Hurston Waldrep will attempt to hold Houston off in series opener

Can the rookie hurler continue his early run of success?

Summarized by AI ⓘ

What is the story about?

The penultimate homestand of the 2025 season for the Atlanta Braves is about to come to a close, starting with tonight’s series opener between the Braves and the Houston Astros. This is yet another contest that would’ve been fun had the Braves been fully into it at this point in the season but instead, they’re once again attempting to play the spoiler role for a team that has its eyes set squarely on October baseball at this point.

The Braves will be going with Hurston Waldrep in this one, which has

been a pretty good sign for them since he came up as an emergency arm all the way back during the Speedway Classic. Atlanta has gone 6-1 in games that Waldrep has pitched for them this season and in the one loss (which was one of the blowouts against Seattle), you could hardly say that this was his fault. The Mariners did most of their damage against Atlanta’s bullpen — while Waldrep was out there, he only gave up two hits and two runs while striking out five batters. He did surrender a personal season-high five walks, so there’s that. Fortunately, the Astros don’t walk at a very high clip, as their 7.8 percent walk rate as a team is tied for 25th with the Baltimore Orioles. Still, Waldrep’s five-walk game occurred immediately after the Phillies coaxed four walks out of him on August 31. Now granted, he still mitigated the damage but that might be something to watch out for in this one.

It’ll also be interesting to see if Houston’s ragtag bunch can continue to find a way to win here. The Astros are sitll in a Postseason position but they’re certainly in a dogfight at this point, as they haven’t had a winning month since June and are already 4-6 here in the month of September. They’ve dropped three straight series so far and appear to be slowing down — especially now that the Mariners have started to surge and have actually caught them in the standings. Statistically speaking, Houston has been pretty middle-of-the-road so far and now they’ll be hoping to find an oasis here in Cobb County.

Still, the Braves are likely to have the edge when it comes to the pitching matchup as Houston is going with an Opener strategy tonight. The opener will be Jayden Murray, who has pitched a grand total of 2.1 innings for the Astros this season. Once Murray is done (and they’ll be hoping to get one, maybe even two innings out of him tonight), AJ Blubaugh will be taking on the bulk role for Houston in this one.

Outside of getting blown up for seven runs against the Tigers in his one and only start this season, Blubaugh has been perfectly fine when called upon duty this season — which hasn’t been often as he’s also spent most of his time this season in the minors. Blubaugh’s latest stint started on August 31 and since then, he hasn’t given up a run in eight innings since then. He’s only given up two hits and three walks while striking out 10 batters, which is a pretty solid run and Astros manager Joe Espada will probably be over the moon if he can get Houston to the middle-to-late innings with the team still in it or in the lead.

So while Houston is tossing a bullpen game in this one with a couple of guys who haven’t exactly been lighting the world on fire on the mound this season, this seems like it’s tailor-made for the Braves to come out and get bamboozled for a few innings. It’s also just as likely that they could go out there and give Hurston Waldrep plenty of run support against this Astros team. Again, the Astros haven’t exactly been firing on all cylinders lately — they’ve only hit at a 99 wRC+ rate for the season and it’s actually gone down to a 91 wRC+ when you only take into consideration games since the All-Star Break. Meanwhile, the Braves have been a perfectly average hitting team with 100 wRC+ since the break — it’s been the pitching (the bullpen in particular) that’s done a good job of dragging Atlanta down in recent times.

So while the Braves may not expect as stiff of a challenge as they’ve received over the past few weeks against various Postseason contenders, this is still a game that the Braves should take seriously — especially considering how this season went, they’re in no position to underestimate anybody. Still, if there was ever an opportunity to trip up a team trying to get into the Postseason, now would be the time to do so. Hopefully Hurston Waldrep can give Houston’s bats fits and hopefully the Braves can take advantage of an opponent’s bullpen game for once and make something happen out there.