After the toughest road trip of the season saw the Atlanta Braves mostly continue an ill-timed downturn in form, the team is now back home — only to go from facing the current best team in baseball for three games to hosting the two-time defending World Series champions and current NL West leaders in the form of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The obvious hope is that Atlanta can make something happen at home against the Dodgers, who are finding their groove again after having suffered a downturn, themselves
over the past few weeks. If they can do so, then they’ll have an opportunity to (hopefully) beat up on a Colorado Rockies team that has had some real struggles trying to gain a foothold at Truist Park in recent years and have just been having yet another rough season, overall.
Of course, all of this hinges on Atlanta’s lineup waking up and getting the job done at the plate. The pitching staff has been carrying a lot of the load lately but as we’ve seen, it’s very hard for this team (or any team, really) to win games if they’re only scoring one or two runs a game. Let’s see if things can change for the lineup, starting with the week ahead for Atlanta.
August 25-27: Los Angeles Dodgers
Current Record: 80-51 Projected Record (via FanGraphs): 99-63
Returning from the tough road trip that the Braves just had, just to run into the Dodgers at home feels like Odysseus returning to Ithaca only to have a bunch of angry suitors waiting for him so they can usurp the whole place. Indeed, it’s pretty rough to go from that road trip to having to deal with the newly-revitalized Dodgers, who will be coming into Atlanta rolling on a six-game winning streak.
IF there’s a silver-lining, I’d say that Los Angeles has not fared well against teams with winning records so far here in August. Again, they’re on a six-game winning streak and they’ve swept three teams this month but those nine wins came against the cellar-dwelling Royals, the moribund Rockies and a Pirates team that has spent the second half of the season fading fast. Meanwhile, Los Angeles dropped a series against the surging Red Sox, got swept by the mercurial Cubs, lost a series to the Wild Card-contending Diamondbacks and then got beaten three-out-of-four by the baseball-leading Brewers. If Atlanta plays to their potential then they are just as capable of joining those winning teams when it comes to getting their licks in on the Dodgers.
That’s not to say that the Dodgers are going to roll over just because they’re facing a winning team — these are still the Dodgers, after all. With that being said, this is a team that looks as vulnerable as ever in their quest to become the first team since 2000 to win three World Series in a row. Since the All-Star break, the Dodgers have a team wRC+ of 96 and have only hit .249/.311/.406 as a unit in that span. For comparison’s sake, the Braves have been slightly better since the break with a .247/.306/.418 slash line alongside a 98 wRC+.
Sure, Shohei Ohtani is still Shohei Ohtani and guys like Max Muncy, Andy Pages and old friend Freddie Freeman are going to be tough to deal with as usual. Outside of that, this team has looked nothing like a juggernaut at the plate. Mookie Betts has struggled mightily compared to what he usually does at the plate and it’s been just as tough for guys like Teoscar Hernandez, Tommy Edman and Kyle Tucker. With the way Atlanta’s pitching staff has been going lately, this is certainly a manageable task for the Braves as long as they can keep the first guys mentioned quiet as well.
On the other side of things, LA’s pitching staff has also looked not-so-juggernaut-like in recent times. Unfortunately, that can’t be said for 2025 World Series hero and Thursday night’s starter Yoshinobu Yamaoto, who has remained very tough to deal with. Since the break, he’s given up two runs or fewer in five of his six starts and in that sixth start, he gave up three runs. He’s been incredibly consistent and has established himself as the ace of the rotation, so you can look forward to another fun ace-on-ace matchup between him and Chris Sale on Thursday. Roki Sasaki will be going on Tuesday against AJ Smith-Shawver and he’s also been pretty consistent for the Dodgers as well, so those figure to be two games where we could be seeing some low scoring with precious few runs coming across the plate for both sides.
Meanwhile, the Braves have found themselves “lucky” enough to be the opponents for Tyler Glasnow’s return from a back injury. Before his injury, Glasnow was looking very good for the Dodgers and he even has an eight-inning, one-hit shutout outing under his belt this season back on April 23. The obvious hope for Atlanta is that they’ll be able to catch Glasnow while he’s rusty (and that Bryce Elder has a good day instead of an enigmatic day) and actually give him a rude welcome back to the regular season. Otherwise, these could end up being three more games where the Braves are going to have to use more energy than a data center just to produce a one-run inning at any given moment.
Tuesday, August 25 at 7:15 p.m. ET (BravesVision, Gray TV, TBS)
Wednesday, August 26 at 7:15 p.m. ET (BravesVision, MLB Network)
Thursday, August 27 at 7:15 p.m. ET (BravesVision, FS1)
August 28-30: Colorado Rockies
Current Record: 50-80 Projected Record: 63-99
Atlanta will finally end their seven-game stretch of playing first-place teams by taking on a Colorado Rockies team that is once again having a terrible go of it. By the time the Rockies come to town, they will have likely clinched their eighth-straight losing season (and their fourteenth losing season out of the past sixteen seasons, mind you) and hopefully Washington’s strong lineup will have exhausted a Rockies pitching staff that has had a lot of trouble trying to keep any lineup in particular quiet.
During the second half, Colorado’s pitching staff is sitting on a 5.84 ERA (123 ERA-) and a 5.08 FIP (115 FIP-) as a unit and if you’re wondering if Coors Field is playing a role in inflating that number, it is not. Colorado’s staff ERA is only slightly better on the road since the break, with a road ERA of 5.48 and a road FIP of 4.83 — that ERA number is the fourth-worst mark in all of baseball and their road FIP since the break is good for the second-worst number. The Braves will likely be seeing the trio of Tomoyuki Sugano, Kyle Freeland and Ryan Feltner this weekend.
None of these fellas have been particularly great since the break and Feltner in particular has been getting bopped all over the place to the tune of a 9.10 ERA and 7.10 FIP in six starts and 28.2 innings during the second half. It’ll simply be a matter of avoiding finding themselves in a situation where Jordan Romano gets called upon since he’s quite clearly been the best pitcher for the Rockies lately — and he’s the closer.
At the plate, the only consistent threat that the Rockies have had lately is Willi Castro. I’d include Hunter Goodman in there as well but he’s been on the IL since August 15 with a left shoulder strain and it doesn’t look like he’ll be coming back in time for this series. Brett Sullivan has been on a tiny bit of a run with the bat since taking Goodman’s place behind the plate but outside of that, the Rockies don’t have too many guys who could be considered as serious threats.
Colorado’s lineup has mustered up the second-worst offense in the NL during the second half of the season and it’s not a particularly surprising development. The Rockies are basically fighting to avoid 100 losses this season and hopefully Atlanta can get them closer to that century mark with a strong performance this weekend.
Friday, August 28 at 7:15 p.m. ET (BravesVision)
Saturday, August 29 at 4:10 p.m. ET (BravesVision)
Sunday, A8gust 30 at 1:35 p.m. ET (BravesVision)
