Urgh, June 2026. It was not a good month. The Braves are 9-13 so far, and lost five series (including a sweep) while only winning three. Two of those three came at the beginning of the month, too, so it’s basically been a disaster of a stretch for a team that played like they were nigh-unbeatable up until that fateful game on Chicago’s South Side. Over the course of the month, the team lost as many series to the Giants, one of the few unequivocal “bad team definite sellers” in MLB this season, as they had
to anyone in the past two months. Not great.
So, there’s one more day left in June, and the Braves can… well, they can’t really salvage the month, but they can at least win a game, yeah? Maybe. The matchup, though, is interesting.
Their opponents over the next few days will be the St. Louis Cardinals, who have a rebuild/youth movement thing going on for the first time-ish in forever-ish, but have also had a pretty good season so far. The Cardinals are 43-38, 7.5 games behind the Brewers, but tied with the Marlins for the last National League playoff spot. They have “just” 1-in-3 odds of making the playoffs, but don’t count out the devil magic.
The way the Cardinals have gotten here has been unexpected. They started off well, but have been playing .500 ball for two months, including a recent 3-7 slide. Not as bad as the Braves’ slide, but few things are or have been. Overall, they’ve been an awesome hitting team, third in xwOBA, while also playing really good defense… but have been held back by a big teamwide xwOBA underperformance, and some pretty bad pitching. The quartet of Ivan Herrera, Alec Burleson, JJ Wetherholt, and Jordan Walker has been pounding the ball.
All in all, this kind of bodes poorly for a Braves team that A) hasn’t hit at all in June, and B) won’t have the luxury of a Chris Sale start in this series. While the Braves will get to take aim at Matthew Liberatore, who’s had a rough season to date in some ways, that’s not too much consolation considering they’re not hitting anyone these days.
Liberatore comes in with a 137/128/103 line (ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-). His peripherals are basically the same as the past two years, but his HR/FB is sky-high, and balls are getting through his defense despite the quality of that defense being pretty high. Whether that continues against the Braves, eh… they’ll need to hit the ball hard to make it matter. That said, Liberatore has had a pretty miserable June, too — 254/205/128 against four not-all-that-good offenses, so something’s gotta give on June’s final day.
The Braves will be starting Martin Perez, which is, well… you know all about Perez pachinko by now, so no need to belabor the point. He comes in with a 72/95/94 line, but had a real clunker against the Padres last time out, his first poor outing in four tries. It may have been related by getting hit by a comebacker, or it may just be that it’s Martin Perez and he’s made a career of not pitching all that well but hanging around, so this is just what happens sometimes (or, a lot of the time). Anyway, the Braves will need to play better if they don’t want to get shut down by a guy who is having a real hard time succeeding in June, and that’s where we are.
Game Info
Game Date/Time: Tuesday, June 30, 7:15 p.m. EDT
Location: Truist Park, Atlanta, GA
TV: BravesVision, Gray TV
Streaming: MLB.tv
Radio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan, Los Bravos
