Drake Baldwin came out of the All-Star break looking like a man who spent four days studying film and sharpening a grudge. The Braves catcher went 5-for-5 with two home runs Sunday afternoon at Truist Park, powering Atlanta to an 8-5 win over the Texas Rangers and a series victory.
It was the first five-hit game by a Braves catcher since Johnny Estrada in 2004 — a gap of more than two decades. Baldwin’s previous career high had been three hits in a single game. He doubled it.
The 17th home run of Baldwin’s rookie season gave Atlanta a 3-0 lead in the third inning, a solo shot that followed Austin Riley’s leadoff blast in the second. Riley, mired in a months-long power drought, homered again in the fourth — his second multi-homer game of the year and his first since April 17. He entered Sunday with five total RBIs in all of June. He drove in four against Texas.
For the series, Baldwin finished 10-for-14 (.714) with three home runs and eight RBIs. Not a bad weekend for a first-time All-Star who didn’t get much of a break.
The Braves built a 4-0 lead through four innings, scoring exactly one run in each of the first four frames — Michael Harris II brought home Baldwin with an RBI in the first after Baldwin’s leadoff single, then Riley and Baldwin traded solo homers. Rangers starter Nathan Eovaldi absorbed the damage, tagged for four runs on six hits, three of them leaving the yard, over four innings.
That 4-0 cushion nearly evaporated in the fifth. Grant Holmes had cruised through four scoreless before Texas loaded the bases with one out. Wyatt Langford ripped an RBI double, Josh Jung drove in a run with a sacrifice fly, and Jake Burger’s two-out single cut the lead to 4-3. Holmes stranded the tying and go-ahead runs with a groundout to third, finishing five innings with three runs on seven hits, two walks, and two strikeouts to improve to 6-4.
The Braves went quiet in the fifth and sixth before breaking it open in the seventh. Riley punched a two-run single up the middle — his fourth RBI of the day — and Brewer Hicklen followed with an RBI double to make it 7-3. Baldwin capped his afternoon in the ninth with his second home run, a no-doubt shot that put the game out of reach at 8-4.
Texas scraped across single runs in the eighth and ninth — Kyle Higashioka’s RBI double off Dylan Lee, then Langford’s leadoff homer off Raisel Iglesias. Iglesias retired the next three in order to close it out.
The win moved Atlanta to 57-41 on the season. They open a four-game set against the Padres at Truist Park on Monday night.
Baldwin’s line over three games against Texas: 10 hits, three homers, eight RBIs, a .714 batting average. The last Braves catcher to collect five hits in a game was playing in a different era. Baldwin made it look routine.