The Atlanta Braves are in desperate need of a long, impressive run of baseball to turn the season and standings around and are hoping that starts Tuesday night with RHP Spencer Strider on the mound in his home park to face the Arizona Diamondbacks. Arizona is countering with RHP Zac Gallen.
Diamondbacks Are Bringing In Their Own Struggles
Believe it or not the Braves are not the only team in Major League Baseball currently ridding the struggle bus. The Diamondbacks come into Atlanta having just completed a 6-game home-stand against the Pirates and Nationals and went 2-4 in those 6 games. Before that was a 6-game road trip to Los Angeles and St Louis where they went 1-5 overall, including a 3-game sweep at the hands of the Cardinals. All toll, that’s a 3-9 record in their last 12 games and they’ve gone from 3 games over .500 to 3 games under .500 in a 2-week span.
Unlike the Braves, Arizona’s struggles reside mostly on the mound. Offensively, Arizona ranks in the top 5 in baseball in both runs scored and team wRC+. It’s the pitching that has been a disaster. The Diamondbacks currently have a team ERA of 4.81, which ranks 24th in MLB and they’ve allowed 306 runs this season, 26th in MLB. And the news certainly didn’t get any better for the pitching staff over the weekend when their high-dollar free agent signing Corbin Burnes left a start early with “right elbow tightness’ and is headed for a MRI. Zac Gallen sporting a 5.54 ERA certainly isn’t helping matters and pouring gasoline on the entire endeavor has been Arizona’s bullpen, currently sporting a 5.28 ERA as a unit.
Braves Offense Continues to Struggle
If the Diamondbacks pitching has been the movable object then to complete the metaphor, the Braves offense has been the easily stoppable force. After scoring just 1 run again Sunday in their loss to Boston, the Braves have now scored 236 runs on the season, which ranks them 22nd in MLB in a tie with the Miami Marlins. It’s still hard to believe this is where this offense is.
And their problem today is the same problem they’ve had all season. They simply cannot hit with runners on base. With the bases empty this season the Braves have the 10th best OPS in baseball at .728. With any runners on base, the Braves have a .684 OPS, the 22nd best OPS in baseball. It’s very much not normal for a team’s OPS to be 50 points lower with runners on base vs not. Offense typically goes up and up significantly with runners on base. And yet, the Braves continue to defy the odds.
Strider vs Gallen
Strider is making his fourth start of the season Tuesday night and is coming off his best outing against Philadelphia last week where he gave up 1 earned run in 4 2⁄3 innings and striking out 7. Strider averaged 94.3 mph on his four-seam fastball in Philadelphia, which is basically where it’s sat in every start this season, but he did show better command of his slider last outing, allowing him to rack up strikeouts and the rate he’s more accustomed to.
Gallen is currently going through one of the worst stretches of his career, giving up 19 earned runs in his last 21 innings pitched over 4 starts with 17 strikeouts and 11 walks. Opponents are sitting on Gallen’s four-seam fastball and absolutely destroying it this year with a .374 xwOBA. His knuckle-curve is still a weapon and where he goes to get strikeouts up in the count, with it registering at 42% whiff rate this season.
Diamondbacks vs Braves
Time: 7:15 ET, Truist Park
TV: FanDuel Sports Network South and FanDuel Sports Network Southeast