"It's the land of opportunity," Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said. "We came out of Spring Training and we had a nice baseball team. We had to do some stuff for the future of our organization. We've gotten some pieces and we've battled."
The Braves' decisive blow in this slugfest came courtesy of the two-out, eighth-inning single delivered by Perez, who was the only of these four aforementioned players who entered the season with any reason to believe he'd eventually be on Atlanta's roster. But as he quickly faded in the center-field battle during Spring Training, there wasn't much reason to believe he would make the offensive (.