Braves continue to lean on rotation in midst of Wild Card race

WASHINGTON -- Wednesday was a difficult day for the Braves in the nation’s capital. They learned around noon that they’ll be without one of their top starters until the final weekend of the regular season at the earliest, as the shoulder inflammation that forced Reynaldo López from his Tuesday start landed him on the injured list a day later. Then they spent the night losing ground in the National League Wild Card race with a 5-1 loss to the Nats.

Max Fried fell behind early, and the Braves followed up Tuesday’s 12-run outburst by doing little offensively against Jake Irvin, as Atlanta failed to keep pace with New York in the Wild Card hunt. After the Mets beat Toronto in dramatic fashion earlier in the day, the Braves’ loss pushed them one game back of the third and final Wild Card spot with 16 games to play.

“After last night, you hoped maybe that’s the start of something really good and we’d keep building on that,” said manager Brian Snitker. “But we didn’t.”

The Braves didn’t manage their first hit off Irvin until Michael Harris’ two-out double in the sixth. By then they were down four, with Dylan Crews and James Wood tallying RBI singles off Fried before CJ Abrams went deep. Fried battled to complete six innings, but tied a season-high by allowing 11 hits en route to his first loss to the Nats since April 13, 2022.

“It’s frustrating knowing that we played a really great baseball game yesterday, and I wasn’t really able to give us the effort that we needed,” Fried said.

“He kept the game manageable,” said Snitker. “We just couldn’t get anything going. You’re going to have that too. You can’t win 3-1 all the time. We have to consistently [score] more runs.”

The Braves needed innings from Fried after the bullpen had to cover eight innings following López’s early exit on Tuesday. Even if it is only temporary, his loss is significant; López’s 2.03 ERA leads all MLB pitchers (min. 100 innings), and he and Fried had played a big role in Atlanta posting the NL’s third-best rotation ERA in the second half. They’ve leaned heavily on that rotation as the offense has sagged without mainstays Ronald Acuña Jr., Austin Riley, Ozzie Albies and others for long stretches due to injury.

Fried became the first Braves starter to allow more than three runs since Aug. 10, a stretch of 29 starts, but the Braves have only gone 18-12 in their last 30 games. Even with that elite starting pitching, they’ve lost five of their last nine to the Rockies, Blue Jays, Reds and Nats.

Now their rotation is down to four members: Fried, Charlie Morton, Spencer Schwellenbach and Cy Young favorite Chris Sale. The Braves have an off-day Thursday before opening an enormous series against the Dodgers, which will allow them to slot Fried into López’s spot on regular rest the next time through. If the entire rotation pitches on four days’ rest their next time through, they won’t need a fifth starter until Sept. 20.

But that might be too much to ask, even of a veteran rotation, at this point in the year. At the earliest, they’ll need a fifth starter on Sept. 17, and López isn’t eligible to return from the IL until Sept. 26.

“We have to be better,” Snitker said. “It’s kind of been up and down and good and bad and the whole thing for a while now.”

“We’re trying to win games,” Fried said. “I know, me personally, I want to get back out there as soon as possible.”