{"id":260899,"date":"2025-08-20T16:11:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T16:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/260899\/"},"modified":"2025-08-20T16:11:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T16:11:10","slug":"braves-look-to-hurston-waldrep-to-win-series-against-white-sox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/260899\/","title":{"rendered":"Braves look to Hurston Waldrep to win series against White Sox"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Atlanta Braves<\/a> will be facing the Chicago White Sox in the finale of an unexpectedly crazy fun series where both offenses have exploded.<\/p>\n

In the first game of the series the Braves were down 0-7 but made a game out of it by scrapping together nine runs to fall short 9-13. In that game the Braves had fifteen hits, and the White Sox had nineteen. In the game yesterday it was similar except the Braves were able to complete the comeback. After being down six runs in the fifth innings the Braves scored seven unanswered runs and capped off an 11-10 win. The White Sox had eleven\u00a0hits,\u00a0and the Braves had thirteen. <\/p>\n

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Both the White Sox and the Braves have been some of the hottest position player groups in MLB. The White Sox have the sixth most fWAR among position players since the All-Star break\u00a0with 5.6\u00a0and the Braves\u00a0are fourth with 6.0.<\/p>\n

If we look at wRC+ the White Sox are fourth and the Braves are sixth in MLB. If we look at total runs scored\u00a0the Braves are third with only the Brewers and Blue Jays scoring more, and the White Sox are\u00a0fourth. If we look at total hits the Braves are seventh and\u00a0the\u00a0White Sox are fifth.<\/p>\n

No matter how you\u00a0want to spin it, these two teams have been scorching hot with the bats, which would have seemed inconceivable two months ago.<\/p>\n

The pitching on the other hand has been terrible for\u00a0the Braves. Only two teams in MLB have lower pitching fWAR than the Braves since the break, and those two teams are the Angels and Rockies. This is not exactly good company.\u00a0If we look at ERA, it is the same story. The Braves have the third worst in MLB with a\u00a05.73. This is largely due to a 6.36 ERA from their SP.<\/p>\n

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Speaking of which, one player who not to blame for this high ERA is\u00a0Hurston\u00a0Waldrep<\/a> who will be pitching today. Since being called up he has pitched 17.2 innings and has seventeen strikeouts to\u00a0only five walks. He is currently carrying an ERA of\u00a01.02 and a WHIP of 0.792.\u00a0Clearly,\u00a0he won\u2019t\u00a0be able to sustain such elite numbers, but it has been a joy to watch.\u00a0That being said, his underlying metrics are good. His expected ERA (xERA)\u00a0has been a solid 2.90 and his expected batting average against (xBA)\u00a0has been an\u00a0exceptional .218.\u00a0He has been able to do this with a\u00a0six-pitch\u00a0mix that he\u00a0spreads pretty evenly. None of his six pitches\u00a0has been\u00a0pitched more than 28.4 percent of the time so far this season.<\/p>\n

His split finger has been lethal.\u00a0This is his most used\u00a0pitch,\u00a0and hitters are struggling to a batting average of\u00a00.048 and xBA of 0.095 while their slugging has been 0.048.\u00a0Hitters are swinging and missing at this pitch 54.3 percent of the time.<\/p>\n

This goes without saying, but no White Sox player has faced Waldrep before, which could be to his advantage. The White Sox have been extremely hot with their bats so\u00a0let\u2019s\u00a0see if Waldrep and his\u00a0elite split finger can hold them down.<\/p>\n

Mart\u00edn P\u00e9rez\u00a0will be taking the mound for the White Sox. He\u00a0has only pitched\u00a023.1 innings this season\u00a0but is having his best season in his\u00a0fourteen-year\u00a0career outside of his lone All-Star season in Texas in 2022. He has a 3.09 ERA and 3.59 FIP while carrying a\u00a01.286 WHIP. This is largely due to him being able to limit the HR.\u00a0for his career he averages 1.0 HR per nine\u00a0innings,but\u00a0this season has cut that down to 0.4. His sample size is extremely small, so these numbers\u00a0could change, but\u00a0he is still pitching well.<\/p>\n

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No Braves player has more than thirteen at-bats against him.\u00a0Matt\u00a0Olson leads the team\u00a0with thirteen at-bats but\u00a0has struggled to a .385 OPS.\u00a0Ozzie Albies has crushed him, which is not shocking since he is a LHP. Albies has\u00a0a .778 average and 2.445 OPS in his nine at-bats.<\/p>\n

Will both team\u2019s bats stay hot? Will Waldrep be able to continue his hot streak since being called up? First pitch is at 7:15 EDT.<\/p>\n

Game Info<\/p>\n

Game Date\/Time:\u00a0Wednesday, August 20, 7:15 p.m. EDT<\/p>\n

Location:\u00a0Truist Park, Atlanta, GA<\/p>\n

TV:\u00a0FanDuel Sports South, FanDuel Sports Southeast, FS1<\/p>\n

Streaming:\u00a0MLB.tv<\/p>\n

Radio:\u00a0680 AM \/ 93.7 FM The Fan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Atlanta Braves will be facing the Chicago White Sox in the finale of an unexpectedly crazy fun…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2394],"tags":[191,46,4166,5,377,192,136,38015,370,541,4,1132,168,1567,396],"class_list":{"0":"post-260899","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-atlanta-braves","8":"tag-atlanta","9":"tag-atlanta-braves","10":"tag-atlantabraves","11":"tag-baseball","12":"tag-blue-jays","13":"tag-braves","14":"tag-brewers","15":"tag-hurston-waldrep","16":"tag-martin-perez","17":"tag-matt-olson","18":"tag-mlb","19":"tag-ozzie-albies","20":"tag-rockies","21":"tag-texas","22":"tag-white-sox"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115061973747022340","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}