The Braves are trying to stop the bleeding, and Grant Holmes will be the one tasked with getting them there when he starts against the Pirates.
Atlanta has dropped at least three straight games five different times since the start of June, and after getting nearly single-handedly bombed by Ryan O’Hearn, the club is once again trying to halt a slide before it turns into a series loss against Pittsburgh.
For Holmes, the assignment is pretty clear: survive the second trip through the order. That’s been the danger zone all season.
The first time through, he’s been sharp, carrying a 2.57 ERA with opponents hitting .197/.285/.283. The trouble starts the next time around, when his ERA balloons to 6.99 and hitters jump him for a .311/.387/.664 slash line.
If he somehow gets through that second look cleanly, the numbers flip back in his favor. On a third trip through the order, Holmes has actually been better than he was the first time, posting a 1.84 ERA while holding batters to .173/.283/.250. The catch is that he’s only reached that point against 60 batters this season, compared with 144 first-time matchups and 137 second-time matchups.
That’s the tightrope Holmes has been walking, even if it’s a little too simple to reduce his night to one inning of the game. The encouraging sign for Atlanta is that he’s been better over his last three starts than he was during the rough patch in mid-June, and the Braves will hope that trend keeps moving in the right direction against a tough Pirates lineup.
Pittsburgh is sending Jared Jones to the mound, and Atlanta will be seeing him as a team for the first time. Jones has been all over the place this season. In seven starts, he’s been knocked around for four runs or more in three of them, and he’s only finished five innings once.
But the stuff is real. Jones is bringing a fastball that averages 99 mph - 98.6 mph, according to Statcast - and he’s getting an elite 32.8 percent whiff rate.
That could create problems for a Braves offense that has struck out on 23.3 percent of the four-seam fastballs it’s seen this season, the tenth-highest rate in the league. Atlanta also has the tied for third-lowest “perfect contact” rate on four-seamers, so if Jones is dealing, it may come down to the Braves simply not being able to square up that heater.
Even so, Atlanta’s bats have started to wake up. After spending most of June fighting through a miserable stretch at the plate, the Braves have scored at least four runs in each of their last seven games. Before that, they had only done it four times in their final 14 games of June.
So the offense is showing signs of life. The bigger issue is the pitching staff, which needs to settle down if Atlanta wants to turn this around instead of just making the losses look louder.
And with the Pirates offense rolling, this could easily become another high-scoring night. If that happens, the Braves will need to keep swinging well enough to give themselves a chance in whatever slugfest unfolds.
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