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Braves bludgeon Charlie Morton and reeling Tigers 10-1

Things went from bad to worse for the Detroit Tigers Friday evening as the all-of-a-sudden red hot Braves laid the wood in a 10-1 route, extending the Braves winning streak to 6 games and plunging the Tigers deeper into their nose dive.

The game got out of hand almost immediately as Tigers starter Charlie Morton had basically nothing from the first pitch. The first four hitters of the game went Jurickson Profar double, Matt Olson hit by pitch, Ronald Acuña Jr walk, and a Drake Baldwin walk to put the Braves up 1-0 with the bases still loaded and no one out. Ozzie Albies stepped to the plate and made sure the inning was going to end in a crooked number with opposite field 2-run single and the Braves had a 3-0 lead before single out was recorded.

Morton was able to escape any more damage in the first but was right back in the soup in the top of the second after a Nacho Alvarez single and a Matt Olson double extended the lead to 4-0. Acuña then sent an opposite field rocket over the right field fence for a 2-run homer, his 18th of the season, and the route was on.

From there it was the Bryce Elder show. Continuing a late season trend, Elder made relatively easy work of the Tigers lineup, scattering 5 hits over 7 innings and allowing only 1 run, a solo homer from Spencer Torkelson in the fourth inning, while striking out six and showing improved velocity. Elder maxed out with a 95 mph four-seam fastball tonight and averaged 93.7 mph, up 1.1 mph on his season average. It’s impossible to tell from night to night what exactly you’re going to get from Elder, with seemingly every outcome possible for him every night, but he’s undoubtedly been very good going on about a month now.

The Braves offense wasn’t done for the evening even though the game was well in hand. Ha-Seong Kim launched a 2-run homer in the 8th, his 4th of the year and 2nd with Atlanta, giving him a 143 wRC+ since joining the Braves and making that $16M player option he holds for 2026 more interesting by the day.

And to wrap up what was already a fun night for the road team, Drake Baldwin added to his Rookie of the Year candidacy by launching a 2-run homer of his own in the ninth inning, his 17th of the season, and giving the Braves a dominating 10-1 victory.

It’s the Braves 6th win a row, as they move to 71-83 on the season and are desperately trying to avoid a 90+ loss season, though those with hopes of potentially the number one overall pick in next year’s draft certainly aren’t loving this late season surge.

Where tonight really hurts, though, is in that Detroit clubhouse. The Tigers have now lost 4 in a row and 7 out of their last 10, meanwhile the hottest team in baseball is the team currently trying to chase them down for the AL Central title, the Cleveland Guardians. Cleveland now sits just 3.0 games back of Detroit and with a win tonight, they’re currently beating the Twins 2-0, would cut the lead down to 2.5 games. After both team finish their weekend series, they have a 3-game series with each other starting next week, in what will likely be the series that decides the AL Central.

Atlanta will look to win the series outright Saturday afternoon with former Tiger Joey Wentz on the mound in a 1:10 pm ET start. The Tigers will throw RHP Keider Montero against what is suddenly a red hot Braves offense.