<img alt="Atlanta Braves v New York Mets" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/i-DkkBKtxobwLBhEpzQL23xt1_4=/0x0:4008x2672/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73481378/2153880126.0.jpg">
Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images
I don’t think anyone saw this coming even a few weeks ago One of my clearest memories of last season was looking over the two series the Braves played with the Mets in August, and pondering how insignificant they were. After an epic end to the 2022 season, the Braves and Mets were supposed to be at each other’s proverbial throats once again... only for the Braves to stomp the league and the Mets to fall apart in Mets-ian fashion. There was only an anticlimax in the longtime NL East rivalry in 2023.
In 2024, too, it didn’t look like the head-to-head games between these two teams were going to matter all that much. The Braves actually lost their first series against the Mets (their first series loss of the season, at that), but the Mets were just 5-7 after winning two of three. By the time the Braves won two of three in New York in early May, the Mets were still under .500. But, as we creep closer and closer to August, this struggling Braves team finds itself in kind of a weird place, given the last season-and-a-half: this four-game series with the Mets that’s coming up actually matters. A lot.
Yes, the Mets are resurgent, rebounding from a 9-19 May with a 16-8 June, and a 13-7 July so far. They’ve yet to lose a series in July, and just swept the Yankees in a two-game crosstown set. Though their seasonal mark isn’t particularly impressive, thanks to the poor start and some terrible pitching, they’re now 53-48, which is the league’s 11th-best record. They had the league’s tenth-best BaseRuns mark, and that was before they obliterated the Yankees on Wednesday night. Most critically for the Braves, though, the Mets are now the team immediately behind them in the Wild Card standings. A poor showing in this four-game set could not just mean the Mets leapfrog the Braves, but that the Braves get ousted from a playoff seat altogether.
In other words, the time for mucking around is over. The Braves have eroded almost all of their early-season cushion, and injuries or not, have a chance to actually knock one of the teams directly on their heels down a few pegs. Or, I guess it’s a chance for them to fritter away even more of their playoff odds, which have fallen from above 90 percent to about 80 percent in the span of about five games. Hopefully the Braves take this series more seriously than they did the set with the Cardinals immediately after the All-Star Break.
As to how the Mets got here, well, they have a very good position player unit and, well, that’s about it. They have the league’s fourth-best wRC+ and are seventh in position player fWAR. That’s largely been how they’ve surged up the standings, as they have a 133 team wRC+ (highest in MLB) and the most position player fWAR since the start of June. This also isn’t some kind of weird, 2022 Mets, slap-the-ball-around success story: the Mets have the fourth-highest xwOBA in baseball, and are generally seventh or higher in quality of contact stats.
Francisco Lindor was mired in some kind of horribad funk when the Braves last encountered him, but already has 4.6 fWAR on the year. Of the nine Mets with 200+ PAs so far this year, four of them have an xwOBA above .350, and Starling Marte just misses the cutoff with a .349 mark. This is not an offensive unit to take lightly.
On the flip side, the Mets are 29th in pitching fWAR, which is why their record is what it is. You’d think that their six-week ascent has been driven by the pitching improving at least somewhat, letting the offense do its thing... but you’d be wrong. Since the start of June, this is the worst pitching unit in baseball. Sean Manaea and Luis Severino have been serviceable, and Tylor Megill was pitching well but got sent down to the minors because Mets, I guess. They’ve had some okay relief work, and Dedniel Nunez is having a good season out of the bullpen, but yeah, this team is really being carried by its bats.
That actually makes this whole thing kind of a weird matchup for a Braves team which has been pretty much the exact opposite. Will the Braves’ pitching shut down the Mets attack enough to let their own bats take advantage of some blah pitching? Or, will even the Mets’ poor arms, combined with a massive xwOBA underperformance they just can’t shake, combine to stymie the Braves’ bats again?
