The Braves are having fun. Mostly. Probably. They have a top five-ish record in the league both after the All-Star Break, and in July as a whole. No team has scored more runs in July, even though the Braves are just 15th in xwOBA for the month. They haven\u2019t lost a series since the All-Star Break, including exorcising a very specific demon by beating the Padres in a series at home \u2014 something they hadn\u2019t achieved since 2018. Now, fresh off a series win after a trio of close, wacky games in Baltimore, they\u2019re off to New York in search of more Ws.<\/p>\n
And, as fate has inevitably contorted itself, I have coverage of another Martin Perez start. To be very clear: this was not my original assignment; I switched from tomorrow to today to help scheduling stuff. No, I did not check who was pitching for the Braves. But I think I already knew. Much like Perez\u2019 style of pitching, we are all just marionettes on the erratically-rattled strings of the universe.<\/p>\n
Anyway, Martin Perez! He\u2019s had his ups and his downs. He was in the middle of a rough stretch when he was hit on the forearm by a comebacker, and had to miss some time on the Injured List. He came back last week and had a very strange outing against the Padres: four innings, four walks, three strikeouts, and a 1-0 lead when he departed. (The Braves eventually won, 7-6.) It was his fourth start in a row with very poor peripherals, but the defense and the vagaries of his own pitching style and the universe at large bailed him out from suffering any damage in the runs ledger.<\/p>\n
On the season, Perez has a 79 ERA-, 107 FIP-, and 101 xFIP- in 85 2\/3 innings, which\u2026 yeah. Sometimes not everything is undeservedly bad. Sometimes, things are undeservedly good. Hurrah.<\/p>\n
As for the Mets, well, they\u2019re kind of just depressing. At 44-62, they have MLB\u2019s third-worst record. They\u2019re 8-12 in July, and recently announced that nearly everyone on their roster is available in trade, though they haven\u2019t actually started moving guys yet. It\u2019s been a tough season in Queens for many reasons, though a big one is a huge offensive xwOBA underperformance that\u2019s made a decent set of inputs translate into some of the league\u2019s worst outputs. In addition, the Mets\u2019 lack of defensive prowess has made their run prevention more of a problem than it\u2019s needed to be.<\/p>\n
On the flip side, 24-year-old Zac Thornton, tonight\u2019s scheduled starter, has been a nice story so far in four starts. He wasn\u2019t pitching all that well in the minors before being called up, and had a rough landing in his MLB debut, but then dominated the Phillies in his second try\u2026 though the Mets still lost that game, 2-1. He\u2019s then had a couple of weirder outings \u2014 zero runs tallied to him (hi, Martin Perez!), but just a 7\/3 K\/BB ratio in 13 innings. He hasn\u2019t allowed a homer since his debut, so that\u2019s why his line is 47\/71\/99 (ERA-\/FIP-\/xFIP-). The Mets could use some undeservedly good stuff, too, after how their season has gone.<\/p>\n
As a pitcher, Thornton is definitely an odd duck. He\u2019s a cutter-slider-thing-first lefty who generates good \u201crise\u201d with his not-thrown-that-hard fastballs. He also throws a sweeper that\u2019s much slower than his cutter thing. His command\u2019s been kind of rough, but it\u2019s an in-the-zone rough, so he\u2019s not walking the world, and the ability to use his four-seamer and sweeper as a change-of-pace has helped him survive.<\/p>\n
Ronald Acu\u00f1a Jr. will apparently be back for this game, so that might be more exciting than everything else put together.<\/p>\n
Game Date\/Time: Monday, July 27, 7:10 p.m. EDT<\/p>\n
Location: Citi Field, Flushing, NY<\/p>\n
TV\/Streaming: BravesVision<\/p>\n
Radio: 680 AM \/ 93.7 FM The Fan, La Mejor 1600\/1460\/1130 AM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Braves are having fun. Mostly. Probably. They have a top five-ish record in the league both after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[102885,9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":["post-306861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-atlanta-braves-game-information","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}