So far, it’s been López leading the way for the rotation. The Braves are certainly looking forward to him keeping it going for a third straight start to kick off the season.
The Atlanta Braves will be facing the Houston Astros tonight with the hopes of picking up their first series win since, well, you know when. They pulled away last night with another big ninth inning performance and they’ll be looking to keep the good times rolling into tonight’s game at Minute Maid Park.
Reynaldo López will be getting the start for the Braves tonight and so far in the season’s infancy, you can make the argument that López has been Atlanta’s most consistent starter so far. He’s gone six innings in both of his starts and has only given up one run over those twelve innings of work and that came in the first start against the White Sox. He pitched six shutout innings against the Mets in his last time out and exited the game with the Braves in complete control of the contest.
The obvious hope is that López can keep it up for another start and he’s facing an Astros lineup that is quite obviously not firing on all cylinders just yet. Houston is 6-12 at the moment and they’ve been held to three runs or less in 10 of those 12 losses. With that being said, they have scored eight runs or more in five of their six wins so Jose Altuve, Jordan Alvarez, Kyle Tucker and the rest of this lineup are still more than capable of flipping the switch and going off at any given moment. Either way, it’ll be a big test for López to keep this team quiet and keep them frustrated for yet another night.
Meanwhile, the Astros are sending Hunter Brown to the mound as their starting pitcher for tonight’s contest and his past two starts were very frustrating for Astros fans to watch. After he got his season off to a solid start by pitching four innings and giving up one unearned run against the Yankees, Brown proceeded to get tagged for five runs over just three innings against the defending champion Texas Rangers and then the Royals ruined his getaway day start last week by chasing him from the game with only two outs in the first inning and a whopping nine runs allowed. Sheesh!
Plain and simple, there’s nowhere to go but up for Hunter Brown after that performance and both he and the Astros are going to be looking forward to some type of bounce-back response. He’ll have a tough task on his hand as the Braves have definitely been bringing the lumber to start the season so far. They’ve played 15 games here in the early going and they’ve scored at least four runs in all but two of them. Marcell Ozuna in particular has been quite easily the hottest DH in baseball right now. I hate to use fWAR this early on in the season but it has to be mentioned that Ozuna being worth 1.0 fWAR so far this season as a DH is off the charts and really impressive. Atlanta will be looking to Ozuna and company to keep on raking in order to keep the runs flowing.
Conventional wisdom would seem to indicate that the Braves are the better team at the moment and have a relatively favorable pitching matchup but as we all know, the game’s not played on a spreadsheet. It’s played on the field and anything can happen at the ballpark on any given night. Atlanta should still be rolling into this one feeling confident but the Astros — slow-starters once again — are still as dangerous as ever. If the Braves do break out for another high-scoring affair, hopefully they don’t wait until the last minute to do it again this time. Granted, there’s never a bad time to go off for runs but I think we need a break from all the drama. I’ll certainly take it if it does happen in the ninth once again, though. Fans can’t be choosers in this type of situation, right? Anyways, here’s hoping for another win for the Braves tonight.
Game Info
Game Date/Time: Tuesday, April 16, 8:10 p.m. ET
Location: Minute Maid Park, Houston, Texas
TV: Bally Sports Southeast, TBS (out-of-market only)
Streaming: MLB.tv
Radio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan