Let’s take stock of Joey Wentz’ 2025 Braves appearances to date:
- July 12, long relief against Cardinals: amazing
- July 19, start against Yankees: decent, didn’t allow a homer
- July 25, start against Rangers: pitched great, marred by a homer
- July 30, start against Royals: decent, didn’t allow a homer
- August 5, start against Brewers: meh, defense could’ve helped out a lot more than it did
- August 10, start against Marlins: nasty (in a bad way)
- August 16, start against Guardians: meh all around
- August 22, start against Mets: nasty again
- August 27, start against Marlins: decent, didn’t allow a homer
Basically, the good news is that Wentz is less mired in a poor stretch, and more that he’s just more inconsistent than he was in his first few outings with his new-old club. His aggregate line with the Braves includes an 81 ERA-, 76 FIP-, and a 98 xFIP-; he is the unintentional recipient of whatever HR/FB fortune most of his teammates have been sorely missing. That’s what his 1.1 fWAR as a Brave can largely be credited to. But hey, in a season
where most speculative adds have kind of blown up in the Braves’ faces, we can at least feel good that Wentz has avoided getting bombed like his teammates.
This will actually be Wentz’ fourth appearance against the Cubs this year. His last appearance before the Braves grabbed him was against the Cubs while with the Twins, and he also faced them twice with the Pirates back in May. All of those outings were honestly meh-to-terrible for one reason or another: a homer given up in July, and a 0/0 K/BB ratio in both of the May outings, but they were also just random relief outings and Wentz has at least been somewhat different as a Brave, so this is his chance for a small measure of revenge.
The Cubs will give the ball to Shota Imanaga, whose second season in MLB has been way less exciting than his debut. Last year, Imanaga reeled off a 3-win season with a 72/93/89 line, leading the Chicago pitching staff in fWAR. He’s taken a huge step back this year at 74/109/109, as his strikeout rate has dipped and he’s become incredibly easy to elevate against. Imanaga’s 56 percent fly ball rate is so high that among the pitchers with 110+ innings completed this year, the gap between his fly ball rate and the second-highest is bigger than the gap between second and seventh place, or as big as the gap between eighth and 25th place. Not that it has helped dilute homers by getting weak fly balls, either: Imanaga’s 11.3 percent HR/FB is pretty similar to the leaguewide rate of 11.8 percent so far this year. In brief, his sweeper has taken a huge step forward this year, but his splitter and four-seamer have gone backwards, across the board. In other words, the sweeper’s shape and command have both improved substantially, while the shape and command of the four-seamer and splitter have been blah compared to his debut. Since he throws his four-seamer about half the time and the sweeper only became a meaningful offering this year, you can see how it’s still a problem. Maybe if he threw a bunch of sweepers, he could get back to something resembling 2024, but there’s not much time left.
Imanaga dominated the Braves last year (8/3 K/BB ratio in five innings), but the Braves still prevailed in a 2-0 win.
Game Info
Game Date/Time: Tuesday, September 2, 7:40 p.m. EDT
Location: Wrigley Field, Chicago, IL
TV: FanDuel Sports Network South / Southeast
Streaming: MLB.tv
Radio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan
