Erick Fedde will make his home debut for the Braves as the red-hot Brewers roll into town
Following a rare series win for the Atlanta Braves, there’s no rest for the weary as the Braves will be right back in action tonight as they play host to the red-hot Milwaukee Brewers for the start of a three-game series.
Despite ending that road series on a high note, the Braves are returning home limping a bit after going 3-6 on the nine-game roadtrip across the middle portion of the continental United States. They’ve also lost Austin Riley to an IL stint, as it appears that he wasn’t quite ready to return from his abdominal strain after all. It also doesn’t help that the Brewers will be rolling into town as one of the hottest teams in baseball at the moment.
Milwauke just got done sweeping the sweeping the Nationals by racking up 56 hits over three games and Nick Collins will be coming into town as the reigning NL Rookie of the Month after his accomplishments on the field during July. Needless to say, this seems like a pretty bad time to be running into Milwaukee but also the Braves haven’t really been catching anybody at a good time, so there’s that.
The point I’m trying to make is that Erick Fedde might have his hands full this evening. While he’ll be making his home debut for Atlanta in this one, that’s certainly not a guarantee of success. He’s also given up at least three runs in each of his past six starts, dating back to his time with the Cardinals. Fedde also has history against the Brewers this season and folks, it did not go well at all.
Fedde ended up giving up seven runs on ten hits and two walks. Somehow he got into the sixth inning while doing this and to be honest, I’d be happy if he just went out there and ate another six innings tonight. I also posted the William Contreras clip for a reason — Contreras has a lifetime average of .563 against Fedde, with a 1.579 OPS, two homers and five RBI over 16 plate appearances against Fedde. Joey Ortiz and Christian Yelich also have very good numbers against Fedde over the course of their careers as well. So yeah, it would truly be a lovely surprise if Fedde went out there and shut down the Brewers tonight.
Meanwhile, the Braves will be facing off against Quinn Priester for the second time this season. The first time was back in June and even though the Braves racked up seven hits against Pirester in that one, he also struck out seven batters and escaped from the game with just one run allowed over six innings. It was a night of frustration for the Braves (what else is new) as they took a 4-1 loss to Milwaukee in that one. Since then, Priester has continued to be effective and productive for the Brewers.
In fact, he recently had a start where he went six innings and struck out ten batters while only giving up three hits against the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium. Priester is certainly making his presence felt in Milwaukee’s rotation and the Braves are going to have a tough task trying to figure out a way to solve the puzzle that he’ll be bringing to the mound this evening.
At this point in the season, there’s not a lot to get super jazzed-up about. The Braves are markedly underdogs in this one and it wouldn’t be shocking if this was another loss. However, as the Rockies and Pirates showed us last week — this is still a monumentally dumb sport. Anything can happen on any given night and maybe this’ll be the night that we see the Braves get this series started on the right note with a win over the Brewers. We’ll see what happens.
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Game Info
Game Date/Time: Monday, August 4, 7:15 p.m. EDT
Location: Truist Park, Atlanta, GA
TV: FanDuel Sports Network South/Southeast
Streaming: MLB.tv
Radio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan