The St. Louis Cardinals will get their first look at the new SunTrust Park as they head to Georgia to take on the Atlanta Braves in a best of three series over the weekend. The Cards are playing much better baseball of late after a very rough start and have gotten back to .500. They’ll look to get past that against the Braves.
This series will be contested from Friday, May 5, 2017 through Sunday, May 7, 2017 at SunTrust Park in Atlanta. For those out of the local markets, Sunday’s game will be broadcast live on MLB Network.
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Pitching Matchups
The pitching lineups up this weekend to pin Lance Lynn and Mike Foltynewicz on Friday with Make Leake and Julio Teheran on tap for Saturday. In the series finale, the Cards will look to Michael Wacha while the Braves look for veteran leadership from R.A. Dickey.
Lance Lynn has been a great performer for St. Louis through the first month. He’s 3-1 with a 2.45 ERA and 1.091 WHIP and, in Lynn-like fashion, is giving his team a chance to win with little fanfare.
The now 30-year old missed all of last year with Tommy John surgery, but shows no ill-effects as he’s allowed no more than one run in any of his last three starts, all lasting at least six innings.
Fotynewicz, meanwhile, has been the Braves’ best starter so far this year, making Friday’s match up—arguably—the best of the weekend series. While the young right-hander is 0-3, his ERA is 2.81 and his WHIP is 1.208, both are the best of any of the Braves’ starters. He may well be this season’s version of Shelby Miller from a couple years ago.
In Folty’s last three starts, he’s gone at least six innings in each, giving up two or fewer runs.
Advancing to Saturday, the Braves will send their team ace to the bump, but Teheran has an inflated 4.33 ERA and is just 2-2. Two of his last three starts haven’t been good, giving up six runs in six innings his last time out, but he does have four quality starts on the year and two earned run free outings of at least six innings.
In his career against the Cardinals, he’s made four starts, going 1-2 with a 3.13 ERA and 1.261 WHIP in 23 innings of work.
His counterpart, Leake, is having a great start to the year. The usually reliable mid-rotation type starter struggled in his first season at Busch Stadium, but he’s now 3-1 with a 1.35 ERA and 0.990 WHIP in his five starts over 33.1 innings He’s allowed just five walks and 28 hits in that span. He hasn’t given up more than two runs in any game this year.
He’s owned the Braves in his career, too, going 4-2 in eight starts with a 1.98 ERA and 1.024 WHIP in 54.2 innings.
These teams wrap it up on Sunday with one of the Cards’ youngest arms against one of the Braves’ oldest.
Wacha’s had a good start to his year, too, keeping the walks in check and the ERA down to 3.23. Health has always been the concern for Wacha since breaking out a few years ago in the playoffs. He appears healthy enough, though his last start was his worst as he went six innings, giving up a season high four runs.
For the Braves, Dickey has been serviceable. The 42-year old is 3-2 with a 3.94 ERA. If the knuckleball is moving he’s still hard to square up. Overall, he’s turned into a nice veteran arm to provide reliable innings. In his five starts, he’s allowed three runs or fewer in each, spanning from five to seven innings.
Wacha has more upside in this matchup, Dickey has more certainty.
Who's Hot?
This fits into the obvious category, but Freddie Freeman is red hot. He’s continued his hot hitting from the second half of last year and is batting .368 with 10 home runs and 17 RBIs through his first 26 games. He’s also slugging .779 and has a 225 OPS+, making him 125-percent better than the average offensive contributor.
In his career against the Cards, Freeman has a .414 OBP, but hasn’t shown too much pop, but many of those numbers were accumulated prior to last year when he belted a season high 34 bombs. He’s certainly found his power.
Matt Kemp has also been a huge contributor for the Braves. He missed some time on the DL, but hasn’t missed a beat. He looks to be in his best shape in years and his playing with passion he had been lacking. He’s hitting .333 with a 1.057 OPS and six home runs to go along with seven doubles in 16 games.
Brandon Phillips and Nick Markakis are providing veteran leadership as well, able to cover up for some of the other woes on this offense. Though, as the record will show, not quite enough.
For the Cards, the bullpen seems to be turning the corner after a slow start. Seung-hwan Oh and Trevor Rosenthal are a nice pair in the back end and the rest are starting to put together more quality innings.
The defense is still not where this team wants it to be and the offense has been slow to come around at a few positions, though Jedd Gyorko has earned nearly every day at bats, showing his power from last year was no fluke. He’s hitting .348 with six bombs. Kolten Wong has also been swinging the bat well.
Who's Not?
For the Braves the biggest ‘not’ is the bullpen. The unit has a combined 5.83 ERA and Jim Johnson has just five saves to go along with a 4.50 ERA. Jose Ramirez is really the only bright spot in this pen, with two runs allowed in 13 innings. Otherwise, guys like Ian Krol, Eric O’Flaherty and Matt Wisler are just handing out the runs.
Offensively, Dansby Swanson has just been bad. He’s hitting .156 and has just three extra base hits, leaving him with an OPS+ of a mere 24. Add in a .248 average and .292 OBP from Ender Inciarte who is supposed to be setting the table and it’s no wonder offensive consistency is an issue even with Freeman and Kemp.
For the Cardinals, Dexter Fowler has been a big disappointment. He was a huge spark plug for the Cubs last year, particularly early in the year, and has a .218 average and sub-.300 OBP so far. That said, he is coming around. He hit in five straight heading into May, going 10-for-23, but is 0-for-7 in May.
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