Atlanta Braves Win World Series For First Time Since 1995

For old school fans of baseball, the 2021 World Series must have been bizarre. 

Openers and bullpen games replaced the traditional World Series starter, turning games into four hour affairs with a constant stream of pitchers running out of the bullpen to take the mound. 

Braves ace Max Fried returned the game of baseball to normalcy on Tuesday night. 

Fried went six innings — giving up four hits and no runs — and the Atlanta Braves offense swung the bats early and often, winning the organization’s first World Series since 1995 in a 7-0 romp.

For Fried, his six innings thrown was the most by a starting pitcher for the entirety of the World Series — by either team — bouncing back from his rough game two start. 

“I just told myself that I was going to go out there and be 100 percent me and just try to pitch and try to win a ballgame,” Fried said. “Just kind of the same mentality that I had in the second half: just go out there and keep guys off-balance, just kind of pitch unorthodox and pitch with my eyes.”

In game two, Fried gave up six earned runs in five innings, allowing Houston to even the series at a game apiece. 

“He was way better than the first game,” said Astros’s second baseman Jose Altuve. “He pitched good. He didn’t use his curveball too much tonight, but fastball, slider, changeup was really good. He was almost unhittable.”

While Fried gets a ton of credit for his outing, it was Jorge Soler who took home the World Series MVP, and silenced a raucous Houston crowd early. 

With two on and two outs in the Braves half of the third, Soler battled with Houston starting pitcher Luis Garcia for seven pitches, before launching a hanging breaking ball out of Minute Maid Park to give Atlanta an early 3-0 lead. 

SOLER HAS LEFT THE BUILDING. pic.twitter.com/IOc5wXreRb

— MLB (@MLB) November 3, 2021

“I just kept battling it out, I’d seen his stuff or whatever, so I was sitting on the off-speed,” Soler said after the game through an interpreter. “I was thinking to myself, if he throws me an off-speed pitch, I can connect and drive the ball. If he throws me a fastball, I’m just going to try to stay alive during this at-bat. I got to 3-2, and I didn’t want the same thing to happen [as] the first-inning at-bat where I struck out