{"id":664793,"date":"2026-04-05T15:27:32","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T15:27:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/664793\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T15:27:32","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T15:27:32","slug":"martin-perez-gets-the-start-to-close-out-the-series-finale-in-arizona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/664793\/","title":{"rendered":"Mart\u00edn P\u00e9rez gets the start to close out the series finale in Arizona"},"content":{"rendered":"

Though the Atlanta Braves<\/a> came up a few runs short for the third win against the Arizona Diamondbacks <\/a>yesterday, at least we\u2019ve seen consistent quality starts from Bryce Elder to propel us to today\u2019s series ending before the Braves head to Anaheim to face the Angels.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s look at today\u2019s pitchers.<\/p>\n

Mart\u00edn P\u00e9rez has gotten the start, making this his second appearance and first official start with the team this season. His last game with the Athletics resulted in three strikeouts, only two hits, and no earned runs across 4.1 innings out of the bullpen.<\/p>\n

The nod was going to either Jose Suarez or P\u00e9rez, and with the struggles Suarez displayed in his last appearance, having P\u00e9rez enter in for the start will be a nice way to get a feel for his command and approach, as we\u2019ve seen bits and pieces during spring training.<\/p>\n

He had mentioned how healthy he felt for the first time since 2024 in the post-game presser for that game, remarking in his words how he had confidence in feeling well the following day without any worries. This was especially great to hear, noting how he was held to 11 games last year with the Chicago White Sox due to injury, but still maintained a 3.54 ERA and 1.11 WHIP (4.24 FIP) across his appearances.<\/p>\n

Relying on four main pitches (change-up, sinker, cutter, and curveball) in his arsenal, we can expect to see the change-up and sinker taking the front seat as his targeted weapons against the Diamondbacks\u2019 offense.<\/p>\n

Looking over to the Diamondbacks, they\u2019re going for the split with Brandon Pfaadt (7.50 ERA) taking the hill. So far, with the start of the season rolling with their five-man rotation, he\u2019s only had one starting appearance with the team. Though allowing five runs across his six innings pitched just five days ago against the Detroit Tigers, don\u2019t let the numbers fool you.<\/p>\n

His consistency and overall command haven\u2019t been the strongest and have hurt his chances for effectiveness on the mound, especially last season, where he was placed fifth in the worst ERA with a 5.25. However, during the second half of the season, he added a cutter to his arsenal that produced him with better results and kept his pitches better located in the zone, which led to weaker contact for batters he\u2019s faced. This change dropped his FIP from 4.64 to 3.68 almost instantly.<\/p>\n

If he can work on control during this outing and stay ahead of his counts, he could have a pretty solid showing, but if the Braves can take advantage of his weakest areas of location and command, they just might be able to pull off the win, making this a third straight series win to start the season.<\/p>\n

Game Date\/Time: Sunday, April 5th, 4:10 p.m. EDT<\/p>\n

Location: Chase Field, Phoenix, AZ<\/p>\n

Radio: 680 AM \/ 93.7 FM The Fan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Though the Atlanta Braves came up a few runs short for the third win against the Arizona Diamondbacks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2404],"tags":[146,22,4314,76532,5,38,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-664793","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arizona-diamondbacks","8":"tag-arizona","9":"tag-arizona-diamondbacks","10":"tag-arizonadiamondbacks","11":"tag-atlanta-braves-game-information","12":"tag-baseball","13":"tag-diamondbacks","14":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116352807299882969","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664793","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=664793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}