The Atlanta Braves are coming off a fun series against the Red Sox where we saw the bats go crazy twice and completely silent once. The Braves will now take their elite offense to Cincinnati and face the back end of the Red’s rotation.
Today Grant Holmes and his 3.78 ERA will face off against Chris Paddack who has yet to bring home his first victory and has a 6.86 ERA. It is still early enough in the season that ERA can be at least a bit deceiving, but the Braves do look primed to do some damage with the bats today.
Grant Holmes has had an up and down season thus far and a lot of it has to do with him not being able to stay effective after seeing the lineup after two times through, which is why you are seeing pitchers like Didier Fuentes being on the ready every time he pitches.
It could be argued that Holmes may have started to turn a corner in a positive direction. Last start he lasted five innings and struck out ten hitters to only two walks against the then MLB leader in runs scored (Nationals). He did give up two solo shots on six hits though. His start before that looked promising too with 6.0 innings of zero run ball against the Red Sox where he struck out four and walked one on five hits.
His underlying metric show that his expected ERA (xERA) is 4.17 which is not terrible and not too far off from his actual ERA. What is concerning though is that hitters have a hard-hit rate of 44.4 percent, which is good for bottom 19.0 percent of qualified pitchers.
No one on the Reds has more than seven at-bats against Holmes in their careers, but most of the players that have faced him have had success. Of the nine hitters to have faced him, six of them have an average of .333 or better. Friedl is the clear front runner in terms of success. In four at-bats, he has two HRs.
It could have probably been guessed already, but Chris Paddack has had some poor luck. Although his xERA is not desirable at 4.32, it is much better than his 6.86 actual ERA. One area that may give the Braves trouble is he is able to get hitters to chase the ball out of the zone 33.7 percent of the time, which is good for top 19.0 percent of qualified pitchers. The Braves have a few players like Albies, Harris, and Riley who are notorious for chasing the ball out of the zone.
Mike Yastrzemski leads the team with twenty-five at-bats against Paddack and has had no problem being successful. He has three HRs, a .400 average, and a 1.324 OPS in that span. No other Braves player has more than eleven at-bats against Paddack. It will be interesting to see if Smith gets the DH start today because he has a .182 average in those eleven at-bats.
First pitch is at 6:40 pm EDT.
Game Time: Friday, May 29th, 6:40 pm EDT
Location: Great American Ball Park, , Cincinnati, OH
Radio/Audio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan