{"id":686422,"date":"2026-06-05T17:56:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T17:56:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/686422\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T17:56:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T17:56:13","slug":"braves-vs-blue-jays-series-recap-two-out-of-three-for-the-umpteenth-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/686422\/","title":{"rendered":"Braves vs. Blue Jays series recap: Two out of three for the umpteenth time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stop me if you\u2019ve heard this before over the course of this excellent season, so far: The Atlanta Braves have won another series. Sure, they were definitely favorites to take another two-out-of-three games against a Toronto Blue Jays squad that had been spinning its wheels in the mud for a bit but the remarkable consistency of this team is truly something to behold. They\u2019ve taken care of business with nearly every opportunity that they\u2019ve had so far this season and the expectations remained the same as Atlanta returned home from another productive road trip.<\/p>\n

Still, this could\u2019ve been a tough series for the Braves. The Blue Jays have had some strong pitching and a lineup that was seemingly itching to return to the level of production that helped propel them to the AL pennant in 2025. If any team currently has a target on their back based on current performance, it\u2019s Atlanta. Toronto was surely looking to use this series as a way to get their season on track but as we\u2019ve seen on numerous occasions, the Braves have no intentions of letting off of the proverbial gas pedal. So let\u2019s take a look at how this series turned out.<\/p>\n

Tuesday, June 2Braves 4, Blue Jays 3<\/a><\/p>\n

As we\u2019ve gotten used to seeing lately, the Braves got off to a quick start in this one as the plated two runs to start things off. Ronald Acu\u00f1a Jr.<\/a> didn\u2019t homer this time but his walk did help matters as Michael Harris II<\/a> immediately followed it up by driving one deep into center field for an RBI double that sent Acu\u00f1a racing from first to home. Ozzie Albies eventually brought home Money Mike with a sacrifice fly and it was 2-0 Braves to get things going.<\/p>\n

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Toronto did respond immediately, though. Kazuma Okamoto<\/a> has hit the ground running since moving over from NPB to MLB and his two-run dinger off of Bryce Elder<\/a> tied things up in the second. Considering that the Blue Jays had Kevin Gausman<\/a> going, it sure felt like runs would be at a premium and it was totally feasible to imagine that this thing could\u2019ve stayed 2-2 until both teams dipped into their bullpen.<\/p>\n

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As it turned out, the Braves weren\u2019t done scoring off of Gausman. Matt Olson and Ozzie Albies got the job done with two outs on the board against Gausman in the third inning as Olson\u2019s double and Albies\u2019 subsequent RBI single put Atlanta back in front. Toronto knotted it back up with a sacrifice fly from Daulton Varsho<\/a> in the sixth inning but the sixth ended up being the end of the line for Gausman. That was when Matt Olson hit a skyscraper shot out towards the Chop House that just about made it into the grass in home run territory to lead off the sixth in order to put Atlanta back in front by a lone run.<\/p>\n

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From that point forward, it was on the pitching staff to make sure that that single run from Olson\u2019s blimp shot held up. Elder ended up winning the duel against Gausman by pitching into the seventh before passing the baton to the dynamic back-end duo of Robert Suarez<\/a> and Raisel Iglesias<\/a>. The tying run for Toronto did make it into scoring position against Iglesias in the ninth inning but a harmless pop up from the bat of Jes\u00fas S\u00e1nchez fell into Austin Riley<\/a>\u2019s glove to end the game and allow the Braves to set the tone in yet another series.<\/p>\n

Wednesday, June 3Braves 7, Blue Jays 3<\/a><\/p>\n

This time, it was Toronto who got off to a fast start as they plated a run in the first inning to go ahead. It could\u2019ve been a lot worse, though, as they loaded up the bases with nobody out against Grant Holmes<\/a>. Fortunately, Holmes was able to get out of that jam with just the one run allowed and that ended up being a huge development considering how the rest of the game ended up going. Atlanta responded in the second inning with a bloop RBI single from Ha-Seong Kim<\/a> (who badly needed something like that to go his way for once) to tie the game up at one run apiece.<\/p>\n

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Nathan Lukes<\/a> ended up having a very solid series and you know it was good for him because he smacked his first dinger of the season in the third inning to put Toronto back in front. Fortunately for us Braves fans, that was as good as it got for the Blue Jays in this one as the Braves forged ahead from that point forward. Mauricio Dub\u00f3n<\/a> came up to the plate in Atlanta\u2019s half of the third inning with two men on and two outs and Dub\u00f3n proceeded to make some more two-out magic happen as he sent one out to the home bullpen in right-center for a three-run bomb off of Patrick Corbin<\/a> that put Atlanta back in front.<\/p>\n

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Thanks to Grant Holmes throwing six steady innings and Atlanta\u2019s bullpen clamping down on Toronto from that point forward (outside of a ninth inning moonshot from Brandon Valenzuela off of Tyler Kinley<\/a>), the Braves were able to eventually pull away. Ozzie Albies essentially put the game to bed in the seventh inning as he bopped one out off of the scoreboard below the Hank Aaron Terrace in left field for Atlanta\u2019s second three-run dinger of the night. Two innings later, the Braves were celebrating their 17th series win of the season \u2014 it\u2019s still just June, mind you.<\/p>\n

