The Atlanta Braves are looking to rebound a tough loss last night against the New York Mets as a clash between two top ten offenses since the All-Star break meet in game two at Truist Park.
The Braves have scored the seventh most runs in MLB since the All-Star break, and the Mets have scored the tenth most. That being said, the rankings are a bit skewed. The gap between the two teams is sixteen runs. If the Braves had sixteen more runs since the break, they would only be two runs behind the MLB leader.
The Mets seem to be getting it together offensively, even without Juan Soto, which means Martín Pérez and crew will need to be on their game tonight to ensure a victory against the Nolan McLean. McLean is having a solid year but has shown some weakness as of late.
McLean was able to hold the Braves to just two earned runs over six innings in early July when he faced off against Pérez the first time. However, over his last three starts he has struggled to an ERA of 4.67. This is largely due to four HRs in that span and an inflated BABIP of .370. The Braves may be facing McLean at the perfect time while he seems to need to make some adjustments or is wearing down after a long season. McLean only has 178.2 innings under his belt in his MLB career, and 130.2 of them are from this season.
With McLean being new to the league, the Braves do not have many at-bats against him. Michael Harris is tied with the most with eight but has struggled to an OPS of .250. Matt Olson is the other player with eight ABs and he is hitless against McLean. Ronald Acuña has a HR in three at-bats, and Drake Baldwin has .900 OPS in five at-bats.
The question of the day with a right-handed pitcher was who was going to be the DH with Dominic Smith’s magic running out.
Ronald Acuña will be the DH today which will slot Mike Yastrzemski into RF. Jim Jarvis is getting another start at SS and super utility Dubón will be in LF. Drake Baldwin is staying in the leadoff spot, which appears to be the norm at this point. It should also be noted that Walt Weiss seems to finally be making it common practice to have Albies out of the top four when facing a righty.
The Mets were able to tag Pérez for four earned runs in early July, but since that gave Pérez has a 1.42 ERA and 3.35 FIP over 19.0 innings with sixteen strikeouts, albeit with a BABIP of .184.
Francisco Lindor has faced Pérez in twenty-five ABs and has been successful with an OPS of 1.213. Another player to keep an eye on is Bo Bichette. He has an OPS of 1.100 and average of .467 against Pérez in fifteen ABs. Marcus Semien has a whopping forty-one ABs against Pérez and has a .707 OPS against him.
On paper it looks like the slight edge factoring in the trends of SPs and the lineups, but we all know that anything can happen in baseball.
First pitch is at 7:15 EDT.
