Walt Weiss Sees the Tide Turning After Atlanta Braves' Bounce Back Win

Atlanta had not had much to feel good about lately.

The Braves built one of the biggest division leads in baseball over the season's first two months, then spent the last several weeks watching that cushion shrink as the losses piled up.

Wednesday night finally gave the club something different to talk about.

The Braves beat the St. Louis Cardinals 5-1 at Truist Park, a result that snapped a stretch where Atlanta had won just five of its previous 18 games, and first-year manager Walt Weiss sounded like a man who had been waiting a while to smile.

"Ozzie keeps plugging along doing his thing," Weiss said. "We need some wins, we need to turn this around. It's a good start."

Ozzie Albies gave Atlanta the night Weiss wanted, homering and driving in two runs during a season in which he has quietly been one of the most consistent hitters on the roster.

Reynaldo López did his part too.

Working his second start since sliding back into the rotation after losing his job there in April, López gave Atlanta five strong innings, allowing one run on two hits while striking out six.

Weiss singled him out afterward.

"You're always good to be patient and hopeful that a player is going to progress from start to start, but that was significant improvement here," Weiss said.

The bullpen backed him up in a big way, tossing four perfect innings, and Atlanta's pitching staff retired the final 20 batters in a row.

Atlanta has gone long stretches this season without Ronald Acuña Jr., Spencer Strider and Spencer Schwellenbach, part of a long list of players who have spent time on the injured list.

Weiss has leaned on patience as his answer through all of it.

"All these guys are striving for consistency," Weiss said. "The guys that have missed a lot of time, it's a process to get back to where they were."

AJ Smith-Shawver is another arm working his way back, and adding him to a staff that already owns one of the best bullpen ERAs in the sport would only make the group deeper down the stretch.

Wednesday was not the first time Weiss has had to talk his team through a rough patch this year, but this time he had more than words to back it up.

Atlanta improved to 50-34 and still leads the NL East by two and a half games over Philadelphia.

"We love the trends that we were seeing," Weiss said. "Think about how significant this can be. You get him going in a rotation now, you can slip [others] in. There were some good things on the horizon even through this tough stretch."

Weiss was careful not to oversell one night, but he could not hide his hope either.

"Tonight maybe it's a sign of the tide turning a little bit," he said. "Some good signs, a lot of good signs tonight."