Pitch No. 3 went for a single. So did Pitch No. 5. One sacrifice fly later, Aaron Blair was down 1-0 and his major league career was barely three minutes old.
At which time, he began to pitch.
The first element of the Braves’ great arms build-up to make it to Atlanta, Blair eventually took the loss in his Turner Field debut on Sunday but the ovation he received when departing with out in the sixth was well earned. Several rows behind the Braves dugout gave him a standing send-off and that’s not happening much around here this spring.