Not much in the results department to talk about, so let’s talk about process.
The Braves’ lineup today is a bit of a shuffle, but all the lefties are at the top. Drake Baldwin is leadoff, then Matt Olson is third, and Michael Harris II is fourth. A procession of righties follows, including Eli White hitting ahead of Austin Riley (oof), and Jorge Mateo is apparently well enough to take the reins back at shortstop.
Interestingly, the Braves are not hitting Mauricio Dubon in the top chunk of the lineup,
as they’ve done when facing a southpaw. While I don’t know for certain, I suspect the rationale, for better or worse, is this…
Matthew Liberatore has weird splits this year, but only sorta. His wOBA-against is .399 against lefties (with the platoon advantage) and .371 against righties. His FIP is 5.81 against lefties, and 5.11 against righties. Putting a bunch of lefties up top against Liberatore, but not against a different southpaw is definitely a change of pace, because the Braves have hit Dubon leadoff against every non-opener lefty since Ronald Acuña Jr. got hurt earlier this month.
But, the thing is, Liberatore doesn’t actually have reverse splits. His xFIP is an excellent 3.03 against lefties; it’s 4.67 against righties. He also has no semblance of a reverse split for his career; in that regard, his FIP and xFIP actually line up really well and there’s about a 1.00 difference platoon-wise in the expected direction. So, maybe there’s some alternative reason the Braves are doing what they’re doing, but if not, this seems like they’re kind of playing themselves by buying into a HR/FB rate against southpaws that’s more than double his rate against righties. Hmmmmm….
So, instead, it’ll be Drake Baldwin hitting leadoff for the first time in over a week, and Harris hitting cleanup for the first time in about six weeks. It’s also Jorge Mateo’s first start in the field since last Monday. Hopefully the Braves have some sort of advanced, four-dimensional chess reason for whatever’s going on here — or, perhaps more saliently, hopefully they just hit the snot out of the ball no matter what else is going on.
The Cardinals are using a lineup that isn’t that unusual for them, but might be for you if you haven’t watched them lately. It’s pretty similar to the most recent lineup against a southpaw they deployed, except that Nathan Church is playing center while Ivan Herrera catches; Herrera tends to DH and another guy often catches. In any case, as you can see above, the Cardinals are kinda-sorta crushing the ball, but it’s very top-heavy, just like the way the Braves have built their lineup today (sorta). This doesn’t actually matter for Martin Perez pachinko purposes, but there you go.
Six guys in the Braves’ lineup have faced Liberatore before. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the main guy that’s succeeded has been Austin Riley, but he ded. Drake Baldwin went 2-for-2 against Liberatore with a couple of singles last year, but he also ded until further notice. Collectively, it’s a .296 wOBA / .290 xwOBA for six guys with 30 lifetime PAs against Liberatore. Meh.
Only four guys in this young Cardinals lineup have ever faced Martin Perez, so again, not much to say. Collectively, it’s a .256 wOBA / .297 xwOBA in all of 13 PAs; Masyn Winn leads their crew with six total PAs.
