The Atlanta Braves Are Surviving and Thriving Early On

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With all the injuries and bad vibes coming out of spring training, the Atlanta Braves have

thrived in the early going as they aimed to survive until reinforcements are able to

become.

Hey and welcome back to Lockdown Braves.

I'm your host, Jake Masteryani.

Today's episode is brought to you by Game Time, download the Game Time app, create an

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And today's episode, we're going to be recapping the Diamondback series, talking about one

way wrong, what went right, and we're going to be talking about the Atlanta Braves first

10 games and how they've not only just been surviving, I think they've been thriving and

showing that this team can compete, and we'll also preview the upcoming series against

the Angels as well.

And as I said, through the first 10 games of this season, things have gone exactly as I would

have hoped for a lot of people that asked me before the season began.

And did you want to see early on and I was as predicting out the series?

This was exactly how I would have wanted things to go.

I thought they would win the first two series at home.

I thought they would go on the road and split a four game set against the Diamondbacks.

Now the last part of this, they need to win the series against the Angels and I'll tell

you later in the episode how they're going to do that.

But they've done exactly what I thought they would do to this point.

And I think that's very much a credit to this team with everything that you had coming

into the year.

And a lot of the bad vibes that you had coming into it that they've been able to still meet

those expectations.

But I am more than satisfied with the start to the season for the Atlanta Braves.

Again, when you consider they lost three starters to begin the season and a guy that figured

to hit in the top half of your lineup.

The vibes were very much down to begin the year, at least among the fan bases.

I had several people tell me in the comment section and in person that the season is over

before it even began.

They're done with this team.

They're over it.

And the fact that they're sitting here at 6 and 4 with a plus 27 run differential.

I think you have to be very happy about this start.

Again, I've had several people ask me in person and online how I feel about this Atlanta

Braves team.

I feel pretty good about them.

I don't feel great.

And we'll talk about why that's the case, but I feel pretty good about this team.

And when you consider that last year's start of 0 and 7, you feel much better right now

than you did a year ago.

Now, could they have done more in this first 10 game stretch?

Absolutely.

They could have done more and maybe you could argue that it should have done more.

I'm not necessarily going to argue that, but certainly you they could have done more.

When you win the first two games of four games set like you did in Arizona, you're really

expect to win one of the next two to clinch that series, especially with how those final

two games played out where it could have gone either way, but it didn't go your way.

And you lost a couple of one run games.

And that's something that has to make you nervous as a braise fan when you witnessed

them losing all of those one run games last year.

And you hope that's not going to be a thing.

Now, they did win one of those, they're last three games, all one run games, they won

one of them, they lost two of them, but you really hope that's not going to be a repeat

of what we saw last season, them just not able to get that big hit and you're giving

up that run late, whatever the case may be, and losing some of those close games.

So I know a lot of braise fans right now having some PTSD to that, hopefully that is not

going to be the case.

We'll see them do much better in those close games like that.

But I think you have to be very encouraged that what you thought was going to be your biggest

weakness coming into the season, which was the starting rotation.

They've been absolutely amazing.

So again, yes, I can understand that you hope you would have taken more advantage of that

because you expect that to regress at some point.

Two starters right now have the second best ERA in all of baseball with 2.26, but their

starters are four and three.

The braise bullpen has the best ERA in the league at 1.08 and the best whip at 0.75.

So yes, your pitching has performed far and above what you expected and you like to take

a little bit more advantage of that, but maybe they did at the same time, maybe they did.

And that's why they're six and four.

That's why I'm not going to sit here and try to make a strong arguments for why they should

be seven and three, you're eight and two, like you're going to lose games in baseball.

And perhaps the reason they are six and four is because the pitching has been so, so good

in the early going.

And you're almost never going to have everything and everyone working at the same time.

You're almost never going to have your starting rotation, your bullpen, your defense, your

offense, all just be at its best at one point.

You might get a couple of chances like that throughout the season where you see a team go

on a eight, 10 game win streak.

We even saw the Braves do it late last year, but rarely do you ever have that going for

long stretches of time during the season.

And when that's the case, you have to have others step up and right now it's been the

starting rotation and the bullpen that has stepped up for this Atlanta Braves team.

And again, while you've gotten great pitching, the offense has been up and down.

Now you look at the offense overall for the Atlanta Braves and it's a top 10 group.

Now you do have an outlier game in there that will keep the Braves numbers somewhat inflated

for a while.