Wednesday, June 4Blue Jays 7, Braves 2<\/a><\/p>\n

Well, when you consider how the xBA results went for the first two games (Blue Jays lost the first game despite winning the xBA battle .211 to .188 and lost by four runs in the second game while only losing the xBA battle by .11), it kind of felt inevitable that the Blue Jays would eventually see something go their way in a tangible matter during this series. That was the case in this one, as they racked up sixteen hits (10 of which came off of Chris Sale<\/a>) and never trailed on their way to salvaging the series with a 7-2 win.<\/p>\n

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A three-run third inning where Sale really had to labor to get out of it was the early pivotal point of this contest and it sure helped Toronto\u2019s chances when the debuting Chad Dallas<\/a> managed to escape the bottom of the third by only giving up one run on a Matt Olson sacrifice fly. That one run was all the Braves could muster up against Toronto\u2019s pitching staff until the eighth inning, which is when Mauricio Dub\u00f3n fired up everybody in the ballpark (particularly the large \u201cTarps Off\u201d contingent in the 400 level) with a solo shot that cut the deficit to just one run.<\/p>\n

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Any hopes of a fantastic finish were quashed following the ninth inning, though. Reynaldo L\u00f3pez<\/a> made his first appearance since May 31 and reader, it wasn\u2019t a good one. He got dinged for four runs on five hits and a walk and those four runs essentially made it so that Toronto could breathe a bit easier on their way to completely thwarting any hopes the Braves had of pulling off a comeback win for a sweep.<\/p>\n

The Atlanta Braves are currently experiencing some real baseball first-world problems. \u201cOh no, they\u2019ve won 17 out of 20 series but only two of those were sweeps.\u201d \u201cOh no, the bullpen had a rare off night.\u201d \u201cOh no, the star offseason signing is struggling, I guess they\u2019ll have to choose between two perfectly capable replacements on any given night.\u201d Basically, if these are the quibbles that your team has to deal with at any given time, then things are going quite alright.<\/p>\n

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It was especially nice to see the Braves take the two games where Chris Sale didn\u2019t start. It\u2019s certainly a rare occasion to see Sale give up so many hits and have to deal with so many baserunners in any given start so it\u2019s good that this off-night of sorts came when the Braves already had the series in hand. Bryce Elder continues to simply find ways to get the job done and Grant Holmes showed some real resilience in his start to make sure that he didn\u2019t fall victim to the same pratfalls that have tripped him up in recent starts.<\/p>\n

Plus, the offense just continues to keep on raking. Mauricio Dub\u00f3n had a bit of a blip at the plate but he appears to be determined to prove that he can get the job done with the bat as well as his glove. Ronald Acu\u00f1a Jr. didn\u2019t carry over his supernova form from the road trip but he\u2019s definitely looked a lot more productive as he starts to find some steady form again. Matt Olson continues to be, well, Matt Olson and Ozzie Albies has been continuing to undergo a resurgence of his own. Despite the wobble on Thursday, Atlanta\u2019s entire pitching staff is still rolling along and doing a great job of limiting any damage that they may sustain so that this offense can keep on having opportunities to change the game with any given at-bat.<\/p>\n

So yeah, life continues to be good for the Atlanta Braves during the 2026 season. The Pirates will be coming into this weekend\u2019s series playing some pretty good baseball so it\u2019s not like Atlanta\u2019s going to be getting any type of respite when it comes to the competition. Still, when a team is running as hot as the Braves have been, it\u2019s hard to really bet against them slowing down until it actually happens. We\u2019ll see if that\u2019s the case on the weekend or if the Braves will continue to steamroll over anybody who happens to be in their way on the schedule.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stop me if you\u2019ve heard this before over the course of this excellent season, so far: The Atlanta…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":686423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[5786,2111,142455,18619,58368,247300,90189,92894,33292,67648,133757,377,9885,133475,29504,363,380,18700,101535,40811,136689,12944,9884,562,22361,99,365,83957,364,27360],"class_list":["post-686422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-atlanta","tag-atlanta-braves","tag-austin-riley","tag-blue-jays","tag-bryce-elder","tag-chad-dallas","tag-chris-sale","tag-daulton-varsho","tag-grant-holmes","tag-ha-seong-kim","tag-kazuma-okamoto","tag-kevin-gausman","tag-matt-olson","tag-mauricio-dubon","tag-michael-harris-ii","tag-mlb","tag-nathan-lukes","tag-ozzie-albies","tag-patrick-corbin","tag-raisel-iglesias","tag-reynaldo-lopez","tag-robert-suarez","tag-ronald-acuna-jr","tag-series","tag-sixth-inning","tag-sports","tag-the-blue-jays","tag-the-braves","tag-toronto-blue-jays","tag-tyler-kinley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/686423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}