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Atlanta Braves begin trip out West with series opener against Diamondbacks

After the Atlanta Braves ended their homestand on a high note with a series win over the Phillies, they’re now looking to keep the good vibes going as they journey out West for the next week — starting with a trip to the desert to face off with the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Tonight’s game should be interesting based on the starting pitching matchup alone. For starters, the Diamondbacks will have a rookie making their MLB debut as their starting pitcher for the second time in as many weeks. Last week, Cristian Mena was the one who got the call. Tonight, it’s Yilber Diaz who will be throwing his first pitches as a big leaguer to start off tonight’s game.

Diaz is not only getting the start since the D-Backs are currently dealing with a whale of an injury situation when it comes to their pitching staff but he’s also getting it because he’s been doing a very good job in the minors so far this season. In fact, Diaz is coming off of a start on July 1 for the Reno Aces where he struck out 13 batters — not bad for a guy who only got promoted to Triple-A back on June 11.

With that being said, everybody knows that there’s still a big difference between what Triple-A hitters can do and what big leaguers are capable off and it’s Atlanta’s job to make that difference as stark as possible. As Ivan mentioned in the series preview, this could be a situation where Diaz may not be out there for super long and if that’s the case, it’ll be on the Braves to run Diaz from the game and get into what could potentially be a depleted bullpen for the Diamondbacks as they head into this one. If Atlanta could give Diaz a rude welcome to MLB then this could indeed be a fun night at the ballpark for Atlanta.

Meanwhile, the Braves are sending anybody but a rookie to the mound for tonight’s game. 2024 NL All-Star Chris Sale is getting the ball for the Braves tonight and as usual, you have to like Atlanta’s chances in any game where Sale is starting at this point. The 35-year-old hurler has been lights-out for the Braves this season as it appears that a return to good health has also resulted in a result to good form for Sale. He’s entering this game with an ERA- of 65 and a FIP- of 58 for the season so far — both of which are are as good as anything that we’ve seen from Sale since his prime days pitching for either of the Sox teams from the AL.

Ever since the A’s inexplicably got him for eight runs over five innings, Sale has absolutely clamped down on opposing hitters. Over his past five starts over 32 innings, Sale has walked nine batters and given up seven runs while striking out 45 batters over that same span for a nice-and-tidy 38 percent strikeout rate and a 30.4 percent strikeout-to-walk percentage. Or, to make it as simple as possible, opponents have only been batting .165 against Sale over this period of time. Sale has been a nightmare for opposing hitters to deal with and at this point it’s all about the offense giving him run support so he can continue to keep the other team quiet while he’s on the mound.

While the past three games are an absolutely microscopic sample size when compared to the rest of the baseball season, it does feel very encouraging that the Braves scored at least five runs in each of the three games that they played against the Phillies. It’s still been far too long since Atlanta won a game where the other team scored more than three runs (April 17, to be exact) but hopefully with Chris Sale pitching tonight, this won’t be the night where we see that stat get put to the test. Instead, here’s hoping that the Braves can ruin Yilber Diaz’s big league debut and gat Sale plenty of run support in order to get the road trip off to a solid start.

UPDATE: You can basically take everything I’ve said about Chris Sale in today’s preview and just keep it in mind for tomorrow’s preview. Sale’s start has been moved to Tuesday and Bryce Elder is starting tonight, instead. I’m just going to leave this here when it comes to Elder.