Forget the scoreline you might have glanced at mid-game. This one finished 9-0 Braves, and the only score that actually matters from Wednesday's mess at Nationals Park is 200 and 200.
Ronald Acuña Jr. got to 200 career home runs and 200 career steals faster than anyone in major league history, and he did it against Washington of all teams, the same franchise whose former player, Alfonso Soriano, had owned that record. There's a nice irony sitting right there: Soriano set the old mark against Atlanta, and Acuña broke it against Washington. Baseball likes symmetry like that more than it should, but I'll take it.
The game needed a while to get out of its own way. A 1-hour, 25-minute rain delay hit in the fourth inning, right after Atlanta had loaded the bases with one out and nothing to show for it. Grant Holmes had been cruising for Atlanta before the tarp came out, and when everyone came back the score was still 0-0, which is probably the line anyone checking in mid-delay saw and figured was final. It wasn't. Baseball games don't end in ties, and this one very much didn't.
The turning point came in the sixth. With the game still scoreless, Washington's Riley Cornelio intentionally walked Michael Harris II to get to Sean Murphy with two outs. I understand the instinct. I don't understand the result: Murphy turned around and hit a three-run homer that broke the game open, his third homer in his last five games at that point. If you're going to pitch around a hitter to get to a healthy, locked-in catcher, you'd better be right, and Cornelio wasn't. That decision turned a tight, rain-soaked afternoon into a laugher.
Acuña's blast came an inning later, pushing Atlanta's lead further, and from there it was mop-up. Austin Riley cashed a bases-loaded chance in the eighth, and Murphy added another RBI single in the ninth off a position player Washington had to throw to the mound just to get through the game. When you're using an infielder to pitch, the competitive part of the evening ended a while ago.
Step back and the standings matter too, though I'd resist reading too much into one game. Atlanta had just come off a rough stretch, including a series-opener loss to Washington the night before, after a hot run had been snapped by an unlikely California visitor. This win didn't erase that discomfort so much as it papered over it with an all-time individual achievement. The Braves were still going to have to answer real questions in Philadelphia, where a Phillies rotation anchored by Cristopher Sánchez and a resurgent Phillies club were waiting.
But for one afternoon, none of that mattered. Acuña's numbers, the pace to get there, and the fact that he got there against the very franchise that used to hold the record, is the story. Everything else, the delay, the intentional walk that backfired, the final Nationals pitcher of the day being a position player, is just how the story got told.