All pitching triple-slashes are ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-
Thursday, July 25, 7:10 pm EDT (Bally Sports Southeast)
Chris Sale (65/57/63, 3.7 fWAR in 110 IP, xERA similar to ERA)
Luis Severino (92/107/110, 1.2 fWAR in 115 2⁄3 IP, xERA between ERA and FIP)
Sale will make his first start since the All-Star Break after a very long layoff; the Braves opted not to pitch him against the Cardinals, and his scheduled start in the nightcap of a doubleheader in the Reds series also got washed out. The Braves could use a reprise of his season-long video game numbers in this one.
Severino’s seasonal numbers are okay, but he was tremendously awful in five of six starts (and dominant in the other) before bouncing back and stifling the Marlins his last time out. He also struggled against the Braves back in May (4/3 K/BB ratio, a homer allowed in five innings), but the Mets won that game when Brandon Nimmo hit a walkoff homer against A.J. Minter. Severino’s outings are kind of boom-or-bust but tilted towards bust: he has seven of 19 so far with an xFIP- above 125, and three with an xFIP- below 75. Of the remaining nine, most have been below-average, but not egregiously bad, efforts.
Friday, July 26, 7:10 pm EDT (Bally Sports Southeast)
Charlie Morton (95/103/98, 1.2 fWAR in 103 1⁄3 IP, xERA a bit above FIP)
Kodai Senga (2024 debut)
Morton had a nice outing in his last start against the Cardinals, snapping a mini-streak of two not-unequivocally unsuccessful starts. He kept the ball in the yard after allowing two homers in each of his prior two outings. Morton has pitched against the Mets in each of the two series against them so far — he had a terrible start against them in Atlanta (4/5 K/BB ratio) and dominated them in New York. The Braves really need a reprise of the latter, but Morton’s been incredibly inconsistent this year.
Senga will be making his season debut after missing more than half the season with triceps and shoulder concerns. He was really good in his stateside debut in 2023 (71/84/86, 3.4 fWAR in 166 1⁄3 IP), and was very good against the Braves the only time he faced them (7/2 K/BB ratio, no homers allowed).
Saturday, July 27, 4:10 pm EDT (Bally Sports Southeast)
Spencer Schwellenbach (112/97/93, 0.7 fWAR in 50 2⁄3 IP, xERA similar to xFIP)
TBD
Schwellenbach continues to have a pretty bonkers debut season in terms of things just going every which way for him start to start. Two outings ago, he had a 3/1 K/BB ratio over seven innings against the Padres but ended up being charged with just one run. His last time out, he had an 8/0 K/BB ratio, but the Cardinals hit three homers off him in six innings. So far, he’s been hideously BABIPed three times in nine career starts, hideously HR/FBed twice, but has also had a couple of outings where he didn’t really pitch well but avoided any damage anyway. I have no idea what he’s going to do in this game, because his starts don’t seem to have any discernible pattern so far.
This is technically David Peterson’s spot in the rotation for the Mets, but he’s being pushed back to the following game. Maybe the Mets recall Tylor Megill here; that would actually kind of suck for the Braves because Megill has a 131/84/99 line in eight starts.
Sunday, July 29, 1:40 pm EDT (Bally Sports Southeast)
Reynaldo Lopez (51/80/96, 2.3 fWAR in 101 2⁄3 IP, xERA way above xFIP)
David Peterson (81/121/115, 0.1 fWAR in 48 2⁄3 IP, xERA egregiously high)
It’s still not clear whether Reynaldo Lopez is or isn’t hitting a wall, or might hit a wall. We’ll just have to wait and see — he had two walk-heavy outings, then bounced back with two great outings that suggested few problems, and then struggled against the Reds in a start that also saw the likely-inevitable-but-wouldn’t-it-be-nice-if-he-could-avoid-it-down-the-stretch regression in his ERA and FIP to his xFIP. Lopez threw six scoreless frames with a 6/3 K/BB ratio against the Mets earlier this year in Atlanta, the one game in that series the Braves won.
The homer-prone Peterson is having a weird-year where his strand rate has ticked up enough to make his ERA look good, even if everything else looks bad-to-horrible. He’s only had one unequivocally good start this year, but the Braves just luuuurve not converting bad pitcher peripherals into runs, so we’ll see what happens. Last year, the Braves won a game in which he pitched well, and then lost a game in which they blasted him because Allan Winans got blasted worse.
<img alt="Atlanta Braves v New York Mets" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/i-DkkBKtxobwLBhEpzQL23xt1_4=/0x0:4008x2672/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73481378/2153880126.0.jpg">
Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images
I don’t think anyone saw this coming even a few weeks ago One of my clearest memories of last season was looking over the two series the Braves played with the Mets in August, and pondering how insignificant they were. After an epic end to the 2022 season, the Braves and Mets were supposed to be at each other’s proverbial throats once again... only for the Braves to stomp the league and the Mets to fall apart in Mets-ian fashion. There was only an anticlimax in the longtime NL East rivalry in 2023.
In 2024, too, it didn’t look like the head-to-head games between these two teams were going to matter all that much. The Braves actually lost their first series against the Mets (their first series loss of the season, at that), but the Mets were just 5-7 after winning two of three. By the time the Braves won two of three in New York in early May, the Mets were still under .500. But, as we creep closer and closer to August, this struggling Braves team finds itself in kind of a weird place, given the last season-and-a-half: this four-game series with the Mets that’s coming up actually matters. A lot.
Yes, the Mets are resurgent, rebounding from a 9-19 May with a 16-8 June, and a 13-7 July so far. They’ve yet to lose a series in July, and just swept the Yankees in a two-game crosstown set. Though their seasonal mark isn’t particularly impressive, thanks to the poor start and some terrible pitching, they’re now 53-48, which is the league’s 11th-best record. They had the league’s tenth-best BaseRuns mark, and that was before they obliterated the Yankees on Wednesday night. Most critically for the Braves, though, the Mets are now the team immediately behind them in the Wild Card standings. A poor showing in this four-game set could not just mean the Mets leapfrog the Braves, but that the Braves get ousted from a playoff seat altogether.
In other words, the time for mucking around is over. The Braves have eroded almost all of their early-season cushion, and injuries or not, have a chance to actually knock one of the teams directly on their heels down a few pegs. Or, I guess it’s a chance for them to fritter away even more of their playoff odds, which have fallen from above 90 percent to about 80 percent in the span of about five games. Hopefully the Braves take this series more seriously than they did the set with the Cardinals immediately after the All-Star Break.
As to how the Mets got here, well, they have a very good position player unit and, well, that’s about it. They have the league’s fourth-best wRC+ and are seventh in position player fWAR. That’s largely been how they’ve surged up the standings, as they have a 133 team wRC+ (highest in MLB) and the most position player fWAR since the start of June. This also isn’t some kind of weird, 2022 Mets, slap-the-ball-around success story: the Mets have the fourth-highest xwOBA in baseball, and are generally seventh or higher in quality of contact stats.
Francisco Lindor was mired in some kind of horribad funk when the Braves last encountered him, but already has 4.6 fWAR on the year. Of the nine Mets with 200+ PAs so far this year, four of them have an xwOBA above .350, and Starling Marte just misses the cutoff with a .349 mark. This is not an offensive unit to take lightly.
On the flip side, the Mets are 29th in pitching fWAR, which is why their record is what it is. You’d think that their six-week ascent has been driven by the pitching improving at least somewhat, letting the offense do its thing... but you’d be wrong. Since the start of June, this is the worst pitching unit in baseball. Sean Manaea and Luis Severino have been serviceable, and Tylor Megill was pitching well but got sent down to the minors because Mets, I guess. They’ve had some okay relief work, and Dedniel Nunez is having a good season out of the bullpen, but yeah, this team is really being carried by its bats.
That actually makes this whole thing kind of a weird matchup for a Braves team which has been pretty much the exact opposite. Will the Braves’ pitching shut down the Mets attack enough to let their own bats take advantage of some blah pitching? Or, will even the Mets’ poor arms, combined with a massive xwOBA underperformance they just can’t shake, combine to stymie the Braves’ bats again?
