Braves set to start huge roadtrip in Minnesota against the Twins

It’s time for the Atlanta Braves to visit The Land of 10,000 Lakes for the first time since 2019, as they’re set to start up a three-game series with the Minnesota Twins starting tonight. Just like the Braves, the Twins are right in the thick of things when it comes to the Postseason race as they’re currently holding on to third place in the AL Wild Card standings and they’re sitting 4.5 games ahead of the Red Sox for that final Wild Card spot.

With that being said, the Twins have their eyes on something bigger than that, as they’re also in a serious fight to retain their AL Central title. Right now, they’re three games behind the Guardians for the lead in the Central and are tied at 72-58 with the Royals. With that being said, they’ve hit a tiny bit of a bump in the road after they dropped a series on the road against the Padres and then came home and took a disappointing series loss to the mediocre Cardinals. Needless to say, they’re heading into this series with the Braves looking to bounce back and get their pursuit of the divisional title back on track.

This figures to be a big-time test for Atlanta’s pitching staff, as the Twins have consistently been one of the best-hitting teams in all of baseball this season. For the year, Minnesota has collectively hit .253/.323/.430 with a team wOBA of .326 and a team wRC+ of 113. That team wRC+ mark is good for second-best in the American League and fourth-best in all of baseball. They’ve also been getting it done this month, as their team hitting numbers here in the month of August have remained remarkably consistent to what they’ve been doing for the entire season. The fact that they’ve been doing this with Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton both on the IL recently has been impressive, as guys like Matt Wallner, Christian Vázquez and Ryan Jeffers have been stepping up in their absence.

Their pitching has also been solid recently as well, which makes it a bit confounding that outside of starting August in the midst of a five-game winning streak, they haven’t been able to really take off. The best they’ve been able to do since early-August is rack up a three-game winning streak but they’ve also suffered a three-game losing streak this week. While that might be good for their overall Playoff Odds (which are at 90 percent), it’s not great for their odds of winning the division (25 percent) so they’ll need to step it up if they want to make a run at defending their divisional title.

Monday, August 26, 7:40 p.m. ET (Bally Sports South)

Max Fried (22 GS, 128.2 IP, 22.3 K%, 8.6 BB%, 3.57 ERA, 3.50 FIP)

It’s been a season of peaks and valleys for Max Fried and hopefully he’ll be sticking around at the peak for a while. He pitched seven strong innings in his last time out and only gave up two runs as the Braves eventually pulled off a big win over the Phillies. Fried will be going into this game actually having some experience pitching at Target Field, as he struck out 10 batters and gave up three runs (none earned) over 5.1 IP all the way back in 2019. It feels weird to dwell on something that happened pre-pandemic so I’ll bring it back to the future and say that Fried hasn’t had consecutive starts where he’s given up two runs or less since June. Hopefully we’ll see it happen in Game 1 of this series.

Bailey Ober (24 GS, 140 IP, 26.3 K%, 6.2 BB%, 3.54 ERA, 3.68 FIP)

Ober is coming into this game off the heels of two starts where one start bounced his way and the other didn’t. In Texas he went six and gave up seven hits but only gave up two runs in what turned out to be a close 3-2 win for the Twins. In his most recent start in San Diego, Ober only gave up four hits and struck out five but one of those hits was a blooper and then it was followed up by a two-run homer from Manny Machado in order to end his night without a decision. With that being said, Ober has been incredibly solid for the Twins this season and when you consider that three runs has been the most runs he’s given up in any start since June 16 then it becomes clear that Atlanta’s probably going to be in for some tough sledding.

Tuesday, August 27, 7:40 p.m. ET (Bally Sports South)

Spencer Schwellenbach (14 GS, 82.1 IP, 28.2 K%, 4.5 BB%, 3.94 ERA, 3.20 FIP)

I’m going to post a couple of screenshots from Baseball Savant. As you can imagine, one of these is going to be Spencer Schwellenbach. What I want you to do is to just take a quick moment to guess which guy is which. Let’s start with Player A:

baseballsavant.mlb.com

Here’s Player B:

baseballsavant.mlb.com

Did you actually humor me and take a guess? Well, even if you just scrolled to see what the answer is, then yeah: Player A is Paul Skenes and Player B is Spencer Schwellenbach. Skenes has been indisputably excellent this season and is likely going to be the runaway winner of the NL Rookie of the Year award but the conversation would be a lot more interesting had Schwellenbach come up a little earlier. As far as this series goes, it really wouldn’t be shocking at all if Schwellenbach continued to push in the right direction in what’s been a fantastic rookie season for him.

Simeon Woods Richardson (22 GS, 112.1 IP, 21.2 K%, 7.5 BB%, 3.69 ERA, 3.93 FIP)

The man with a last name that makes Fanatics’ letter printers shudder in fear has been pretty good for the Twins this season if we’re talking about just raw pitching. He’s got plus stuff with all of his pitches and his slider in particular is very good at missing bats. His problem is that sometimes he’ll just have a tough time actually getting the outs, which has resulted in the type of run he had in late July where he was boom (six shutout innings against the Phillies) or bust (six runs given up over 3.1 innings against the Mets).

Wednesday, August 28, 7:40 p.m. ET (Bally Sports South, MLB Network)

Chris Sale (24 GS, 147.2 IP, 32.7 K%, 5.7 BB%, 2.62 ERA, 2.08 FIP)

You know things are going well when giving up two runs over seven innings is considered to be a “frustrating” start. Yet that was the case for Chris Sale in his last outing. He certainly didn’t look at his best and Jorge Soler’s rough defense helped to contribute to those two runs allowed but at the same time, if that’s considered a “rough” start for Sale then I can’t wait to see what a good one looks like. Hopefully we’ll see it on Wednesday to close out the series on a high note.

David Festa (7 GS, 36.1 IP, 28.0 K%, 7.0 BB%, 5.20 ERA, 4.25 FIP)

Festa came up on June 27, got rocked for 10 innings across two starts and then returned on July 24 and has been perfectly fine since then. He even pitched five shutout innings with nine strikeouts and only two hits allowed against the Cubs back on August 5. Five innings has been the longest that he’s gone in any of his seven big league starts so far in his career and if the Braves can get something going against him then maybe that’ll be his limit in this start as well. H’ell definitely have a tough task when it comes to dueling with Chris Sale, however.