You have that 17 run game where you got five of those runs in the ninth inning off James

McCam, but they've scored four or more runs in over half their games and six of 10 games

they've scored four more runs.

That is the magic number for them to get to to win more often than not.

They won five of those.

They did lose one the one on Sundays.

The first game they lost when they scored four more runs.

They also won a low scoring game where they didn't get to four runs too.

So those kind of even out there a little bit, but in more and a half of their games,

the offense has done its job.

And when you look at things individually, Drake Baldwin, Matt Olsen, Ozzy Albies, all three

of those have produced while Akunya, Harris and Austin Riley have not.

So in your six core players, three of them have a reduced, three of them have it.

And again, you're almost never going to have all six of them going at the same time.

But then you're getting good performance from your, your depth pieces like Dominic Smith

has stepped up.

Mauricio Dubon has stepped up.

You're strips.

He's been fine.

Certainly not great, but you know, he's contributed, especially in the first couple of games

of the season.

Again, point being not everyone will be clicking at the same time, but while somehow struggling

out of the gate others have picked them up.

And later those guys will probably be struggling at some point and you'll need the others

to pick them up.

One of the key things I pointed out a lot last year throughout the season is that in a

month stretch, you might have one, maybe two guys with an OPS over 800 and then everybody

else was like 500 or less or 600 or less.

You've got to have a little bit more balance in that.

You got to have three or four guys who are having a good month or a good, you know, couple

of weeks.

Again, not everybody can OPS over 800 for the month, but you can't have one or two guys trying

to do it while everybody else is just awful.

You got to have three guys who are doing it, two or three guys who are just kind of in

the middle and then you can help pick up the other guys that are maybe having a bad couple

of weeks or a bad month.

And I get it.

We're talking about 10 games, not even a month stretch, but that was one of the downfalls

of last year's team offensively is you just had too many guys who were just playing

negatives for a month stretch at a time and that cannot be the case.

You've got to get more help than that and you've got to have guys picking up some slack.

So again, I think they have definitely survived the first 10 games.

There's more to go.

I also think they've thrived in areas.

You're pitching has been much better than you thought and I think offensively, they've

at least been as good as you hope.

I still think there's more offensively plus there is hope on the way again.

We all knew the braves would need to try to pick up the slack in the early going with

the players that you're missing.

And perhaps the entire first half until you get some of that pitching back in the second

half of the season.

And I think the braves have done that through the first 10 games and show me that they can

do that.

Sean Murphy is progressing could be back in the next few weeks while you know, Jonah

Heim has been great behind the plate.

He's over seven in the batter's box.

So you hope you get Sean Murphy back who we know is good behind the plate, but also maybe

he can give you a little bit more in the box as well.

Spencer Strider could be back in a week or so.

We've got to hope he's an upgrade over what Suarez and Martin Perez have given you, although

I didn't think Perez was awful on Sunday, but you're hoping Strider can give you better

production than that.

I think the bottom line for me through the first 10 games is that while I can't confidently

say this team is a world series favorite.

One thing that they have proven to me in the first 10 games, if there is enough depth

here to compete that I feel like this team is going to compete that we're not going

to see them just completely bottom out like we did last year.

Like I said, there's still something, something missing.

There's still another gear, I believe, even for the group that is here now, but to have

that feeling and to still be six and four, I think raises my, my expectations for the

floor of this team and what they can be 10 games, I get it, but it's, it's what we have

to go on.

What I've seen so far gives me hope that the floor of this team is as high as I thought

it could be, which is a winning team, playoff, continuing type of team.

That's what they've shown me through the first 10 games with what we have seen so far,

is that they have the depth, they have the pieces to not only survive, but be able to thrive

in win games when you're not clicking on all cylinders.

So next we'll get into that Diamondbacks series.

We'll look at the four games set there, including what went wrong in those final two.

We did we see some improvement in the run game is Ron Kunijuner about to break out.

We'll talk about that here next on Locked On Braves podcast.

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The Atlanta Braves do earn a series split on the road against the diamond backs.

I know we were all hoping for a little bit more out of that series, but you take a step

back and you'll look at it and say it was a road series early in the year that just said

I still don't think this team's clicking on all cylinders and you do get a series split

against what I think is a good team in the Arizona diamond backs now going through each

game just very quickly here on Thursday night.

We had the 17 to two a blowout you felt really good after that game that maybe you're

going to get a series win, but even if you win 17 17 to two, you know what, it's just

one win.

It doesn't do anything and we joked on the postcast after that game that the offense

would struggle, you know, probably in the next game or two and they absolutely did.

Like I said, this is the outlier in the series.

The next three games very much competitive games toss up games that could go either way.

And again, as I said earlier, this game was also going to boost the braves offens of

the numbers for quite a while, but it's a game that counts and it's just in stats that

absolutely count.

You saw Hurry up and Mateo take a cut, get a home run and you know what, he had a big

game on Sunday too.

And it was a great effort by the team on Thursday as well.

And it really came down to that eight run, fifth inning.

Couple of big moments in that inning, Ozzy winning a crucial ABS challenge to get a lead

off walk, don't expect Ozzy to use the ABS challenge system too many times.

He doesn't, I think have a great idea of the strike zone up there.

He certainly seems to swing it a lot of pages that are out of the zone, but either way,

that was a crucial win for him there.

Drake Baldwin hustling to beat out a potential inning, inning double play, a call that got

overturned.

I mean, that was the inning there.

If you get that double play, I think it's just three to one at that point.

So there's still very much a close game.

So that was a big one.

You also took advantage of an error by Nolan Erinotto made a couple of errors in this

series.

So maybe I jinxed him coming in.

He's about how great of a diventer.

He still is at third base and he made a couple of errors in this series.

So you're welcome for that, but those are some big pivotal moments in that Thursday game.

What ended up being a laffer 17 to two, a couple of crucial moments in that fifth inning

really kind of changed the whole dynamic of that game.

As I mentioned, the Braves offense did struggle in that next game that didn't score until

the ninth inning, Ozzy and Matt Olsen going back to back, but that was enough for a two

to nothing win.

That was just an outstanding, I wrote outstandingly pitched game.

I don't know if that's a word or not, but Grand Homes and Water Rodriguez, just fantastic

in that game.

Grand Homes six innings, one hit, three walks, no earned four strikeouts on 85 pitches.

He carried a no hitter into the six inning, 84% of the time he threw a fastball slider.

I mean, it was about as two pitch as you get 14 whiffs though, a 40% whiff rate overall,

nine on the slider, 17 called strikes as well for a 36% called strike plus whiff rate

percentage.

As I always say, around 30% is a really good outing.

He was at 36%, a lot of weak contact, only four balls were really struck well against

him.

Braves only had two or three on E-Rod.

Like I said, he was really good as well.

Then Olsen and Ozzy coming through in the ninth inning, both in, obviously, nails there.

Two.

On Saturday, a two to one loss offense continuing to struggle to get going after that 17 run,

effort, Bryce Elder, just so, so good.

I mean, one of the best outings, really that we've seen from him seven innings, four hits,

one walk, two runs, both of them unearned, but it was his own error.

Eight strikeouts and 89 pitches, just again, one of the more dominant starters that we've

seen from Bryce Elder, 13 whiffs, a 31% CSW, and he mixed in more four seamers in this

one.

I've talked a lot about the four seamers in the past.

I just didn't feel like that's a good pitch for him to raise the eye level.

You also saw, I mentioned this after his last start, you saw I'm throwing a lot of those

sinkers at the top of the zone two, and you go back and look at the spray chart in this

outing.

It was a lot of four seamers and sinkers up in the zone, and I just feel like that plays

really well with his arsenal that is typically, you know, you want to get that slider down.

And generally it's, it's the sinker going down in, in derides, it's a slider going down

in a way.

Everything's working down, down, down, all the sudden you raise, you know, the eye level

throwing up a four seamers and sinkers up, it makes that slider play even better.

So that's something to continue to keep an eye on for Bryce Seller.

Of course, the Bryce Seller, it's always going to come down to command.

Is he able to live on the black, the outside, inside corner?

Is he able to live on the black there, and he's done it so far through two starts this

season.

Still hasn't given up an earned run through two starts, and it was great to end last

year.

So fingers crossed.

Again, it's one of those things I'm ready to see it over a full season, actually believe

it because we've seen great stretches from him before that are followed by really

awful stretches.

But hopefully this is a new and improved version of Bryce Seller that's just going to be

more consistent.

And when he does have some hiccup starts, which are going to come, then maybe he's able

to reel it back in quickly and not let that turn into three, four, five, six bad starts

in a row.

Brace did have some good swings off Michael Soroka in that game.

The 409 foot fly out by Michael here is really, really hurt.

That ball was absolutely crushed, but not able to get to their bullpen was really

I think what dooms the braves in this one that Arizona bullpen is one that you should

be able to get after and that Arizona bullpen on Saturday, four innings, no hits, no walks,

no earn, four strikeouts, I mean that go that's on that's on the offense at that point.

When you cannot do anything against there for their relievers in the last four innings,

the first three relievers through no more than 14 pitches in an inning.

So you really didn't even make them work.

That is squarely on the offense there, only two hard hit balls against their bullpen.

That's just not going to cut it.

And then on Sunday, you had the six to five loss in extra innings, going tennings in

that one.

Mark Team Perez, five innings, five hits, one walk, four earned, one strikeout, 75 pitches

thrown, four whiffs, but a 27% CSW means he was feeling up the strike zone and when you

only have four whiffs and you still have a 27% CSW again, just really throwing a lot

of strikes.

It's like hit the pitch count down.

Some good contact against him, but he competed, he gave the team a chance to win.

You can question the decision to send him back out for the sixth inning, really only somewhat

questionable decision.

I thought from what wise.

And at the end, I think it was probably the right call.

And like I said, the pitch count, the pitch count was good.

He had just had an easy fifth inning.

It was a left on left matchup.

You're trying to manage 13 straight games right now.

So any else that you can still and save the bullpen, but you had Tyler Kinley up, you know,

ready to go.

Like I said, second guessing certainly.

And bringing it back out to start that sixth inning, trying to get another out out of him

against the left.

You match up in Corbin Carroll, but Carroll had a great game, you know, let off the

ending with the double, came around to scores, the time back took the lead there.

The offense did a good job in this game, battling back on three separate occasions to tie

the game, but they just couldn't get that next hit to take the lead and create some separation.

Even though they had several chances there, I think the biggest moment was in the top of

the ninth.

They tied it.

They still had two on with nobody out and you had Matt Olson, Mike Yostrymsky and Michael

Harris coming up three lefties against a righty and none of them could come through to push

across that.

Go ahead, run.

You had Iggy coming in the ninth to do his thing.

You likely would have won that game.

They went two for 14 with runners in scoring position.

They couldn't get that ghost runner home and the 10th.

So again, while I want to give the offense a lot of credit in that game for continuing

to battle back, getting on base, putting pressure on the other team, scoring five runs

through nine innings, but still two for four team with runners in scoring position, not

able to push across another run in the ninth inning there, manufacture just one more run.

Again, still, I hate to kind of put that one on the offense.

Now, looking at a couple of players individually, one in Ronikunya, Jr. that we're obviously

hoping is going to turn things around in every game in this series.

He hit a ball over 100 miles per hour.

He had a 105.3 mile per hour line out on Thursday, a 101.1 mile per hour fly out on Friday,

a 112.3 mile per hour ground out on Saturday, and then a 109.6 mile per hour single on Sunday.

So four really loud hits, only one was actually a hit out of that.

And you know me, I'm I'm keying it on the fastballs.

It's really what he's struggling with right now.

Four seamers and sinkers saw a lot more sinkers in the series in four seamers.

He only had one whip against the four-seater.

Like I said, he didn't see a ton of them.

He also had a 105.3 mile per hour line out on a four-seamer, which is really good.

That was up in the zone as a line out just straight at the center filter.

Also had a 78 mile per hour pop up.

And then again, sinkers.

He had two whiffs against sinkers.

So just three whiffs overall against fastballs on the four game series is very encouraging.

Had some hard contact against those sinkers as well.

And I think what's encouraging about that is that the contact got better and better throughout

the weekend.

And more and more sinkers, his final three contacts against sinkers with a 109.6 mile

per hour single 93.5 mile per hour where he reached on an error over to an aeronauto

there.

And then a 95.2 mile per hour single.

So again, the contact just got better and better.

So really encouraged by what I saw from a Ronald Goon to junior on the weekend.

I didn't notice a lot more success on the sinker down in the zone as you would expect.

Again, fastballed up, sinker up are things that you can get Ronald at times.

But he got better and better on those pitches as the weekend went along.

I feel like he is really close to breaking out.

I'd buy a stock in Ronald Goon to junior right now if anybody sold any.

Getting back to the braves, you know, kind of surviving and thriving.

Had you told me the braves would be six and four through their first 10 games.

And Ronald Goon to junior would have just one run scored.

I would have said that's impossible.

So again, the fact that they have a winning record and their best player has scored one

run in their first 10 games is very impressive.

And again, just shows me that the floor for this team is where it needs to be that they can

still survive when one of their best players.

If not the best player is going through a little bit of a rut like Akuni is right now.

And it's only scored one run in a 10 game stretch.

I can't imagine that's ever happened in Akuni's career before and probably won't ever

happen again.

So very encouraging stuff.

However, not nearly as encouraging or as confident in a breakout coming for Austin,

right?

It looks really, really bad right now.

I had someone comment on the video I did last week where I talked about, you know, Riley

slow start.

How he looks like he's lost.

He's struggling and somebody commented.

They thought it was funny that I was, you know, complaining about a guy who was hitting

250 at the time with a 350 on base.

But if you watch all the advance like I do, you could see this was coming that something

is not right with Austin, Riley swings were not great.

He was getting some lucky results.

But there was a lot of good contact.

It was all week singles.

And you can just see something is off with Austin, Riley right now.

Now Walt Weiss did the smart thing.

He set him down on Sunday.

But he did Austin, Riley did enter the game late and had a couple of crucial abats with

the runners on, but he couldn't get that big hit.

You know, if he gets a big hit there, you know, the drive in a run, maybe that sparked

something for him.

It's just it is looking very down for us.

Riley doesn't mean it's over.

It's 10 games.

I get all that.

But just at this moment in time, it is not looking very good and he's got to figure this

out.

He's the highest paid player in team history.

He's going to play.

He has to figure this out.

Now on the good side, Drake Baldwin, he continues to be great.

Cory Mateo, I mentioned earlier, he had a great game on Sunday.

Maybe that earns him some more playing time.

Certainly wouldn't mind seeing him pinch run a little bit more is speaking of pinch running.

You know, base running over the weekend, Akunya had a steal, but got caught stealing.

Mateo had the steal on Sunday.

So I think that's an improvement.

Two successful stolen bases, one caught stealing.

That's better than their success rate early on before that.

On Sunday, you had Cory Mateo take third.

So you got him there with one out, which was really good.

And then Akunya got on put corners at the runners at the corner with one out.

And then you sent Akunya, which kept the braves out of a double play.

And that helped tie the game because Mateo was able to score from third.

So that was a good little sequence there.

Now that was more taking advantage of a pitcher who was slow to the plate and not great

at holding runners on.

But still, that's the little things you want to see in the run game.

So that was somewhat encouraging, still a long, long way to go with the running game,

with that was encouraging as far as the bullpen.

I know Kinley and Dylan Lee didn't have their best games on Sunday, but overall, it was

another great series from this bullpen.

And I think Walt Weiss continues to pull all the right strings.

Like I said, sitting a guy like Riley, 10 games in, that takes some guts.

When he's getting paid what he is, he wants to play every day.

You know he wants to play every day, but I thought it had to be done.

And I think the next step for Walt Weiss is maybe just shaking up the lineup even more.

Behind Akunya Baldwin and Olsen, I always want those in the top three, top four in the

offense.

Obviously, imagine he's still going to put ball, or put all these in between Baldwin and

Olsen against the lefty and you're about to face two lefties in the angels.

But mixing things up beyond those top three or four guys with guys who are, who are swinging

the bat well, if Dom Smith is giving you your best at bats, put him fourth or fifth in

the lineup.

If you feel more confident in him right now at the plate than you do, Mike, your strims

here, Austin Rally, put him fourth and fifth in the lineup.

Everybody's going to be streaky.

Everybody's going to have their moments.

I get that.

I still expect Austin Rally to have better numbers at the end of the year than Dominick

Smith and Mikey Strymsky and Mauricio Dubon.

But in this moment, and I think part of this is the manager and something that we never

really saw with Brian Snicker and I'm curious if we'll see it with Walt Weiss is playing

the hot hand and riding the hot hand.

The guys are swinging the bat well now.

Will you move them up the lineup and prioritize them in those moments, knowing, recognizing

when the guy is cold and managing that and recognizing when a player is hot and prioritizing

that player in the lineup, will we see more of that from Walt Weiss now that you kind

of have a 10 game sample size to see where players are at this moment doesn't mean things

won't change things will most definitely change.

But at this moment, you know, riding the hot hand.

So speaking of the next series, the braze will take on the angels hoping to complete a

winning road trip.

I'll let you know how they're going to get things done here next.

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The Atlanta Braves head to Anaheim for a three game series to end out this West Coast

trip.

Angels coming in with some some momentum winning an exciting series over the Mariners.

They also played an extra inning game on Sunday, but unlike the Braves, they won their

extra inning game in 11 innings with a walk off.

And then on Saturday, if you missed it, Joe Adele robbed three home runs.

So don't hit anything his way right now.

Mike Trout got hit in the hand on Sunday and left the game sounds like he avoided anything

major, which is great.

I wanted to see Mike Trout have a healthy season and help this angels team win just not

for these next three games.

But again, hopefully Mike Trout avoided anything major.

And right now, Kurt Suzuki labeling him as day to day.

And yes, Kurt Suzuki is the new manager of the Angels former Atlanta Brave there.

The angels are a very much age three true outcome team.

You don't know what three true outcomes is.

It's a home run walk or a strikeout.

They are fifth in home runs, fifth most walks, but the most strikeouts.

So we'll see how that plays out against them.

Just don't walk them.

Don't let them go of any home runs.

Make them earn it.

Right now they're 27th in batting average.

So again, make them put them all in play, but make them put it in play in the park is the

key to holding down this angel's offense.

You look at who's hot.

Who's not right now for the angels, Zagnato, Mike Trout, Nolan, Shane Wolder, top three

hitters in the lineup have all been solid in the early going.

Got them Frazier as well, but in a very small sample size, just four game sample size that

he was key in their win on Sunday.

Everyone else has been pretty much awful over the angels, quite honestly, hopefully it

remains that way.

The bullpen has been surprisingly good.

They were very bad last year, one of the worst in all of baseball.

Right now they're fifth in ERA with a 1.31 whip, though, thanks to a 5.58 walk for

nine.

So they do walk a lot of batters, but they have some big time stuff, including these

next three guys.

I mentioned in Chase Silseth, he's pitched in six games already, four and a third innings,

two hits, one walk, no earn five strikeouts, Jordan Romano, four and two thirds innings,

no hits, two walks, no earn and seven strikeouts with three saves.

And then Sam Bachman, five and two thirds innings, three hits, four walks, one earn, though,

and seven strikeouts, some pretty, pretty filthy stuff coming from these three.

You got Silseth with a very nasty splitter.

You got Romano with the slider and then Bachman with a triple digit sinkers.

So those are the three guys out of the bullpen to watch out for the pitching matchups.

In this one, you're still getting, you know, ones on ones, twos on twos, threes on three.

It's at that point in the season where the top, top three are still or everybody in the

rotation is still matching up.

So your pitching matchup is Chris Sale versus Jose Soriano on Monday, Soriano 2.0, 12

innings, four hits, six walks, but no earn run so far with 11 strikeouts.

He has a very high velocity sinker, a devastating knuckle curve, and he's yet to give up a hit

on either of those pitches so far.

The key with Soriano is just be patient, as I said, he's, he's walked six, he's only

about four hits, but he's walked six and 12 innings, make him come into the zone and

get him out as soon as you can because the stuff is really, really good.

And when he has command of it, he can be really, really tough, but make him come in the zone.

And the next in game two of this series, you'll have Bernardo Lopez versus Jose Sacucci,

nine and two thirds innings, 14 hits, five walks, seven earn, a home run and eight strike

outs.

So not a great start for him.

And then in the finale, you'll have a grant, a home versus read a debtmer's debtmer's

has given up three runs on nine hits and four walks and 11 and a third.

And he's this year with 13 strikeouts.

He might finally be figuring it out, former top prospect, really one of the raves to try

and buy him while his stock was low, very good strikeout stuff for read debtmers.

If he doesn't figure it out as a starter, he's going to be a very good reliever, but right

now, Angel's got him in the rotation and he seems to be, like I said, starting to figure

some things out.

This is a series of raves need to win as much as I try to be positive about their early

success and their six and four record.

You don't win this series.

And then you come back home where you have to face a good guardians team, a Marlin's team

that's playing good baseball at the moment.

And then you go to Philly, it could be a really tough stretch for the Atlanta race.

So this is a series you want to win and you need to win.

You win this series and you come home at least eight and five, you're going to be feeling

pretty good.

So that is the key here for the Atlanta Braves and the hope for the Atlanta Braves that

they shake off these last two games against a dime back, several close losses.

Go into Anaheim, a team that you are more talented in than and you should win, even though

they're coming in with some momentum, you need to go out there and take care of business

and at least win this series, come home, feeling good with a West Coast win and a West Coast

winning streak or winning trip for the Atlanta Braves.

Thanks so much for tuning in today to locked on a Braves, we're back on Tuesday with another

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Hey, this is Stacey Gutsuleus, DC Lundberg, Ryan Finkelstein, two of Blake Wars, post

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