ATLANTA -- Ryan Braun may have saved the Brewers' 4-2 win over the Braves on Saturday.
After already having driven in a run in the first inning, Braun made a full-extension leaping catch with two outs in the seventh with a runner on second, saving a run and preserving Milwaukee's one-run deficit.
"I think the turning point might be Brauny's play with three outs, making that," Brewers starter Wade Miley said. "That was an outstanding play. People don't understand how good of a play that was, fully extended and then creating momentum for us."
That catch flipped the script for the game. With a little energy in the dugout, the Brewers followed with an offensive outpouring of three runs on four hits in the eighth, more runs than the Brewers had scored in the previous 16 innings of the series combined.
"We're one run down, and we've got Christian Yelich, Lorenzo Cain, Mike Moustakas coming up, the top of our lineup and our big kind of offensive guys coming up," Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. "It's a big deal keeping it one run. Yeah, there's energy kind of going into that inning at-bat, and we've got the right guys up. It's a fabulous play."
Even the Braves dugout realized that the catch changed the course of the game.
"He made that catch and I said, 'Uh, oh,'" Braves manager Brian Snitker said. "I thought it was a double down in the corner as soon as he hit it. Then he sprawled out. In a game like that, that's a huge run. That saved them the ballgame."
To make the catch, Braun had to travel 58 feet in just 3.6 seconds. The ball had just a 19 percent catch probability, ranking it as a 5-star catch according to Statcast™. Braun hadn't made a catch on any of his 11 5-star catch opportunities prior to that.
Braun didn't definitively say that he thought it was the best catch of his career, but it was certainly up there, and he recognized the improbability of making it even as he did everything right from a good jump to a good route to his full extension.
"Considering the circumstances, it was one of the more important [catches in my career]," Braun said. "I've had a couple home run-robbing catches that were probably slightly more challenging, but obviously I had to get a perfect jump. Even when I dove, it was maybe a 50-50 chance, full extension kind of end of the glove. So it was a tough one for sure."