ATLANTA -- When starting pitcher Ervin Santana walked the bases loaded in the first inning, things didn't seem like they were going to go well for the Atlanta Braves. But Santana got out of that opening frame unscathed, and calmed down to hurl a good six innings of one-run baseball.
The game was won in the later innings, however, long after Santana had exited. Justin Upton led the way with two hits and three RBI, two of those runs plated courtesy of his sixth-inning, two-run blast.
David Carpenter got the win in relief, and Craig Kimbrel notched his league-leading 40th save. Here are three other observations from Friday's 5-2 win over the Miami Marlins in Game 1 of the weekend series.
Freeman entered Friday's game batting .291 with 17 home runs and 69 RBI. That's a decent clip for the fifth-year pro that's already been to two All-Star games. But with all the success Freeman's had with the Braves, there are teams he doesn't hit well against.
The Marlins are Freeman's Kryptonite.
Of teams Freeman has played more than three times in his career, his batting average against the Marlins is third lowest (.245). The team that gives him the biggest problem is Milwaukee (.185 in 25 games). Houston (.208 in 14 games) comes in at No. 2.
In 70 games against the Marlins, Freeman is 59 for 244 with seven home runs and 34 RBI. While looking at his career split versus the Marlins is bad, Freeman's had even worse luck against Miami this season.
Against the Marlins this season, Freeman entered Friday's action 3 for 51 (.059) with a home run and two RBI in 13 games. He has more hits (four) against the Seattle Mariners in just four games; he has five hits against the Pittsburgh Pirates in five games and six against the San Francisco Giants in just six games.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Freeman's 25 hits in 52 at-bats (.481) versus the Washington Nationals this year has got to make the Nationals the favorite team he faces.
But Friday's game wasn't against the Nationals, and Freeman had similar luck facing the Marlins. Freeman went 0 for 3 with three strikeouts and lowered his 2014 average against Miami to .056.
For those that only look at Heyward's .271 batting average, his 11 home runs, 54 RBI and 14 stolen bases, you're missing out on the whole story. And the portion of the story you should be focusing on has nothing to do with whether he bats in the leadoff spot or down in the heart of the order.
Heyward is the best defensive player in baseball, and saves so many runs for the Braves with both his glove and arm.
In the sixth inning with runners on first and second base, Marcell Ozuna laced a ball that kissed off the right-field foul line and into the corner. The runner from second base scored easily, but Garrett Jones, who was chugging from first base, was met at the plate with a surprise.
Heyward corralled the ball and laser-beamed the throw to the cut-off man Tommy La Stella, who then made a perfect throw to Evan Gattis. The ball was to home plate with enough time for Gattis to shift and easily tag out Jones. Gattis wasn't quite sitting there with the ball waiting, but it almost felt that way.
The assist from Heyward was his ninth on the season, but it wasn't just the throw that made the play special.
Ozuna's base hit originally looked like it was going to land foul. Heyward didn't get a good jump on the ball, possibly because he thought it was going foul, or possibly he'd already mapped out what was going to happen.
There is an advanced metric called Defensive Runs Saved (DRS). The formula is too complicated for most humans to understand, but it takes into account what percentage of players would successfully have made a given play and then it subtracts that number and assigns a point value to the play in question.
Too much? Yeah.
Defensive Runs Saved generalizes a player's complete defensive value into one figure. Any number above 15 means the player is of Gold Glove worth. Anything from 10-14 is great, five to nine in above average and so on ...
Heyward's DRS prior to Friday's game was a league-leading 33. That figure is absolutely sure to rise when someone smarter than myself calculates what happened on Friday.
There were only eight players in the majors prior to Friday's action with a DRS above 15. New York Mets outfielder Juan Lagares was second to Heyward at 30, and the Braves' shortstop Andrelton Simmons was third at 23.
In the 40 games since the All-Star break, Upton is batting .313 (45 for 144) with nine home runs and 36 RBI. There was even a stretch in August where he enjoyed a 13-game hitting streak and hit .413 with five home runs and 20 RBI over that span.
Upton's hot bat since the break has driven his season average to .288, and he's plated 91 runs and blasted 26 homers. It's also quietly landed Upton in the thick of the NL MVP debate.
But the front-runner for the award was in the house. Miami's right fielder Giancarlo Stanton will have a lot to say about this MVP race.
Stanton entered Friday's game batting .294 with 33 dingers and 97 RBI. He'd also stolen 10 bases.
On Friday though, Upton's 2-for-4 night with three RBI outshined Stanton's 0-for-2 performance. It's going to take a lot of outperforming Stanton for Upton to catch up, and there are only 27 games now left in the regular season.
There are also guys like Clayton Kershaw, Andrew McCutchen and possibly even Jonathan Lucroy that will not sit back and let Upton and Stanton duke it out. There are many faces in this battle.
