Braves' Petco – After a 5-2 loss in San Diego extended the Braves’ Petco Park skid to nine straight defeats dating back to the 2024 NL Wild Card Series, manager Walt Weiss says the team’s pitching-and-scoring slump “isn’t going to last.” The slide also shrank their NL East le
When the Braves walked off Petco Park after a 5-2 loss on Wednesday night, the number on the losing streak was already starting to feel unreal. It wasn’t just another defeat in San Diego.
With that game, the Braves have now lost each of the past nine games played at Petco Park, dating back to the 2024 NL Wild Card Series. Over those matchups, they’ve been outscored 39-19.
And location isn’t softening the blow. The Braves have lost 10 of their past 13 games overall, and their NL East lead has narrowed from 9 1/2 games to 4 1/2 during this rough stretch.
“The teams we’re playing are catching us at a good time for them,” Braves manager Walt Weiss said. “It’s all about when you play teams. It’s really not necessarily who you’re playing, it’s always about when you play teams in this league. We’re down right now. We’re struggling a little bit on both sides, with pitching and scoring runs. It’s not going to last.”.
They head to San Francisco with their first four-game losing streak of the season, and the same questions keep landing in the middle of every conversation: Why did the offense drop, why has the bullpen been under strain, and how long can a team keep absorbing this kind of slide?
Drake Baldwin’s slump has a clear starting point. With the Braves needing a win, Drake Baldwin didn’t start Wednesday’s series finale. He did come in as a pinch-hitter in the sixth and struck out. Since then, he’s 1-for-31 with 19 strikeouts.
The timing is hard to miss. Baldwin homered in his first plate appearance after spending nearly a full month—May 19 through June 15—on the injured list with a left oblique strain. His recent dip has been dramatic enough that the Braves are now missing what he was doing before the injury. not just the presence of a player on the roster.
Weiss pointed back to what the team still believes is there. “We have the personnel,” Weiss said. “It’s the same personnel that was really good the first couple months or month and a half [of the season]. They’re going to come around, but right now, we’re having a hard time.”
The numbers line up with that belief. Through May 18—when Baldwin strained his oblique—the Braves ranked third in MLB with a .765 OPS over 48 games. Since that date, in 31 games, their OPS has fallen to .680, tied for the fourth-worst mark in the league.
The Braves’ offensive decline isn’t happening in a vacuum, and the bullpen is paying for it. The strain has shown up in how often relief support has been forced to cover extra innings—or earlier outs—because starters haven’t consistently gone deep.
A starter completing six innings has happened in just five of the Braves’ past 25 games going back to May 26. Bryce Elder has done it three times in that span. Grant Holmes and Martín Pérez have each done it once.
Tuesday night’s 10-inning loss to the Padres carried an especially sharp reminder. Pérez tried to help on the mound, but a 110.4 mph Xander Bogaerts liner hit Pérez’s right hamstring to begin the second inning.
Pérez still pitched into the fifth inning, but the inning-after-inning control problems followed him anyway: he issued four walks and allowed three earned runs. He didn’t record an out beyond the fourth. It marked the first time in 12 starts that he hasn’t completed at least five innings.
“[The liner] got me really good,” Pérez said. “It wasn’t something that was bothering me when I was pitching. I just walked too many guys and got behind too many times. It was just one of those days.”
Even when the Braves create a moment, the bigger picture has been stubborn. Wednesday’s game included at least one bright spot: Joey Bart hit a two-run homer off JP Sears in the sixth. That shot prevented the Braves from being shut out for the fourth time in their past five games at Petco Park.
Bart’s homer mattered for Atlanta in the standings, but it also landed in a personal place. Bart is a suburban Atlanta native, and this is the kind of memory he said he’ll carry.
“It was good,” Bart said. “I just wish I could have come through a couple more times.”
That last sentence fits the broader offensive problem. Over the past 13 games, the Braves have hit .154 (14-for-91) with a .432 OPS with runners in scoring position.
Bart’s homer was also his first since the Braves acquired him from the Pirates on Thursday. For a team trying to arrest a slide, he’s another piece they’ll want to move quickly—especially with more injury uncertainty lingering behind the scenes.
Veteran catcher Sean Murphy might remain sidelined into the second half of August with a left middle finger fracture.
The sequence of what’s gone wrong is starting to feel consistent: the Braves’ offense has dropped right around the time Baldwin’s injury began. the bullpen has been stretched because starters haven’t reached innings often enough. and even in games where the Braves get a spark at Petco. the scoring doesn’t sustain.
When Weiss says the struggles “isn’t going to last,” it lands as more than a coach’s line. It’s a bet the team is forced to make while it tries to stop the bleeding—starting now, before the road trip turns into something even longer than a skid at the park they haven’t been able to solve.
Braves Petco Park Walt Weiss Drake Baldwin Ronald Acuña Jr NL East bullpen Martín Pérez Xander Bogaerts Joey Bart JP Sears Sean Murphy