Nature is healing, as they say. For two very distinct reasons.<\/p>\n
Reason 1: The Braves, having sauntered to a pretty lofty record despite mediocre production, have been absolutely ravaged by some combination of baseball\u2019s luck dragons and\/or the Tampa Bay Rays\u2019 sublime-in-this-series defensive positioning. Seriously:<\/p>\n
If this is how the universe attempts to set things to rights for the Braves leading the division while sliding towards the bottom third in position player production, well\u2026 the rest of the season is gonna suuuuuuuck. So let\u2019s hope that doesn\u2019t happen. It probably won\u2019t, but we\u2019ve seen this team run extended xwOBA underperformances for a while, and it\u2019s awful every single time.<\/p>\n
Reason 2: I have to cover another Martin Perez start. Sigh. Maybe this means that Perez Pachinko will turn up positive for the Braves, though I wouldn\u2019t count on it. But at least I\u2019ll get to complain about it if it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
On the season, Perez is up to 124 1\/3 innings and 1.2 fWAR on the back of a 78\/104\/104 (ERA-\/FIP\/xFIP-) line. He\u2019s been fine and the defense has done a good job of preventing runs behind him\u2026 which means that he\u2019s a prime target for getting blooped and bleeder-ed to death by the Rays, given the way this series has gone. Perez is coming off pretty much his worst pitching of the year. The media narrative has been that extra rest messed with his command, but let\u2019s be real: it was the eighth time in 23 outings that he walked more than he struck out, so it seems more like it was just one end of the gamut of possible starts you get when you employ Perez, moreso than anything else. It just so happened to be paired with his third-lowest grounder rate of the year, which is why he got knocked around by the Phillies before exiting after 3 2\/3 innings of work.<\/p>\n
In addition to the universe and\/or the Rays\u2019 defensive positioning, the Braves will need to contend with Nick Martinez as they try to avoid getting swept at home and possibly dropping the division lead down to two games ahead of a weekend set with the Phillies. Martinez has had a weird year \u2014 he\u2019s put up 2.6 fWAR in 160 innings, but it\u2019s come with a 73\/95\/108 line. It\u2019s tempting to say that the Rays made some set of big fixes to get more out of the journeyman despite him playing in his age-35 season, but his 108 xFIP- is similar to his career 111 xFIP-. He\u2019s just running a low HR\/FB and getting fortunate when the ball remains in play. Some of that is going away as the season progresses: he\u2019s at 90\/97\/105 since the All-Star Break compared to 63\/93\/110 before, but whether you believe that trend will keep up against the Braves right now is up to you.<\/p>\n
In his career, the Braves have been a mixed bag against Martinez. He\u2019s dominated them in his most recent two outings, but the Braves tagged him pretty handily in the other two that came earlier. Martinez-as-Ray is a bit different, and the most recent start he had against the Braves came as a Red in 2024, so I\u2019d sweat whatever the baseball gods have planned for the Braves far more than their history against Martinez.<\/p>\n
Game Date\/Time: Thursday, September 10, 12:15 p.m. EDT<\/p>\n
Location: Truist Park, Atlanta, GA<\/p>\n
TV\/Streaming: BravesVision<\/p>\n
Radio: 680 AM \/ 93.7 FM The Fan, La Mejor 1600\/1460\/1130 AM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nature is healing, as they say. For two very distinct reasons. Reason 1: The Braves, having sauntered to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":801483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2377],"tags":[76532,5,4,297,2550,68,2551,2549],"class_list":["post-801482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa-bay-rays","tag-atlanta-braves-game-information","tag-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-rays","tag-tampa-bay","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-tampabay","tag-tampabayrays"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117247074916478574","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801482","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=801482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/801483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}