The West Coast swing begins and Max Fried will be looking to get things started on the right track for the Braves.
The Atlanta Braves are set to get started on a quick trip out West and they’ll be sending their star pitcher out to kick things off as Atlanta takes on the Seattle Mariners.
You don’t need me to tell you how well Max Fried did in his last start — Atlanta’s starting rotation has stepped their game up as of late and nobody came up bigger than Fried did. The top guy in Atlanta’s rotation delivered a complete game shutout against the Marlins in his last time out, which means that he’ll have a very difficult task on his hands when it comes to figuring out a way to top that performance.
He’ll be dealing with a Mariners offense that hasn’t exactly been lighting the world on fire so far to start the season. While they’re easily clearing the Marlins (who are currently sporting a shocking team wRC+ of 73), Seattle’s offense isn’t particularly in juggernaut mode at the moment. As a team, they’re hitting .219/.298/.356 with a team wOBA of .295 and a team wRC+ of 95.
Josh Rojas and Cal Raleigh have been the standout performers at the plate for the Mariners so far but other than that, nobody else (outside of the platoon-performer Luis Urías and the currently-injured Dominic Canzone) has been tearing the cover off the ball as evidenced by the aforementioned team numbers that were cited. There’s a reason why they’re still just two games over .500 at the moment — that’s still good enough for first place right now in the AL West but it’s not exactly a glimmering record, either. Still, they’ve won nine of their past 12 so that’s nothing to sneeze at.
The Mariners are above water and looking down on their competition in the West mostly due to their pitching. Seattle’s pitching staff is currently sitting on both the sixth-best ERA- (84) and FIP- (91) as a unit in all of baseball. This also isn’t a case of either the rotation or the bullpen carrying the staff, either — the entire pitching staff has been on top of things for Seattle so far. Seattle’s starter for tonight is Bryce Miller and he’s already prove that he can keep a lineup quiet on any given night. He had a run of three starts this month where he gave up just one run over 19.1 innings and did so against the Brewers, Cubs and Reds.
Still, Bryce Miller is not infallible by any means. He’s given up five home runs so far this season, including two against the Rangers in his most recent outing. He’ll be rolling into this game with a 15.2 percent HR/FB rate, which isn’t exactly what you want to have going on when you know you’ll be encountering an offense that can swing the bat like the Atlanta Braves are capable of. While Atlanta didn’t hit any dingers against Miller when they saw him last May, they did put three runs past him in 6.1 innings. This figures to be a tough task for the Braves but it certainly won’t be impossible for Atlanta to get things going against this particular hurler.
I know I probably sound like a broken record once I get to this point in my game previews but this really does figure to be a very interesting game tonight. The Braves and Mariners have played their fair share of entertaining games against each other over the past couple of seasons and that goes especially for the series that took place in Seattle in 2022. I think we would all prefer a nice and boring win for the Braves to kick this road trip off tonight but it really wouldn’t shock me if things got wacky and wild once again in the Pacific Northwest this evening.
Game Info
Game Date/Time: Monday, April 29, 9:40 p.m. ET
Location: T-Mobile Park, Seattle, Washington
TV: Bally Sports South
Streaming: MLB.tv
Radio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan