The Braves have a chance to get back at one of their tormentors from earlier this season. It’s easier said than done!
Earlier this month, the Atlanta Braves visited Los Angeles looking for any type of way to get their season going in a positive direction after they had gone 0-for-4 in San Diego to kick off the season. As we all know, that ended up not being the case as the Braves left Los Angeles (and the state of California) with a big fat goose-egg for their seven-game road trip to start the season.
Here we are with a new month on the horizon and the Braves have spent the entire month of April trying to dig themselves out of a hole that the Dodgers helped dump them into. Los Angeles will be entering this series as the top dog in what is looking like a very formidable group of four teams (fourmidable?) in the NL West. They’re 21-10, they’ve got one of the best offenses in all of baseball and they also have a pitching staff that has been getting the job done. You’d sure hope that a team that has spent as much money as the Dodgers have would have a well-rounded and talented team with a ton of depth and that certainly appears to be the case for this squad.
You’ll be absolutely shocked to hear that Shohei Ohtani is currently leading this team in fWAR at the moment. He’s sitting on a wRC+ of 160, he’s already close to reaching double digits in both home runs and stolen bases and it really wouldn’t be surprising at all if he had yet another fantastic season. With that being said, he’s got some company in at the top of the Dodgers fWAR leaderboards, as he’s currently joined by Andy Pages and Tommy Edman. Pages has come out of the gates swinging a hot bat (even though his walk rate continues to leave something to be desired) and Edman has been firing on all cylinders — even despite an ankle injury causing him to miss most of their series this week with the Marlins.
Even if those three don’t come through, you still have to worry about the likes of Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts, Will Smith and Teoscar Hernandez. Again, this is a supremely talented and deep team — they’re going to be a handful to deal with on any given night.
With that being said, the Dodgers have looked like a team of mere mortals on the road when compared to their performance in their home fortress. Los Angeles has a record of 15-3 at Chavez Ravine but they’re only 6-7 away from home and their most recent trip through the NL East didn’t go well at all, as they dropped series to both the Phillies and the Nationals. Meanwhile, the Braves have played some really good baseball at home here in the early portion of the season. If Atlanta’s home form and LA’s road form both continue like they have then this could actually turn into an opportunity for the Braves to continue to get even closer to reaching .500. It’s certainly not going to be easy but it’s definitely not an impossible mission, either!
Friday, May 2, 7:15 p.m. ET (FanDuel Sports South/Southeast, Gray TV, MLB Network)
RHP Grant Holmes (5 GS, 28 IP, 22.2 K%, 14.5 BB%, 4.50 ERA, 108 ERA-, 5.47 FIP, 139 FIP-, -0.2 fWAR)
The good news for Grant Holmes in his last outing is that he made it into the sixth inning. That’s about all you could take away from that start, as Holmes got lit up for six runs from five hits and three walks — three of those hits were home runs as well. Fortunately, the Braves were able to come away from this one victorious against Arizona but it was definitely a case of the lineup lifting up their starter.
Holmes made his first start of the season back on March 31 against the Dodgers and, well, it didn’t go well. There were a lot of fours on the board for Holmes in that one — four innings pitched, four hits, four walks, four runs. Like any good offense, you can get into some serious trouble with the Dodgers if you give them free passes to get traffic on the basepaths. Needless to say, Holmes will have to avoid falling into those same pitfalls this time around.
RHP Yoshinobu Yamamoto (6 GS, 34 IP, 32.6 K%, 8.3 BB%, 1.06 ERA, 26 ERA-, 2.29 FIP, 58 FIP-, 1.2 fWAR)
Yamamoto has been excellent to start this season so far, as he’s only given up two earned runs at the most in any of his six starts so far. He ended up giving up three runs against the Pirates in his last outing but two of those were unearned. With that being said, he did walk four batters in that one so he wasn’t particularly sharp in a rare home loss for the Dodgers.
With that being said, I’d imagine that Yamamoto is going to be on his game for this one. He already has two starts where he’s reached double-digits in strikeouts and he also has a nine-strikeout appearance to compliment those two starts as well. He’s made it at least five innings in each of his starts and he’s gotten his results by leaning on a devastating four-seamer/split-finger combo. Opposing batters are only hitting .189 against his four-seamer with a .250 xBA and his splitter is even more dominant, as they’re only hitting .111 against it with a paltry xBA of .143. He’s pretty good!
