Underdog is the word in a three-game series against the Braves - A Series Preview

Well this will certainly be an interesting series. This is one of those series where fans don’t really expect the Cardinals to even win a game, although it is worth pointing out that they aren’t quite the same as the 104 win team from last year. They have been roughly a 90-95 win team and have played like it too. They are still good, but definitely more beatable.

They have one very big injury in the rotation with Spencer Strider likely missing all of this season. They have three other players on the IL who are either completely unproven or more of a 5th starter type in AJ Smith-Shawver, Huston Waldrep, and Huascar Ynoa. Ynoa hasn’t pitched since 2022 and the other two combined for three starts this season. Offensively, Ronald Acuna Jr. is also done for the year, and Michael Harris II recently went on the IL with a strained hamstring.

They aren’t quite playing at full strength, although most of their offense is still healthy. As a team, this isn’t quite as impressive an offense as you may be lead to believe though. They are 14th in wRC+ in the MLB with a 103 wRC+. Acuna’s 108 wRC+ before he got injured, Sean Murphy’s 83 wRC+ and Harris’ 83 wRC+ have something to do with that. Also Adam Duvall with just a 59 wRC+ and Orlando Arcia with a 63 wRC+.

They are led on offense by Marcell Ozuna, who really doesn’t get enough hate from Cards fans if I do say so myself. He has a 171 wRC+ with 20 homers. Matt Olson has fell back to earth a bit, at least so far, with a 122 wRC+. Travis D’Arnaud has picked up the slack from Sean Murphy when he was injured quite nicely with a 111 wRC+. Austin Riley has gotten off to a slower start with a 110 wRC+. Ozzie Albies also has a 110 wRC+. And lastly Jarred Kelenic has what seems to be a very unsustainable 106 wRC+ with a high K rate, low BB rate, high BABIP line.

Atlanta has also been middle of the pack in relief. Raisel Iglesias has been pretty good as closer, though his K rate has fell to 19.3% so he’s much more hittable than in the past. Both Joe Jimenez and Pierce Johnson are good relievers who will usually shut down the other team in high leverage innings. Aaron Bummer has been a high groundball effective reliever from the left side. Dylan Lee provides another effective left-handed arm. While this is an overall middle of the pack pen, there’s five pretty reliable relievers they can go to with a lead, so I wouldn’t depend on comebacks in late innings.

This is a team who does not rest its starters. In the past six games, their only regulars who have sat even once are the catcher, Murphy of course. And then whoever is the LF that day, which is either Forrest Wall or Ramon Laureno. And they’ve only sat because neither are actually the full-time starter quite yet. Even Duvall’s terrible play never sits. It’s wild.

Monday - 6:45 PM

Spencer Schwellenbach (4.98 ERA/3.97 FIP/4.23 xFIP) vs. Lance Lynn (4.08 ERA/4.08 FIP/4.10 xFIP)

Wow, haven’t seen a starter’s trio of pitching stats be so in symmetry like that. Sometimes advanced stats do exactly what they’re supposed to. Lynn has achieved something called regression in recent starts. Oddly enough, none of the three were good from a traditional standpoint, but two of the three had both good FIPs and xFIPs and the third also had a good xFIP. You can take this as a good sign if you want.

Schwellenbach has been merely okay, which is impressive given he’s another Braves player who skipped AAA. I don’t understand how they are the only team that can do this. He didn’t even get a preseason ZiPS projection, because he started this year in High A. He made six effective starts, and then two utterly dominant starts in AA (38.6 K%). He did get drafted in 2021, but didn’t make his first start until 2023, so he is already 24 despite very little professional experience, relatively speaking anyway.

Tuesday - 6:45 PM

Reynaldo Lopez (1.57 ERA/2.73 FIP/3.53 xFIP) vs. Kyle Gibson (3.44 ERA/4.14 FIP/3.95 xFIP)

I guess we can’t throw stones, but how stupid do the White Sox feel in not being able to make Lopez a starter? They tried more than we did with Hicks, but I don’t know if that makes it worse or better. Like he got 97 starts with the White Sox. He never pitched anywhere near this good. But speaking of regression, Cardinals can give him some regression here cause he ain’t been 1.57 ERA good.

Gibson has been very close to his usual self that he’s been the rest of his career with one extremely notable exception: instead of having an ERA worse than his advanced stats, it’s been better. That’s a pretty decent swing. To give you an idea, if his ERA was as many points lower than his FIP as it is above, he’d have a career ERA of about 4.00 if you exclude this year’s stats. That’s better than the 5th starter we expected.

Wednesday - 6:15 PM

Chris Sale (2.91 ERA/2.30 FIP/2.49 xFIP) vs. Andre Pallante (5.23 ERA/4.21 FIP/4.07 xFIP)

Pallante pitched much better than his line ultimately looked at Rickwood Field. Part of it was he was kept in longer than I think Oli would have wanted to save a fresh bullpen. The other part is that Andrew Kittredge to some degree screwed him over by allowing both of the inherited runners to score.

He’ll have to be on his A game, because we appear to have vintage Sale on Wednesday. He’s actually good better stats than his career line and pretty close to his peak seasons. He’s also 35 so the vintage line works in two ways.

The Braves offense hasn’t been the Braves offense so the Cardinals do have more of a shot than you probably think, but the bats are going to have to show up to win this series. They have their work cut out for them and the Cardinals really, really need a good game from Lynn, because winning Wednesday is going to a tough one.