Michael Harris II gave the Atlanta Braves a postseason jolt on Sunday night, turning a ball with a.016 expected batting average into a fifth-inning triple and then into a run. The play helped Atlanta take a 2-1 lead, and Harris was not done there.
MLB.com reported the hit carried a 1.6% expected batting average, the kind of number that usually means an out, not a trip around the bases. Video and tracking data showed an 86 mph sweeper, a 92.3 mph exit velocity and a 23-degree launch angle, but Teoscar Hernández’s handling of the ball in the left-field corner helped the play stretch into a triple. Harris then scored on Kris Bubic’s wild pitch, a sequence that changed the score in a hurry.
That is why the night belonged to Harris. In a playoff game, the difference between a weakly hit ball and a rally can be one bad hop, one late read or one corner play that does not quite get finished cleanly. Here, the contact quality looked modest by Statcast standards, yet the result was the opposite of modest: a triple, a run and a lead Atlanta could carry deeper into the game.
Harris added to it in the seventh inning with an RBI double that brought Matt Olson home, giving Atlanta another productive swing from the same bat. The finish still had one more turn when Max Muncy homered in the ninth inning, a reminder that no postseason game stays quiet for long once the leverage rises.
For Atlanta, the broader picture is simple. Harris supplied the game’s most unusual hit and then backed it up with another run-scoring swing. For anyone checking Braves Score Today, the story was not just that he reached base. It was that he turned one unlikely break into the kind of night that can decide a playoff game.
