is there. It's just, when your swing is not good, you can't put up numbers and you can't hit the ball hard. It's a feel. You gotta feel it. It's a round ball with a round bat. You've got to work on it every day.'
Baldwin had a two-out double and Murphy walked in the fourth before Albies hit the next pitch out. It moved him into ninth place on the Braves' Atlanta-era hits list with 1,024.
'It's good to see that maybe he had the four days off and relaxed a little bit and cleared his mind,' Snitker said. 'Hopefully, by doing that, it'll be something that starts him on the path of a really good next 60-some games.'
Harris gave the Braves a 1-0 lead in the third with a 438-foot homer off Will Warren, the seventh of the season for the center fielder and his first since June 13.
Money Mike puts us on the board! 💸@MoneyyyMikeee | #BravesCountry pic.twitter.com/v0DL2ZOHtg
— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) July 19, 2025
Harris hit .133 with a .330 OPS in 26 games between homers, and he entered batting .211 with the lowest OBP (.234) and lowest OPS (.550) among all MLB qualifiers.
With his two-out walk in the fourth, he also snapped an astonishing streak of 178 walk-free plate appearances since May 18, the longest such streak by a Brave in at least a quarter-century. He last homered and walked in the same game on April 19 against the Minnesota Twins.
Advertisement
Nine years and three other organizations since the Braves selected Wentz with the 40th pick of the 2016 MLB Draft, the left-hander made his Atlanta home debut Saturday, and plenty of fans had to be wondering why it took so long.
Wentz was nearly as impressive as he'd been out of the bullpen in his Braves debut a week earlier at the St. Louis Cardinals, when he had six strikeouts in three scoreless and hitless innings — the most strikeouts in franchise history for a Brave making his debut out of the bullpen.
This time, he fired four scoreless innings with two strikeouts and two hits in his first start at any level since 2023, giving him seven scoreless innings for Atlanta with eight strikeouts and two walks.
Because he'd thrown a season-high 59 pitches and the Braves had a long four-run fourth inning, Snitker decided not to send him back out for the fifth; the original plan was to allow him to face one batter: Grisham. He has done enough in two games to earn another start next week.
'Oh, yeah,' Snitker said. 'We're gradually getting him stretched back out as a starter. And I think he's done a really good job, obviously. We're kind of building him up as we go, and he's been really, really good.'
Wentz, a Kansas native, was struggling in Double A in 2019 when the Braves dealt him to the Detroit Tigers with outfielder Travis Demeritte for closer Shane Greene at the trade deadline.
He made his MLB debut in 2022 with Detroit, went 5-17 with a 5.81 ERA in 70 games (26 starts) over three seasons and was claimed off waivers by the Pittsburgh Pirates in June 2024. He was again claimed off waivers by the Minnesota Twins this June, posted a 15.75 ERA in six relief appearances and was waived once again.
This time, he was claimed by the Braves. And in two appearances with the franchise that drafted him, Wentz has looked like a new man, using pinpoint control of an improved cutter – after he tinkered with his grip on the pitch — and a mid-90s fastball, with occasional curveballs.
Advertisement
'Before I got here, and really since I've been here, just trying to simplify the game, simplify the matchups, not really dig too deep on anything, trust my stuff and just kind of get to a place where I'm trying to execute as many pitches as I can,' Wentz said. 'However the team sees fit to use me, I'll try to be available for any role. So, if (starting) is what it is, yeah, and if not, I'm good with throwing bulk out of the pen. But I thought tonight was personally a good night for me. And it would be great to kind of try to get back in the starting role.'
When Snitker told the Braves before Friday's game that he was going to make lineup decisions that gave the team the best chance to win that day, he didn't take Marcell Ozuna aside for a discussion.
'I didn't have to,' Snitker said. 'I talked to the team, and it's pretty much put out there what my feelings were for going forward. (Ozuna's) great. I mean, he's been through all this, and he's not gonna not play. I'm going to pick my spots, and the other two guys … are doing so good, I can't not play them.'
The other two are hot-hitting catchers Murphy and Baldwin, who've handled the catching and DH duties for three consecutive games and four of the past five.
Ozuna started 89 of the first 92 games at DH, missing a three-game series at the Toronto Blue Jays in April to have his balky hip checked out and not leaving the lineup again until July 6, when Baldwin DH'd one game.
But with Ozuna hitting .172 with three homers and a puny .547 OPS in his past 35 games before Saturday, expect to see him on the bench plenty as long as Baldwin and Murphy keep performing. Ozuna struck out as a pinch hitter to end the game Saturday.
This will increase speculation that Ozuna, a pending free agent, could be traded. He has trade-veto rights as a 10-and-5 player (10 years of service, five with current team), but would Ozuna want to stay if he doesn't think he'll play? That wouldn't be a good note on which to enter free agency.
(Photo of Raisel Iglesias: Brett Davis / Imagn Images)