WASHINGTON — Ronald Acuña Jr. hit a three-run homer to become the fastest player in Major League Baseball history to reach 200 home runs and 200 stolen bases for his career, and the Atlanta Braves beat the Washington Nationals 9-0 on Wednesday to split a two-game set between National League East Division clubs at Nationals Park.
Sean Murphy homered for the third time in five games, a three-run shot in the sixth inning that broke a scoreless tie in a game that was interrupted by a 1-hour, 25-minute rain delay in the fourth.
Acuña followed with a drive to left-center field in the seventh, his 14th homer of the season, to make it 6-0. The 28-year-old from Venezuela needed 904 games to reach the 200/200 club; the five-time MLB All-Star and 2023 NL MVP made his major league debut on April 25, 2018, but has missed parts of multiple seasons due to major injuries. Alfonso Soriano set the previous record at 929 games in August 2006 while playing for the Nationals against the Braves.
Acuña also stole the 225th base of his career and his 20th of the season, swiping second after his leadoff single in the sixth against Riley Cornelio (2-2), who struck out the next two batters. After Michael Harris II was walked intentionally, Murphy took Cornelio deep to left.
Earlier, Acuña led off the fourth with a single off Nationals starting pitcher Brad Lord. A walk and an error loaded the bases before it started raining. When play resumed, Cornelio came in and retired Murphy and Mike Yastrzemski to escape the jam.
Atlanta starting pitcher Grant Holmes needed only 26 pitches to retire the first nine Nationals before the delay. Dylan Dodd worked a scoreless inning in relief of Holmes, and Elieser Hernández (2-0) pitched the next three, allowing two hits, including James Wood’s two-out single in the sixth for Washington’s first hit.
Nationals catcher Keibert Ruiz left in the fourth inning after taking a foul ball off his mask.
Atlanta, which had lost back-to-back games — 7-3 at home to the San Francisco Giants on Monday and 9-5 to the Nationals on Tuesday — improved to 83-57 and has a four-game lead over the second-place Philadelphia Phillies (79-61) in the NL East. Both teams are off Thursday before meeting in a four-game series at Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park, where the scheduled starting pitchers for Friday’s opener are left-handers Chris Sale (13-9, 2.06 ERA) for the Braves and Cristopher Sánchez (16-4, 2.52) for the Phillies.
The Nationals fell to 67-75 and are fourth in the NL East, 17 games behind Atlanta.