The pace continues to be a furious one for the Atlanta Braves here in September. Once they get done facing the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field this week, they will have played 13 games in a row against teams who are currently in Postseason position — and it could be 16 games in a row if the Houston Astros can find any vein of real consistency.
It’s definitely a tough gauntlet for any team to endure but the good news is that the Braves have done a solid job of navigating it so far. They did what they
needed to do against the Phillies and they avoided getting swept against a red-hot Rays squad, so they’ve been doing a decent job of simply treading water in these turbulent waves during this part of the schedule.
It remains to be seen whether or not this will have a galvanizing effect on the Braves going forward or if it’ll cause them to run out of gas at some point but either way, you can’t say that the Braves will be cruising into October no matter how they get in. They will have been baseball battle-tested and proven resilient thanks to this unrelenting schedule, which continues on with six more big games this week.
September 14-16: Chicago Cubs
Current Record: 83-67 Projected Record (via FanGraphs): 90-72
Depending on how things shake out, this could be a potential Wild Card Series preview and it would certainly be an intriguing one if the Braves stayed in the third seed and the Cubs potentially fell to the six-seed. This would be a good ol’ fashioned matchup of whether or not strong pitching (from the Braves) can overcome a lineup that can seemingly go off at any given moment. We’ll get a taste of that this week as the Braves visit Wrigley Field for three games against the Cubs.
Chicago essentially finds themselves in a similar spot as the Phillies, since losing five-out-of-six to the Brewers this month essentially nuked any hope they had of catching Milwaukee for the NL Central title. Instead, they’re now jockeying for position in the NL Wild Card. Barring the collapse of the century, they should make it into the Postseason altogether but their position in the standings isn’t as comfortable — what with the Phillies being tied with them on record and the Padres currently surging in the standings with a seven-game win streak. It’s anybody’s guess as to whether or not the Cubs will be hosting a series at Wrigley or potentially having to travel to get their October quest started.
Either way, this is likely going to be a tough series for the Braves considering what the Cubs have going on. Chicago has had the best offense in baseball this season (according to wRC+) and they’ve only tightened their grip on that position since August. Dating back to August 1, the Cubs have collectively hit at a clip of .260/.342/.477 with a wOBA of .330 and a wRC+ of 126. The nearest team in wRC+ to them since August is (none other than) the Brewers, who have produced a wRC+ of 114 since August. Pete Crow-Armstrong is likely going to win NL MVP and he’s been mashing lately along with Alex Bregman and Seiya Suzuki in particular. We’re all familiar with Dansby Swanson’s wOBA Rollercoaster and as of right now, the cart is going upwards so he’ll also potentially be dangerous to deal with as well.
So with Chicago’s offense being as good as it is, it’s only natural to try to figure out why they aren’t leading their division (outside of the Brewers just being a buzzsaw this season) and it’s partially due to the fact that Chicago’s pitching hasn’t been nearly as consistent. Since August 1, Chicago’s pitching staff has the 20th-highest ERA- in baseball (105) and the next-to-worst FIP- in all of baseball (114). The Braves probably don’t want to get into a slugfest with this team but if they can keep things low-scoring and tight, Atlanta’s bullpen would have the clear advantage here.
With that being said, the Cubs are sending two of their better starters to the mound during this series in the form of David Peterson and old friend Kevin Gausman, so this probably won’t be smooth sailing for a Braves lineup that has found it tough to hit away from home in recent times. On the other hand, the Braves have had plenty of experience with Peterson over the years due to his stint with the Mets and for the most part, they’ve had decent success against him so hopefully that’ll continue. On top of that, the Braves managed to get four runs off of Kevin Gausman when they saw him earlier this season as a member of the Blue Jays, so the Braves have shown that they can get something against these two guys. We’ll just have to see if Atlanta can manage to get the job done and get some runs on the board against this duo for the first two games and Shota Imanaga for the series finale on Wednesday.
Monday, September 14 at 7:40 p.m. ET (BravesVision, MLB Network)
Tuesday, September 15 at 7:40 p.m. ET (BravesVision, Gray TV, TBS)
Wednesday, September 16 at 7:40 p.m. ET (BravesVision)
September 18-20: Houston Astros
Current Record: 75-75 Projected Record: 81-81
Is it really going to happen? Are we going to see a .500 (or possibly below) team make the Postseason? If the Astros (or the Rangers) don’t pick up the pace then it’s looking very likely that this apparently broken sport with no parity that’s dominated by one club in particular will be dealing with a scenario where an 81-81 team will be 13 wins away from a World Series title. That is the future that awaits the Astros if they can manage to make it through this season on top of the AL West.
It’s been a deeply weird month of September for the Astros so far, who are showing the sense of urgency that you’d expect from a team that’s going to finish very close to .500 but also somehow finds themselves in the thick of a playoff race. They took out the AL Central-leading Chicago White Sox over four games but then slipped on a banana peel at home against the Diamondbacks. They then proceeded to do the Braves a solid by taking a series in Philadelphia before going down to Tampa Bay and getting rocked in a three-game sweep. They’ll be taking on the moribund Royals before hosting the Braves but with the way this Astros team has looked, it’s really anybody’s guess as to whether or not Houston will be above or below .500 once the Braves come to town.
Houston hasn’t been particularly good at much of anything this season, which makes sense considering their record. They’ve put up a wRC+ of 91 since August 1 (24th-best mark in baseball since that date. Better than the Braves, which is scary) and their pitching hasn’t been too great, either with an ERA- of 102 and a FIP- of 99 since that date. They’ve been a very average ballclub but they still have to be taken seriously since this is a steam that’s still having to swat away the Rangers for the lead in the AL West. Atlanta’s going to have to take them seriously — especially if the Braves want to keep pressure on the Dodgers for the sixth seed.
At the plate, I think everybody knows to look out for Yordan Alvarez but he’s also been getting some help from guys like Issac Paredes, Yainer Diaz, Cam Smith and ol’ Jose Altuve. With that being said, outside of old friend Nick Allen surprisingly carrying a 100 wRC+ for the season, there’s not a lot of danger to be found elsewhere in Houston’s lineup. The same could be said for their pitching staff, which doesn’t have a lot of guys who should be feared outside of Josh Hader. If you see Josh Hader, it’s probably too late.
In order to avoid seeing Josh Hader, Atlanta will have to likely figure out how to score runs off of the probable trio of Peter Lambert, Hayden Wesneski and Hunter Brown. It’s kind of wild how similar these three pitchers are — Brown’s FIP since August 1 has been 3.69, Lambert’s FIP since then has been 3.57 and Wesneski has been sporting a FIP of 3.78. Brown and Wesneski are also separated by 10 points in ERA (3.56 and 3.66, respectively) but Lambert has been the exception with an ERA of 5.27. Either way, all three of these guys are perfectly fine and while that doesn’t seem imposing, it could be for a Braves lineup that is still trying to get their footing as far as hitting on the road is concerned. Hopefully Atlanta will have it figured out and they’ll be able to crack their code as they return to a former place of glory from five years ago.
Friday, September 18 at 8:10 p.m. ET (BravesVision)
Saturday, September 19 at 7:10 p.m. ET (BravesVision)
Sunday, September 20 at 2:10 p.m. ET (BravesVision)
