Right when the Atlanta Braves perhaps needed it most, they got a weekend series against the struggling Washington Nationals, a real opportunity for Brian Snitker’s team to gain more ground in the National League wild card race. On Friday night, they accomplished just that — but they didn’t make it easy on themselves.
That’s, unfortunately, been a theme for the Braves this season as they’ve been battling both a devastating epidemic from the injury bug and their own miscues throughout the entire season. On Friday, we saw just that when Jorge Soler, who was reunited with Atlanta at the trade deadline, returned from a hamstring injury to play in right field despite being the DH almost exclusively this season at both of his stops.
With that stage set, it was the fourth inning when Chris Sale gave up a fly ball to right field that was drifting toward the foul line. Soler ran toward it but seemed to pull up short of the line. That was a massive blunder as the ball landed fair and then bounced into the stands for a ground-rule double to leave Sale with runners on second and third with two outs and Atlanta nursing just a 1-0 lead. The Nats took the lead with a two-RBI double on the next at-bat…