Braves Hope to Solve Offensive Woes Versus Stout Boston Pitching Staff

The Atlanta Braves have not had a good week.

The Braves went 1-5 on their most recent road trip, a swing across the West Coast, only winning one game against the Seattle Mariners and then getting swept by the Los Angeles Dodgers. The offense was the issue, with just a .168/.218/.244 line in the six games with fourteen total runs. 

Can the Braves fix what ails them against the Boston Red Sox? 

A quick glimpse at the Boston pitching staff would say no - Boston’s pitchers have a MLB-low 2.61 ERA as a group, more than a third of a run better than the next closest qualifier, the Seattle Mariners (2.96). The individual matchups don’t appear to be much easier, with Kutter Crawford getting the call for Tuesday night and Wednesday’s starter officially a “TBA”, but widely thought to be Nick Pivetta returning from the injured list. 

Crawford’s leading all Boston starters with a 1.56 ERA, having allowed only nine runs (seven earned) in hs first seven starts and 40.1 innings of the year. He’s struck out forty, but leads all Boston starters with thirteen walks, as well. 

MLB’s ERA+ leader at 262 (100 is league average), Crawford’s reinvented his arsenal this season. Gone is the four-seam fastball and curveball combo, in favor of a cutter and a sweeper. He’s not stopped throwing the four-seam fastball at all, using it 29% of the time, but it’s dropped over 10% from last season’s usage and the cutter’s taken up that slack. The curveball, which was of the knuckle curve variety, has been used exactly 35 times all season, all but one coming against a lefty (where a split-finger changeup also comes into play.)

Boston pitching coach Andrew Bailey explained to the Boston Globe ($) in rather simple terms why Crawford’s moved to a mostly horizontal arsenal featuring the sweeper over his original vertical pairing of fastball and curveball: “It generates weak contact; it can generate swing and miss. It’s (the sweeper) been a really productive pitch for our guys. The sweeper plays off his cutter really well.”

And the stats back up Bailey’s assertion rather well: Crawford’s allowing only a .372 slugging percentage on the sweeper and a .200 on the cutter, while both have whiff rates in the 20s (23.1% for the cutter, 27.7% for the sweeper.) 

It’s also a pairing that Atlanta’s not seen a lot of, with only Marcell Ozuna having more than ten plate appearances featuring a sweeper being used (he’s at a +2 run value against the pitch, but he’s also at a positive run value against EVERY pitch except for cutters.)

Cutters have been used more often against Atlanta than sweepers, with six different Braves hitters having at least ten plate appearances this season against cutters. Matt Olson’s struggled against the cutter, with only a .133 batting average in eighteen plate appearances. 

Pivetta went on the injured list retroactive to April 6th with a right elbow flexor strain. The same injury that knocked out Max Fried for three months in the 2023 season, Pivetta’s strain was seen as mild and he’s expected to return for Wednesday’s series finale. 

But his only rehab start didn’t go great, a shortened outing for AAA Worcester on Thursday being three runs on three hits and four walks in just three-plus innings. He did strike out five and reported feeling good after the outing, but he threw only thirty-six strikes in his sixty-two pitches. 

He’s a four-seam fastball, sweeper, and cutter guy so far this season, although he’s used the curveball more than Crawford, throwing it 17% of the time in the small sample size of his first eleven innings prior to his injury. 

And there’s some bad news there: Austin Riley’s struggling with the fastball. 

I don’t mean “not doing great” when I say he’s struggling - Austin Riley is the worst hitter in baseball against four-seam fastballs right now, per MLB Statcast. He’s batting just .114 with a .227 slugging off of four-seam fastballs and his -8 Run Value off the pitch is 379th in MLB out of 379 total players.

Atlanta’s got their work cut out for them in these two games.