Nature is healing, as they say. For two very distinct reasons.
Reason 1: The Braves, having sauntered to a pretty lofty record despite mediocre production, have been absolutely ravaged by some combination of baseball’s luck dragons and/or the Tampa Bay Rays’ sublime-in-this-series defensive positioning. Seriously:
- First game: the Braves actually out-xwOBAed the Rays, .334 to .326, but managed just a .156 wOBA while the Rays managed a .426 wOBA. That was the Braves’ biggest xwOBA underperformance of the year. Amazingly, the Rays outhitting their xwOBA by .100 in a single game didn’t even fall in their top ten xwOBA overperformances for the year.
- Second game: in nearly a repeat of Game One, the Braves put forth a .336 xwOBA… and a .197 wOBA. The Rays out-xwOBAed them (.347), but not by much, and certainly not to the extent that they out-wOBAed the Braves (.339).
If this is how the universe attempts to set things to rights for the Braves leading the division while sliding towards the bottom third in position player production, well… the rest of the season
is gonna suuuuuuuck. So let’s hope that doesn’t happen. It probably won’t, but we’ve seen this team run extended xwOBA underperformances for a while, and it’s awful every single time.
Reason 2: I have to cover another Martin Perez start. Sigh. Maybe this means that Perez Pachinko will turn up positive for the Braves, though I wouldn’t count on it. But at least I’ll get to complain about it if it doesn’t.
On the season, Perez is up to 124 1/3 innings and 1.2 fWAR on the back of a 78/104/104 (ERA-/FIP/xFIP-) line. He’s been fine and the defense has done a good job of preventing runs behind him… which means that he’s a prime target for getting blooped and bleeder-ed to death by the Rays, given the way this series has gone. Perez is coming off pretty much his worst pitching of the year. The media narrative has been that extra rest messed with his command, but let’s be real: it was the eighth time in 23 outings that he walked more than he struck out, so it seems more like it was just one end of the gamut of possible starts you get when you employ Perez, moreso than anything else. It just so happened to be paired with his third-lowest grounder rate of the year, which is why he got knocked around by the Phillies before exiting after 3 2/3 innings of work.
In addition to the universe and/or the Rays’ defensive positioning, the Braves will need to contend with Nick Martinez as they try to avoid getting swept at home and possibly dropping the division lead down to two games ahead of a weekend set with the Phillies. Martinez has had a weird year — he’s put up 2.6 fWAR in 160 innings, but it’s come with a 73/95/108 line. It’s tempting to say that the Rays made some set of big fixes to get more out of the journeyman despite him playing in his age-35 season, but his 108 xFIP- is similar to his career 111 xFIP-. He’s just running a low HR/FB and getting fortunate when the ball remains in play. Some of that is going away as the season progresses: he’s at 90/97/105 since the All-Star Break compared to 63/93/110 before, but whether you believe that trend will keep up against the Braves right now is up to you.
In his career, the Braves have been a mixed bag against Martinez. He’s dominated them in his most recent two outings, but the Braves tagged him pretty handily in the other two that came earlier. Martinez-as-Ray is a bit different, and the most recent start he had against the Braves came as a Red in 2024, so I’d sweat whatever the baseball gods have planned for the Braves far more than their history against Martinez.
Game Info
Game Date/Time: Thursday, September 10, 12:15 p.m. EDT
Location: Truist Park, Atlanta, GA
TV/Streaming: BravesVision
Radio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan, La Mejor 1600/1460/1130 AM