All pitching triple-slashes are ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-
Thursday, July 25, 7:10 pm EDT (Bally Sports Southeast)
Chris Sale (65/57/63, 3.7 fWAR in 110 IP, xERA similar to ERA)
Luis Severino (92/107/110, 1.2 fWAR in 115 2⁄3 IP, xERA between ERA and FIP)
Sale will make his first start since the All-Star Break after a very long layoff; the Braves opted not to pitch him against the Cardinals, and his scheduled start in the nightcap of a doubleheader in the Reds series also got washed out. The Braves could use a reprise of his season-long video game numbers in this one.
Severino’s seasonal numbers are okay, but he was tremendously awful in five of six starts (and dominant in the other) before bouncing back and stifling the Marlins his last time out. He also struggled against the Braves back in May (4/3 K/BB ratio, a homer allowed in five innings), but the Mets won that game when Brandon Nimmo hit a walkoff homer against A.J. Minter. Severino’s outings are kind of boom-or-bust but tilted towards bust: he has seven of 19 so far with an xFIP- above 125, and three with an xFIP- below 75. Of the remaining nine, most have been below-average, but not egregiously bad, efforts.
Friday, July 26, 7:10 pm EDT (Bally Sports Southeast)
Charlie Morton (95/103/98, 1.2 fWAR in 103 1⁄3 IP, xERA a bit above FIP)
Kodai Senga (2024 debut)
Morton had a nice outing in his last start against the Cardinals, snapping a mini-streak of two not-unequivocally unsuccessful starts. He kept the ball in the yard after allowing two homers in each of his prior two outings. Morton has pitched against the Mets in each of the two series against them so far — he had a terrible start against them in Atlanta (4/5 K/BB ratio) and dominated them in New York. The Braves really need a reprise of the latter, but Morton’s been incredibly inconsistent this year.
Senga will be making his season debut after missing more than half the season with triceps and shoulder concerns. He was really good in his stateside debut in 2023 (71/84/86, 3.4 fWAR in 166 1⁄3 IP), and was very good against the Braves the only time he faced them (7/2 K/BB ratio, no homers allowed).
Saturday, July 27, 4:10 pm EDT (Bally Sports Southeast)
Spencer Schwellenbach (112/97/93, 0.7 fWAR in 50 2⁄3 IP, xERA similar to xFIP)
TBD
Schwellenbach continues to have a pretty bonkers debut season in terms of things just going every which way for him start to start. Two outings ago, he had a 3/1 K/BB ratio over seven innings against the Padres but ended up being charged with just one run. His last time out, he had an 8/0 K/BB ratio, but the Cardinals hit three homers off him in six innings. So far, he’s been hideously BABIPed three times in nine career starts, hideously HR/FBed twice, but has also had a couple of outings where he didn’t really pitch well but avoided any damage anyway. I have no idea what he’s going to do in this game, because his starts don’t seem to have any discernible pattern so far.
This is technically David Peterson’s spot in the rotation for the Mets, but he’s being pushed back to the following game. Maybe the Mets recall Tylor Megill here; that would actually kind of suck for the Braves because Megill has a 131/84/99 line in eight starts.
Sunday, July 29, 1:40 pm EDT (Bally Sports Southeast)
Reynaldo Lopez (51/80/96, 2.3 fWAR in 101 2⁄3 IP, xERA way above xFIP)
David Peterson (81/121/115, 0.1 fWAR in 48 2⁄3 IP, xERA egregiously high)
It’s still not clear whether Reynaldo Lopez is or isn’t hitting a wall, or might hit a wall. We’ll just have to wait and see — he had two walk-heavy outings, then bounced back with two great outings that suggested few problems, and then struggled against the Reds in a start that also saw the likely-inevitable-but-wouldn’t-it-be-nice-if-he-could-avoid-it-down-the-stretch regression in his ERA and FIP to his xFIP. Lopez threw six scoreless frames with a 6/3 K/BB ratio against the Mets earlier this year in Atlanta, the one game in that series the Braves won.
The homer-prone Peterson is having a weird-year where his strand rate has ticked up enough to make his ERA look good, even if everything else looks bad-to-horrible. He’s only had one unequivocally good start this year, but the Braves just luuuurve not converting bad pitcher peripherals into runs, so we’ll see what happens. Last year, the Braves won a game in which he pitched well, and then lost a game in which they blasted him because Allan Winans got blasted worse.
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