The Atlanta Braves began their road trip with an uninspiring performance on Tuesday night, but recovered to win the next two games and secure a series win over the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. Atlanta is 29-18 on the season and are 6.0 games back of the Philadelphia Phillies in the NL East.
The Braves struggled with runners in scoring position throughout the series in Chicago but homered six times in the series. Marcell Ozuna homered in Wednesday’s win, but saw his 15-game hitting streak end Thursday. Atlanta got another complete game effort from Max Fried on Wednesday and then a shutout performance by AJ Smith-Shawver and the bullpen Thursday.
Austin Riley missed his eleventh straight game Thursday. He began swinging a bat while in Chicago and has been working out on the field before games. It feels like he is getting pretty close to a return. Sean Murphy is currently on a rehab assignment and is scheduled to catch again for Gwinnett Thursday and then DH on Friday. It is unclear if he might return while the team is in Pittsburgh or wait and rejoin when they get back to Atlanta on Monday.
The Pirates come into the series with a 23-28 record and are 6.0 games behind the Milwaukee Brewers in the NL Central. They started the season with a five-game winning streak and were 9-2 through 11 games, but have collapsed since. Mid-April featured a six-game skid and then they carried a five-game skid, including a sweep at the hands of the Athletics in Oakland, into May. They’ve won literally two series since that 9-2 start, and one of those came against the Rockies. They just dropped two of three to the Giants, and are 5-5 in their last ten games.
The Pirates have really struggled everywhere. They’ve been a bottom-five unit offensively (88 wRC+) and are bottom-ten defensively. Their pitching staff is bottom ten as a whole. Pretty much the only particularly gratifying thing you can say about them as a team is that their offense isn’t as bad as it seems because they’re suffering from one of the league’s bigger xwOBA underperformances, but it’s been a struggle in Pittsburgh over the last six-plus weeks.
That said, there have been some relative bright spots. Bryan Reynolds and Oneil Cruz are playing pretty well; the latter continues to light up exit velocity leaderboards and hit two balls over 120 mph earlier this week, but has also struck out in over a third of his PAs. Jared Jones has been amazing, and Paul Skenes is basically must-seeing viewing when he starts a game; fortunately for the Braves, they’ll miss both of those guys in this series. Starter Mitch Keller and reliever Hunter Stratton have also chipped in some great work.
On the flip side, there’s been a huge position player group that’s struggled mightily — the combination of Jared Triolo, Henry Davis, Alika Williams, Jack Suwinski, and Rowdy Tellez have basically taken up a third of the team’s PAs to date, and none of these guys has a wRC+ above 65 or an xwOBA above .300. David Bednar was insanely good last year despite a relatively pedestrian xFIP; regression has hit him all at once in the early going. A number of other key relievers for Pittsburgh have also struggled, including Aroldis Chapman and Josh Fleming.
One thing to keep an eye on this series will be the bullpen usage. The Braves did use five relievers on Thursday, but they benefited from a Max Fried complete game on Wednesday and generally didn’t use their top relief arms in a loss that maybe could’ve been avoided had they done so on Tuesday. The Pirates, meanwhile, had a combined 13 reliever outings across their three-game series with the Giants. All of their relievers save the just-recalled Jose Hernandez have been heavily used over the past three days.
