All ten-game road trips will come with their struggles, but any trip to the West Coast seems to supply its own brand of difficulty for the Braves. The team has struggled mightily out West for the past several years, so the remaining seven games on this trip carry a sense of impending doom.
The good news is, the Braves have already started this road trip on the right foot, sweeping the lowly Marlins in Miami and pulling to within 1½ games of first place in the NL East. Now, the Western half of the trip begins, and the Braves will see if they can reverse their ill-fated trend.
Thanks to some timely hitting by Ender Inciarte and some heroic baserunning by Max Fried (of all the phrases I expected to type coming into this season, that was certainly not one of them), the Braves are now winners of 5 of their last 7, and will head to Los Angeles to face a 22-14 Dodgers team that sits in first place in the NL West. The Dodgers are one game ahead of the Arizona Diamondbacks, who the Braves will face next on this road trip.
This will be the first time the Braves have visited Chavez Ravine since last October, when L.A. took the first two games of the NLDS on their way to a series win.
After getting ejected for attempting (and failing) to start what would have been an ill-advised kerfuffle against the Marlins on Friday night, Kevin Gausman will take the ball in Game 1 of the series. Gausman’s 28th pitch on Friday night went behind Marlins starter Jose Ureña, who beaned Ronald Acuña last August in the battle of the tildes. Accordingly, home plate umpire Jeff Nelson took umbrage at Gausman’s pitiful foray into headhunting and tossed him, thus preserving his pitch count and making him eligible to throw tonight - hopefully not directly at anyone. On the season, Gausman carries a 1-2 record with a 4.83 ERA | 4.19 FIP.
Speaking of pitchers who have history with Acuña, the Dodgers will give the ball to Walker Buehler this evening. As you may recall, it was Buehler that allowed Acuña’s grand slam in Game 3 last year’s NLDS, further cementing Acuña’s must-see-TV reputation and thus causing SunTrust Park to tremble as though it was mid-earthquake. So far in 2019, Buehler is 3-0 with a 5.22 ERA, but his 3.46 FIP indicates he has been the victim of some bad luck so far. His strikeouts are down after his strong 2018 rookie campaign, so maybe the contact-happy Braves can get to him early.
The types of wins the Braves have been tallying recently have been good momentum builders, even if they have been against the Marlins. In particular, Ozzie Albies’ Saturday night grand slam and Fried’s warp-speed tour around the bases on Sunday are the types of moments that can pull complacent teams out of the doldrums. This is the type of momentum the Braves will need against their upcoming foes, who are mere percentage points behind the Chicago Cubs as the National League’s best team.
Game Info
Game Date/Time: Monday, May 6, 10:10 p.m. ET
Location: Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles, California
TV: Fox Sports Southeast
Streaming: MLB.tv
Radio: 680 AM/93.7 FM The Fan, Rock 100.5, Braves Radio Network
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