Schwellenbach did very well to keep Baltimore mostly quiet in his last outing. Now it’s time for him to hopefully do it again, this time against Detroit.
Following a rare close victory on Monday night, the Atlanta Braves are hoping to build on that result in order to keep the good times rolling and assure themselves of a series victory with another win tonight against the Detroit Tigers.
Recent form didn’t mean much of anything for Reese Olson last night, as he snapped his rough streak of starts in emphatic fashion with six shutout innings last night. Casey Mize will be hoping to bring that same type of result to the mound for Detroit tonight as he’ll be getting the start. Mize has given up at least three runs in four of his past five starts but the exception was his most recent start, where he pitched six innings and only gave up one run against the Nationals.
In fact, that was Mize’s third start this season where he went at least six innings while only giving up one run or less. Mize has had his fair share of starts where he’s looked like a very solid pitcher but then he’ll have a string of starts like the one he recently broke and then you’ll be wondering if he’s got much of anything going on. Obviously, the Braves will surely be hoping that the version of Mize that has seen his four-seam fastball get smacked to the tune of a .307 batting average against and a .430 slugging percentage against is the version that shows up to Cobb County this evening.
Meanwhile, Spencer Schwellenbach is getting another opportunity to show off what he can do at the major league level for the Braves. While Schwellenbach had shown flashes of his potential but ultimately unraveled in his first two starts for the big league squad, he finally put it all together for a solid start in his most recent outing. Pitching six innings agianst anybody in MLB as a rookie is already impressive — doing it against the Orioles and only giving up two runs over those six innings was even more impressive.
While expectations still have to be tempered when it comes to what Schwellenbach can do this early on in his career, his most recent start in Baltimore was certainly encouraging and I’d say that it would be fair to dream that he could pull off another good outing tonight against the Tigers. As long as he can avoid the one disastrous inning that derailed his first two starts at this level, Schwellenbach definitely has what it takes to keep the Braves in this one with a chance of winning while he’s out there.
It also should help Spencer Schwellenbach that this Tigers team hasn’t exactly been setting the world on fire at the plate here in June. I know Atlanta’s offensive woes have been discussed a ton here on this website and on the Braves’ corner of the internet but at least Atlanta has shown recent signs of getting things back together. Meanwhile, Detroit has scored three or fewer runs in eight of the 15 games that they’ve played this month. The Tigers are also hitting .220/.282/.356 as a team in the month of June, with a team wOBA of .282 and a team wRC+ of 82. For comparison’s sake, the Braves have been hitting .234/.290/.409 as a team here in June with a collective wOBA of .306 and a team wRC+ of 96.
Neither team is tearing the cover off of the ball this month and while the past doesn’t have any bearing on what’ll happen tonight (for all we know, a slugfest might break out this evening), it really wouldn’t be shocking if we got another tight contest between these two teams here tonight. Hopefully it’ll be Atlanta coming out victorious on the other side and it’ll be a perfect way to segue into the getaway day game on Wednesday. You have to get through Tuesday to get to Wednesday though and the Braves are surely going to try to escape Tuesday with a win over the Tigers.
Game Info
Game Date/Time: Tuesday, June 18, 7:20 p.m. ET
Location: Truist Park, Atlanta, GA.
TV: Bally Sports South
Streaming: MLB.tv
Radio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan