How do you write a preview for this game? The Braves have morphed into someone being chided by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in Crime and Punishment at this point, as their worst sin has been that they destroyed and betrayed themselves for nothing. At no point was this more evident last night than a team who, in a fugue state, managed to get a bunch of stuff they wanted in the final two innings: walks! bloop hits! — only to fail to actually score enough runs anyway. The 2024 team was horribly unlucky but didn’t have problems like this. The earlier teams didn’t just live with a “one dimensional” offense or an inability to sequence, but thrived “despite” those things.
So, what do you say at this point? The Braves are trying to adjust — but it’s not having immediate results, because why would it? They’re now swinging way more than before, but unfortunately, it’s not swinging at strikes. (They were doing a better job of swinging at strikes and not at balls, by design, in May, but the lack of oomph has clearly engendered an attempt at a reversion.) Going back to what worked before might be the only way to turn the ship around, but at this point it feels more like something involving that ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal than a quick fix.
But, they still have to play today and try to avoid a sweep. Or not. I’m not really sure it really matters, because, as Dostoyevsky wrote, they tried to do something without any great purpose, and here we are.
Pitching-wise, the Braves will start Grant Holmes, whose 93/120/97 line is emblematic of the team’s pitching this year. It’s fine, but the HR/FB is a problem and has helped tanked the season. A lot of Holmes’ HR/FB issues came when he gave up three homers to Eugenio Suarez when these two teams faced off in Arizona, but he’s also had 11 starts to this point and has avoided ceding a longball in just three of them. Even so, Holmes has pitched really well in five of his last six starts (combined 79/104/80), but yeah, the HR/FB sucks and the team is now in a place where even if it normalizes by virtue of being normal going forward, it won’t be enough. Sorry, Grant — at least we know you’re pitching well.
Speaking of HR/FB issues, say hello to Brandon Pfaadt, who has -0.3 fWAR on the year because of them. Pfaadt has a 124/130/104 line, so he and Holmes can commiserate about 2025 sucking. Pfaadt has had 12 starts and avoided the longball in just four of them, and one of those starts came against the Braves when he helped the Diamondbacks avoid a sweep. That was actually one of his two best outings of the year, and he’s been meh to abominable otherwise. In particular, in his most recent outing, Pfaadt failed to record an out, hitting two of the eight batters and having the other six BABIP him to pretty much a non-outing. That’s probably not happening again, but maybe the Braves can stave off a sweep at home the way Pfaadt did earlier. Neither of these teams seems to be going anywhere, so while they’re not serving as speed bumps to anyone else in this series, they can at least do some weird parallelism stuff or whatever.
Game Info
Game Date/Time: Thursday, June 5, 12:15 p.m. ET
Location: Truist Park, Atlanta, GA
TV: FanDuel Sports South / Southeast, MLB Network (out-of-market only)
Streaming: MLB.tv
Radio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan, La Mejor 1600/1460/1130 AM
