Earlier this season, it was a bad time for the Braves to run into Kutter Crawford. Now, it’s a bad time for the Red Sox to run into Max Fried.
Following a series that saw the Atlanta Braves eke out a series victory over the Oakland Athletics to round out their homestand, the Braves are back on the road again to take on their traditional interleague rival in the form of the Boston Red Sox.
The Braves are seeing Kutter Crawford for the second time in as many months and they may have caught Crawford at the end of a great run to start the season. In that start back on May 7, the Braves were only able to push two runs past home plate against Crawford over six innings but it ended up being enough for Atlanta after Reynaldo López kept pace with him over 5.1 innings in the pitcher’s duel. Ever since that start, Crawford has had a bit of a rough go of it. He’s made four starts since then and has given up at least four runs in three of those starts — including his last two starts where he gave up six runs over 4.1 innings against the Brewers and then got tagged for five runs over six innings against the Orioles in his very next (and most recent) start.
Kutter Crawford has definitely slowed down on the mound after his blistering start to the season saw him sitting at and near the top of the starting pitcher fWAR leaderboards. He’s still in the top 20 among starters but it’s clear that a lot of that work was done in the first month of the season and the early portion of May. His performance has reflected what’s been happening with the Red Sox as a whole, as Boston has gone from being 19-16 heading into that aforementioned series with the Braves in Cobb County to being 30-30 now that the two teams are renewing hostilities in Boston this evening. Overall, it’s about where you’d expect this particular Red Sox team to be but they’ve definitely fallen into the pack of mediocre teams since we last saw them.
Meanwhile, the Braves are somewhat comfortably over .500 themselves but they clearly haven’t hit that type of gear that we’re used to seeing from them at any given point of the season. A lot of that has to do with the fact that the Braves clearly have not been hitting the ball like we all expect them to. Ever since the immediate aftermath of that aforementioned two-game series between the Red Sox and Braves, the Braves have a team slash line of .239/.303/.392 with an Isolated Power number of .153 and a team wRC+ of only 97. For comparison’s sake, the Red Sox have hit .230/.300/.405 with an ISO of .165 and a team wRC+ of 94. Boston’s actually been out-slugging the Braves a bit over that stretch, which is not something that I expected to write at any point during this season but baseball is just chockful of fun and wonderful surprises, right?
Anyways, Atlanta’s pitching staff has been carrying a lot of the load for the Braves this season and one guy who’s been doing some serious load-bearing as of late has been Max Fried. Tonight’s starter for Atlanta has been on roll as of late. He’s gone at least seven innings in four of his past five starts, including a complete game at Wrigley Field against the Cubs back on May 22 and then his most recent outing saw him pitch eight shutout innings against the Nationals.
While he did have a rough outing against the Padres where he gave up three runs and was unable to make it through five innings, it’s obvious that Fried has returned to the form that we’ve grown to enjoy throughout his tenure with the Braves. When you consider how I mentioned Boston’s offense has looked as of late, I’m going to say that it wouldn’t be outlandish to suggest that tonight could be another good night for Max Fried.
After salvaging a homestand where they honestly should’ve fared a lot better than they have, the Braves are clearly looking to lock in on this road trip that won’t see them back in Cobb County until June 14. They had success against the Red Sox at Truist Park last month and will surely be hoping to repeat that success with Max Fried going on the mound tonight. The Red Sox have also slowed down a bit since these two teams last played each other but they’re still a team that needs to be taken seriously — as is the case for every game, really. Games in Fenway Park are always interesting and tonight’s contest should be no different.
Game Info
Game Date/Time: Tuesday, June 4, 7:10 P.M. ET
Location: Fenway Park, Boston, Massachusetts
TV: Bally Sports South
Streaming: MLB.tv
Radio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan