Baseball’s schedule is quirky. Sometimes, that leads to a starting pitcher facing the same team in two consecutive starts. When that happens with a division rival, you figure, “Well, they’ve gotta fit those 13 games in somewhere!” When it happens with a team not in your division, well… making an MLB schedule is apparently hard work.

In any case, the Braves and Cubs will play again this week, after tangling for three games in Chicago last week. Both Bryce Elder and Shota Imanaga started in the earlier series, and here they are again, starting against their respective opponents for the second week in a row, with no palate cleanser in between.

Elder’s start against the Cubs was a good one — his best of the year by FIP, and top five by xFIP. He threw seven innings with a 6/0 K/BB ratio, and didn’t get stung by HR/FB (or an actual homer). He only pitched one inning — the seventh — with a lead, thanks to Ha-Seong Kim’s three-run homer, but he bore down all the same. On the season, Elder now has 0.5 fWAR and a 130/116/101 line (ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-). The HR/FB has pretty much continually taken its toll on the right-hander, though his actual pitching quality has been decidedly average in aggregate. He’s on a bit of seven-start run right now (95/85/96) where the HR/FB has been kinder, and as a result, he’s dropped all the way to fourth in terms of highest HR/FB among the 76 pitchers with 130+ innings thrown this year. (He’s also fallen all the way the 17th among the 156 starters with the most innings this year, which is pretty incredible given where he was when July ended — a HR/FB north of 20 percent.)

Imanaga’s start against the Braves was not a good one… but the Cubs won anyway. It was his fifth-worst start of the year by FIP and his ninth-worst by xFIP. Ozzie Albies and Eli White each hit a homer off of him, and the Braves had a number of other barreled outs, but ultimately fell 4-3. Imanaga has allowed at least a single homer in each of his past five starts, and if you set aside the game against the Cardinals where he had a 9/0 K/BB ratio and the homer allowed, he’s really kind of struggled in his past four outings at 72/131/114. That rise in HR/FB has “stabilized” his line at 76/112/110 for the season — the FIP has caught up to the xFIP, but boy, that ERA/FIP-xFIP difference. Maybe he and the Cubs feel good about it, who knows; the Cubs do have one of MLB’s best defenses.

Game Date/Time: Monday, September 8, 7:15 p.m. EDT

Location: Truist Park, Atlanta, GA

TV: FanDuel Sports Network South / Southeast

Radio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan, La Mejor 1600/1460/1130 AM