Baseball is usually pretty good at spreading humiliation around. One night, a team looks untouchable. The next, some guy who had been quietly minding his own business turns into Barry Bonds for three hours and leaves behind a box score that looks like someone entered a cheat code.
The Atlanta Braves have seen a little too much of that lately. Over the past two seasons, the Braves have found themselves on the wrong end of three truly absurd individual performances. One came in a game they somehow won. One came from a noted Braves enemy doing noted Braves enemy things. The most recent came Tuesday night in Pittsburgh, when Ryan O’Hearn turned a midweek July game into a new page in the Pirates’ history book.
For a team already familiar with All-Star snubs, the injury bug, uncomfortable road trips and pitchers going from dud to stud then back into a pumpkin, these games are their own strange category of pain.
Three Monster Games vs. Braves
Suárez Somehow Wasn’t Enough for the Diamondbacks
The wildest part about Eugenio Suárez’s monster game for the D-backs against Atlanta is not that he hit four home runs. That is ridiculous, obviously, but the truly deranged part is that Arizona still managed to lose.
On April 26, 2025, Suárez went 4-for-4 with four homers, four runs scored and five RBIs against the Braves at Chase Field. He homered in the second, fourth, sixth and ninth innings, the last of which tied the game at 7-7 and should have felt like the final ridiculous blow in a night full of them.
Instead, Atlanta won 8-7 in 10 innings.
That is the kind of game that makes no sense in real time and even less sense later. A player joins one of baseball’s most exclusive clubs, spends the entire night personally dragging his team across home plate, and still has to watch the other dugout celebrate.
For the Braves, it was less a clean escape than a very loud warning label. They had won the game, yes. They had also allowed one man to hit four home runs, which is generally not a recommended path to victory.
Schwarber Remains a Braves Problem
Then there is Kyle Schwarber, who has made a career out of being deeply unpleasant to Atlanta pitching.
On Aug. 28, 2025, Schwarber turned Citizens Bank Park into a batting cage replete with ravenous Philly fans. He went 4-for-5 with four home runs and nine RBIs as the Phillies hammered the Braves 19-4. Unlike the Suárez game, there was no funny little escape hatch here. No late rally. No “well, at least they won.” Just an old-fashioned divisional beating with Schwarber standing in the middle of the wreckage like a conquering king.
This was the nightmare version of a familiar problem. Braves fans already know Schwarber is dangerous. He has the exact profile that feels custom-built to make any mistake look stupid: patience, immense power, and the ability to end a game before the pitching coach has even finished his walk to the mound.
Plenty of players have good games. Schwarber frequently has the kind against Atlanta that feel personal, even when they probably aren’t. Probably.
O’Hearn Joins the List
Ryan O’Hearn added the latest chapter Tuesday night, and he did not bother easing into it.
Against the Braves in Pittsburgh, O’Hearn went 4-for-5 with three home runs, three runs scored and 10 RBIs in a 12-4 Pirates rout. He clobbered a grand slam in the first inning, added another no-doubter three-run shot in the third, and then launched his third and final homer in the sixth. By the time he was done, he had set a Pirates franchise record for RBIs in a single game.
That’s not just a bad night for Atlanta; it’s a night where the other team starts collecting trinkets from the diamond to commemorate the occasion and that night’s star player gets his helmet sent to Cooperstown. No, really.
It was also the kind of game that lands awkwardly because the Braves have spent much of the season looking like one of the National League’s most complete teams. They have survived plenty of adversity so far in the 2026 season, but none of that matters when one hitter turns a game into his own private fireworks show.
Braves Pitching Has to Avoid the Next Nightmare Inning
The Braves are good enough to survive plenty over a long season, but these individual explosions are reminders of how quickly one matchup can become a mess. Suárez somehow hit four home runs in a loss, Schwarber did what Schwarber so often does to Atlanta, and O’Hearn just authored one of the biggest games in Pirates history against Braves pitching.
None of those games define Atlanta’s season by themselves. Together, though, they are a pretty blunt warning. Against power bats, hot hitters and division enemies with long memories, the Braves continue to enter the record books- and not in the way they’d like to.
Main Photo: Charles LeClaire- Imagn Images