Saturday, May 3, 7:15 p.m. ET (FOX)
RHP Spencer Schwellenbach (6 GS, 37.2 IP, 22.0 K%, 4.0 BB%, 2.87 ERA, 69 ERA- 3.27 FIP, 84 FIP-, 0.7 fWAR)
Schwellenbach has started to come back down to earth a bit after he came out of the gates with two of the best starts that he’s had in his career so far. Instead, he’s gone from being “spectacular” to being “solid.” His past two starts have seen him get through the seventh and sixth innings, respectively, but he wasn’t exactly dominant on the way there. He gave up four runs (three earned but he’s the one who committed the error) against the Diamondbacks in his last outing and then the Cardinals scored three times (two earned runs) against Schwellenbach on April 21.
Again, we’ll certainly take results like that from the sophomore Schwellenbach and I’d imagine that Atlanta will take a similar result to what the rookie Schwellenbach had against the Dodgers back on September 13. That was when the rookie went six innings and struck out six batters while only walking one batter and giving up two runs along the way. That’s the type of start that we’ve come to expect from him and I’d imagine that a similar performance would be enough to keep the Braves competitive on Saturday night.
RHP Rōki Sasaki (6 GS, 25.1 IP, 18.2 K%, 16.4 BB%, 3.55 ERA, 88 ERA-, 5.29 FIP, 129 FIP-, 0.0 fWAR)
After Sasaki had a bit of a shaky start over his first two starts in MLB, he’s started to settle in a bit over his past few starts. He’s made it through five innings in each of his past three starts and he’s stayed in a similar groove over each of those three starts. He gave up one run over five innings against the Cubs on April 12, he went six and gave up two runs against the Rangers on April 19 and then he made it into the sixth inning against the Pirates while giving up three runs on April 26. In each of those three starts, he’s struck out a handful while walking a couple. We’ll see if he has a breakout on the horizon but hopefully it doesn’t happen this weekend!
When it comes to his arsenal, Sasaki keeps it simple with a four-seamer, a split-finger and a slider. He’s not going to miss a lot of bats with his four-seamer (which could get him in trouble against a lineup like Atlanta’s) but he’s got a 45.1 percent whiff rate on his splitter and a 40.9 percent whiff rate on his slider, so there’s that. We’ll see if Atlanta can figure him out.
Sunday, May 4, 7:00 p.m. ET (ESPN)
RHP Bryce Elder (5 GS, 27.0 IP, 13.7 K%, 8.5 BB%, 5.33 ERA, 128 ERA-, 5.89 FIP, 149 FIP-, -0.3 fWAR)
Nowadays, watching Bryce Elder pitch is like watching an actual tightrope act during the circus. Yeah, there’s a chance that he could make it all the way along the tightrope but there’s also a good chance that he’s going to take a steep fall at some point or another. He’s managed to avoid some serious whammies against the Cardinals and Rockies in his previous two outings but he did give up a first-inning, three-run homer in Colorado where it was less “Coors Field” and more “Please stop throwing 85-mph hangers right down the middle” from Elder.
That’s always the fear with Elder — he can get relatively deep into games but usually it’ll coincide with him leaving at least one pitch right down the middle to be feasted upon. That actually happened to Elder twice during his first start of the season against the Dodgers. He gave up three runs over four innings with the Dodgers absolutely crushing two of his pitches for dingers. Needless to say, it probably won’t go well for Elder or the Braves if he continues to serve up hangers for the Dodgers to mash.
RHP Dustin May (5 GS, 27.1 IP, 19.3 K%, 10.5 BB%, 3.95 ERA, 98 ERA-, 3.26 FIP, 81 FIP-, 0.6 fWAR)
It appears as if Dustin May is starting to step up now that he’s having an extended run without suffering some type of injury. He made five starts in April and was pretty solid in each of them. With that being said, he did have a major hiccup against the Cubs on April 22 — the Cubs got him for seven runs over five innings, so it hasn’t been all sunshine and lollipops for Dustin May. Outside of that, May has been faring pretty well to start the season so far.
That includes his first start of 2025, which is when he went five innings and only gave up one run against the Braves back on April 1. Atlanta was unable to figure out May with his Sweeper/Sinker/Four-Seamer combination of pitches. He’s been very good at keeping balls on the ground and avoiding getting barreled up and he was very effective against the Braves last month. Hopefully things will change this time around but it honestly wouldn’t be surprising if May picked up in May where he left off in April.