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Morton, Braves, look to end series and week on a good note

Yes, for purposes of this preview post, the week ends on Sunday, not Saturday.

Look, it hasn’t been the greatest week ever for the Braves. Though the news that Spencer Strider had some UCL damage came last week, this was the week that the ramifications started to take hold, and also the week that the news that he had undergone an internal brace procedure came out. The Braves then suffered through a rainy series loss against the Mets in which they opted to start Strider Replacement Numero Uno, Allan Winans, who then presided over a 16-4 dismantling at the hands of the Amazins. Miami hasn’t been much kinder so far, either — the Braves dominated the Marlins on Friday night, but were eviscerated by Max Meyer and their own key pitching decision on Saturday.

So, we come to Sunday, where the Braves have a chance to wrap up the week with a 3-3 record before their all-Texas smorgasbord next week. But, to do that, they’ll need to have a few things happen: namely, Charlie Morton needs to figure some stuff out against the Marlins that he wasn’t able to do against the Mets, and the bats need to figure out Jesus Luzardo, and perhaps, their launch angle.

Let’s start with Morton. The veteran righty pitched 5 ²⁄₃ scoreless in his season debut against the White Sox, with a 6/2 K/BB ratio. His FIP and xFIP in that game against left-handed batters were 5.82 and 7.67, respectively, but given that he dominated right-handed batters, it was a fine start overall. Then, he had his blow-up against the Mets, driven in part by Brandon Nimmo taking him deep for a three-run the third time through, after Morton failed to retire him either of the first two times. Overall, Morton had a 10.91 FIP and 8.02 xFIP against lefties in that game, and basically, you can tell that’s going to be the story for him in every single start until he figures things out.

That’s not to say that Morton’s lefty problems are intractably ever-present. His aggregate FIP and xFIP against lefties last year were a perfectly fine 4.20ish, but it was driven by stretches where he seemed to have things figured out (late April through early June, the second half of August), only for things to fall apart (his first few starts, mid-July through mid-August, September). Morton appears to be in the latter stretch now. Maybe he’ll figure it out again. Maybe he won’t. Hopefully the Braves safeguard him against lefties in situations that matter in this game, but they haven’t really shown that level of proactiveness before, so who knows.

And then, there’s Jesus Luzardo. The 26-year-old left-hander has gotten progressively worse in three starts this season. He had an 8/2 K/BB ratio against the Pirates in his season debut, a 5/2 K/BB ratio in his second start against the Angels, and then a nightmarish 4/5 K/BB ratio with two homers allowed against the Yankees on Monday. He also allowed a homer in each of his first two starts, so his line right now is a pretty nasty 167 ERA-, 153 FIP-, and 105 xFIP-. That said, the Braves haven’t exactly dominated Luzardo in their past meetings. In his six career starts against Atlanta dating back to 2021, he’s dominated them three times, and struggled twice. The aggregate line includes a 2.98 FIP and 3.65 xFIP, but that belies the duality of things like the Braves smashing him in May last year, and then getting no traction off him in September.

The Braves probably can’t afford to have another one of those no-traction games if they want to win this one, but Luzardo struggling a lot with his changeup (namely, he can’t throw it for a strike) in the early going could help their righties a fair bit. They’ll still have to figure out a way to contend with his slider, though, after failing to make any progress against Meyer’s cutter/slider yesterday.

Still, even with the bad week, the Braves come into today with the majors’ seventh-best record, a one-game lead in the NL East, and the highest playoff and championship odds in baseball. They just need to get their fly ball thing figured out — they come into this game first in exit velocity and hard-hit rate (as expected), fifth in xwOBA and third in xwOBACON (maybe a little weird), and eighth in barrel rate (same). You can explain all this pretty easily: they’re bottom four in fly ball rate, and more damningly, top three in groundball rate. (They’re also tenth in pop-up rate.) You can’t get barrels or dingers while smashing everything hard into the ground, and while there are signs that they’re improving the launch angle issues as a team, they’re not there yet. But hey, maybe today’s the day.