The Braves may not have much of an immediate future to play for, but messing with the Mets is always fun
The Atlanta Braves swept the Mets in Atlanta last week. It was a feel-good moment for a team that has struggled for much of the year, and maybe a hey-guys-the-sky-has-a-crack-in-it moment for a team that cruised through much of the first two months of the season. Any good feelings the Braves had were promptly extinguished by them dropping a series in Miami. The Mets, though, didn’t rebound either, losing two of three to the Phillies to return home in second place for the first time in about three weeks.
Unless you were completely absent for either last week’s sweep or much of the season, you probably know the deal with the Mets by now. They have a humongous payroll and have largely played accordingly, with a top-seven position player corps and top-four pitching staff at the moment. They’re second behind only the Dodgers in team xwOBA, and are doing what you expect good teams to do: mash the ball. They’re broadly in the top five, generally the top three, in the various contact quality metrics. The pitching has been good (top ten in xFIP-), though also exceedingly fortunate, running baseball’s lowest HR/FB. That’s part of the reason they’ve been as good as they have been so far: it’s really, really easy to win games when your team tries to hit homers, but your opponents just… don’t.
The Mets were rolling right along, having won 11 of 13, with those two losses coming to the Dodgers… until the wheels just randomly fell off the proverbial wagon. Since then, they’ve lost eight of nine, including a seven game skid that included the sweep in Atlanta, and then lost a series in Philadelphia to boot. The hitting has been bad (but not truly horrid), and the pitching’s been victimized by a combination of actually-poor pitching (they have the worst xFIP- during their doldrums) and a low strand rate that’s made trying to prevent runs a nightmare. Still, they had enough cushion from earlier that the skid hasn’t really changed much for them overall, as the Mets maintain baseball’s fifth-best record and should still easily make the playoffs at this point, barring an extra-spicy collapse. Maybe the Braves will help that along this week. Maybe not.
Monday, June 23, 7:10 pm EDT (FanDuel Sports South / Southeast)
Spencer Schwellenbach (15 GS, 96 2⁄3 IP, 79 ERA-, 85 FIP-, 74 xFIP-, xERA a bit above FIP)
In the three-game sweep of the Mets in Atlanta, Schwellenbach had the outing that was not an out-and-out smushing of the Mets’ collective faces. He gave up two homers and was charged with four runs in total, such that his 8/2 K/BB ratio in seven frames was mostly just a consolation prize. The Braves battled back late, rather than the other two games, where they mostly just cruised.
That kinda clunker-y (mostly just due to the homers) outing snapped a streak of four straight dominant starts for the Braves’ sophomore hurler. He largely dominated the Mets last year, including in back-to-back outings at the tail end of last year (though the first of those outings was more meh than great), so there may not be much concern about his performance in this one, assuming he’s not stung by HR/FB again.
Paul Blackburn (4 G, 2 GS, 13 IP, 176 ERA-, 94 FIP-, 116 xFIP-, xERA below FIP)
Blackburn had a nice half-season in Oakland in 2023, but hasn’t really done much in terms of both being able to stay on the field or provide production since then. He missed much of the beginning of this season with a knee injury, and is now in the rotation as the injuries to starters have piled up for the Mets. The Braves had little trouble roughing him up last week (in the 5-0 win started by Chris Sale) as he walked two and gave up a homer while getting just 11 outs.
Tuesday, June 24, 7:10 pm EDT (FanDuel Sports South / Southeast)
Spencer Strider (7 GS, 37 IP, 94 ERA-, 96 FIP-, 91 xFIP-, xERA a bit above ERA)
Strider is getting back up to speed, and has shown a velocity uptick in his last two starts, which have also been his two good starts of the year so far. Though he had some ball-in-play issues early, he threw six innings with an 8/1 K/BB ratio against the Mets, getting charged with just a lone run in the process. The Braves will desperately need more of the same now, given Chris Sale’s absence.
Frankie Montas (Season debut, 113/111/105 in 2024)
Montas will be making his 2025 (and Mets) debut after missing the season to date with a lat problem. He got $34 million on a two-year deal from the Mets this offseason, which is a little strange given that he missed nearly all of 2023 and had some serious homer problems in 2024, but it is what it is, and starting pitching is wildly expensive these days. Montas struggled through six rehab starts, but the Mets don’t have much of a choice at this point. He made two starts against the Braves last year — one good but unlucky, one not-so-good, but was the beneficiary of two blowouts of Braves’ pitching by two different teams, given that he was traded midseason. Though he’s been around since 2015, he had never actually faced the Braves until that point.
Wednesday, June 25, 7:10 pm EDT (FanDuel Sports South / Southeast)
Didier Fuentes (1 GS, 5 IP, 175 ERA-, 128 FIP-, 112 xFIP-, xERA akin to ERA)
Fuentes made his season debut against the Marlins, and it was… okay at best. He has velocity and surprisingly good command for a very young player, but clearly had mechanics issues and could use some tweaks to his grip and such to get the most out of his stuff. The Mets are a much harder test than the Marlins, so hopefully he’s got some more putaway stuff working than he did in his debut.
Clay Holmes (15 GS, 83 IP, 77 ERA-, 99 FIP-, 95 xFIP-, xERA akin to FIP)
The Braves handed Holmes arguably his worst start of the year, as he somehow walked six while striking out five and not making it out of the fifth. One of the few Mets arms not benefiting from a fortunate HR/FB, he didn’t actually give up a longball to the Braves… he was just on the unfortunate receiving end of the Braves’ “try to walk” strategy actually working for once. Holmes has now had a stretch of six starts with a meh-to-bad xFIP in all but one of them, after a span of eight starts with sparkling peripherals in each, so maybe he’s wearing down.
Thursday, June 26, 7:10 pm EDT (FanDuel Sports South / Southeast)
Grant Holmes (16 G, 15 GS, 85 IP, 90 ERA-, 112 FIP-, 90 xFIP-, xERA higher than ERA/xFIP but not as high as FIP)
Holmes has been victimized by HR/FB in the same way the Mets largely haven’t — he’s had just five homerless outings in 15 tries this year. One of those came in his most recent start, where he danced through all the raindrops and was charged with zero runs despite a 5/5 K/BB ratio in 5 2⁄3 innings in Miami. That snapped a streak of five straight pretty dominant starts from Holmes; prior to the streak, his outings were a lot more of a mixed bag. Holmes faced the Mets in that sad postseason-”clinching” game last year where he threw four innings with a 7/1 K/BB ratio, but not in any less-weird circumstances yet.
Griffin Canning (15 GS, 73 2⁄3 IP, 100 ERA-, 102 FIP-, 100 xFIP-, xERA way higher than everything else)
It’s only fitting that the Braves eventually face Canning in an outing that will no doubt cause a large contingent of people to complain, many for terrible reasons, about the fact that the Braves non-tendered him in the offseason. On the one hand, it’s nice that the Mets have gotten average-y performance out Canning. On the other hand, the Braves have gotten average-y performance from guys like Holmes and Bryce Elder if not for whatever deity has decided that their HR/FB must be insanely high apparently all year, so there doesn’t look to be much of a process issue there.
Though Canning had a nice start against the Dodgers to kick off his June, he’s struggled in his five other recent starts, and has a combined 165/112/129 line going back to May 23. He was having more success with fewer walks earlier in the season, but his sum total performance now that he’s back to walking a lot more guys and relying on HR/FB to avoid runs from scoring is just kinda Wade Miley-esque. Which again, isn’t bad for a guy scooped up off the non-tender heap, but it’s not exactly the thing carrying the Mets, either.