The Braves can get back to .500 for the season with a sweep of the Rockies, but that’s easier typed than done
The bad news: The Atlanta Braves are currently 12-15, still mired well below .500 despite playing very well since their disastrous, season-opening, 0-7 road trip.
The good news: they have a chance to clamber back up to .500 by sweeping the Rockies at Coors Field this week, giving them a potential 15-15 record heading into May. When the Braves began this relatively soft stretch of schedule before the Twins series, I figured that 11-1 was not likely but probably the best thing they could achieve, which would be quite a turnaround from their early April travails. They’re actually 7-2 in that span, and with the Rockies on tap, 10-2 might be doable. Still, they’ll have to go ahead and do it.
On the one hand, you couldn’t ask for better prospective opposition for a sweep: the Rockies are bad. Oh so bad. The franchise hasn’t made the playoffs since 2018, and hasn’t had a winning percentage above .400 since 2022. As the rest of baseball plays copycat with one another’s successes and congeals towards something resembling modern best practice, the Rockies are… the Rockies, losers of a combined 204 games from 2023-2024, and mired in a horrible 4-23 start this year.
Do the Rockies deserve to be 4-23? Nah, no one does. Their run differential suggests at least six wins; their BaseRuns have them at 8-19. Despite playing at Coors Field, they have the fifth-lowest runs per game; in part due to Coors Field, they have the highest runs-per-game allowed. fWAR always has a bit of a tough relationship with the Rockies due to the extreme nature of their park, but even keeping that in mind, their 66 team wRC+ is well below that of any other team, and their -1.6 fWAR from position players speaks for itself as a particularly special level of abominable. The pitching theoretically could be aided by the same ballpark adjustment effects dinging their hitters, but instead, it’s the third-worst in MLB by fWAR.
That pitching element is actually something the Braves and Rockies can commiserate about: both have been blasted by HR/FB thus far, though the Braves have had it worse. Still, one of the challenges with expecting a sweep is that Coors Field can be hard to manage for any pitching staff, and the Braves’ pitching staff hasn’t exactly been great, and been victimized by basically everything you can think of beyond the team’s own talent level.
There are few bright spots so far on Colorado’s roster. Jordan Beck has been murdering the ball, Hunter Goodman has had good results, while Brenton Doyle and Mickey Moniak have hit well with little to show for it. Ezequiel Tovar also gets a mention for non-horrible inputs, but the rest of the position player group is wooftastic. You’d think that of 11 players with 50+ PAs so far, the Rockies would somehow have at least six with a .300+ xwOBA given that it’s Coors Field and xwOBA isn’t park-adjusted, but… they don’t. Instead, they have the league’s worst xwOBA, not so much because of their contact quality, but because they’ve had few walks and lead MLB in strikeouts, without anything else special going on. Maybe the Braves’ pitching gets a little more right in this series, or maybe it’s a disaster of a three-game set because they don’t despite the meager level of opposition.
Pitching-wise, you’ve got a resurgent Kyle Freeland (whom it looks like the Braves will miss) and a single reliever, Jake Bird, blowing guys away, and then… struggles. Ryan Feltner’s at least been okay, and German Marquez is finally back but struggling, and there isn’t too much else to highlight that isn’t “boy this roster, woof.” So, we’ll leave it at that. The Braves are heavily favored in each of the three games, let’s hope they don’t screw it up.
Monday, April 28, 8:40 p.m. ET (FanDuel Sports South/Southeast)
RHP Bryce Elder (4 GS, 21 IP, 137 ERA-, 158 FIP-, 114 xFIP-)
Through four starts, Elder’s season has gone like this: 1) blown up by the Dodgers; 2) 4/0 K/BB but two homers allowed to the Rays; 3) blown up by the Twins; 4) tightrope act successfully performed against the Cardinals. A collective 12/8 K/BB ratio isn’t the worst thing ever (but it’s not that far off), but he’s also given up five homers in four games.
Elder faced the Rockies twice in 2023 — once at home before his season turned sour, and once at Coors Field after. He had a 4/0 K/BB ratio in the former and a 4/1 in the latter, and gave up a homer in each.
RHP Ryan Feltner (5 GS, 25 2⁄3 IP, 84 ERA-, 114 FIP-, 108 xFIP-)
Feltner made 30 starts for the Rockies last year and was totally fine (96/98/103). He’s been more or less the same, if a little worse for wear due to an increased walk rate this year — driven largely by now missing the zone a bunch. He’s throwing a ton of changeups, and getting a ton of whiffs on it right at the edge of the zone, but has also become dependent on getting calls on it when batters lay off. His numbers overall are really juiced by getting absolutely crushed by the Dodgers two starts ago — other than that, he has a 20/5 K/BB ratio and his only real issue has been a tick more homers than you’d like to see.
The Braves have faced Feltner a few times — he made his MLB debut against them in 2021 (and got absolutely obliterated), didn’t fare against them in two starts in 2022, and hasn’t seen them since.
Tuesday, April 29, 8:40 p.m. ET (FanDuel Sports South/Southeast)
TBD but probably AJ Smith-Shawver?
I’m not sure what other option the Braves have at this point for this game. Smith-Shawver had an inconsistent three starts in the majors (113/109/90, with an awful xERA) but nonetheless got the boot despite the presence of Elder in the rotation, and should be coming back. He’s actually faced the Rockies once before, back in 2023, where he had a so-so outing (6/1 K/BB ratio, two homers), but rode the Braves blasting Freeland to victory anyway.
RHP German Marquez (5 GS, 20 1⁄3 IP, 203 ERA-, 117 FIP-, 136 xFIP-)
It’s been a long road back for Marquez. Through 2021, the Venezuelan righty had a career 88/85/84 line, thriving in Coors Field the way few can. He took a step back in 2022, partly driven by HR/FB, but then went down for the count with Tommy John Surgery, and even after returning, ended up going right back on the shelf with a stress reaction in his elbow. This season, he’s back and healthy enough to make regular starts, but isn’t back to his old self to any extent, as he’s still struggling with feel. He’s leaning on his sinker much more heavily than when he was successful earlier, and it’s been getting creamed, too. While all of this kind of makes it seem like he’s still a work in progress, the reality is that his inconsistency is as much start-to-start as anything else. He dominated the Phillies in his first start of the year, but has also been crushed three times as well.
Marquez has faced the Braves four times, but not since 2021. Those performances have been a mixed bag – a good start, a couple of so-so ones, and a creaming.
Wednesday, April 30, 3:10 p.m. ET (FanDuel Sports South/Southeast)
LHP Chris Sale (6 GS, 28 1⁄3 IP, 132 ERA-, 94 FIP-, 92 xFIP-)
Sale isn’t pitching great, but still better than average. His results, though, have been a source of massive frustration, for him, the team, the fans, you name it. He’s still rocking a .400 BABIP-against, and his xERA is in line with his peripherals, so it’s not like he’s getting rocked to the wall by doubles all day every day, either. In “hey karma cut it out” fashion, Sale’s most recent start was actually his worst of the year by xFIP, but he finally got better results en route to helping the Braves beat the Diamondbacks. Maybe things will come together positively for him in this matinee finale.
Sale eviscerated the Rockies last year in Atlanta (9/0 K/BB ratio), but that’s not really surprising. He’s faced them four times in his career and dominated each time, though he hasn’t pitched at Coors Field since working as a reliever back in 2011.
RHP Chase Dollander (4 GS, 19 1⁄3 IP, 173 ERA-, 176 FIP-, 100 xFIP-)
The ninth overall pick in the 2023 draft out of Tennessee, it’s been a cruel introduction to big league life for Dollander, because he’s pitching decently, and yet his HR/FB is right around 30 percent. Sorry, man. In his MLB debut, he had a 6/1 K/BB ratio, but gave up two dingers. The game after, it was a 7/2 K/BB ratio, but again, two dingers. You’d think maybe just by sheer chance or force of will, the very draggy 2025 baseball would grant him a reprieve against the Nationals, but… 5/2 K/BB ratio, four homers (80 percent HR/FB). So, of course, when he didn’t give up any homers to the Royals his last time out, he… had a bad game otherwise, with just a 3/2 K/BB ratio. Sorry, man.
His fastball command could use some work, and all but one of the homers against him have come off of it. Honestly, peripherals aside, he’s got some work to do on the pitch design front, because this is a strange fading fastball that gets poor “rise” despite its 98 mph-ish velocity, and the combination of “doesn’t know where it’s going” and “has a lot of horizontal movement” is kind of a disaster for avoiding the barrel. One wonders if another organization would’ve already fixed it…