Four of the five NL West teams have gotten off to great starts so far. Atlanta will face another one of those four in Arizona.
The Atlanta Braves are showing tangible signs of life. They just went 5-1 on a six-game homestand. The offense is starting to come to life. Bryce Elder made a good start. While the Braves are still floating around under .500, they at least look better than they did when they made that ill-fated trip out West to see the Dodgers and the Padres in order to start the season.
Now, we get to see just how much of those improvements were real and how much were just against softer competition in the form of the Cardinals and Twins, as the Braves will once again go back into the pressure cooker that is the April 2025 NL West. Atlanta will be making their annual trip to Arizona to take on a pretty tough-looking Diamondbacks team.
As you’ll see below, Arizona’s pitching staff has been pretty average to start the season so far. With that being said, all you need is “average” when the lineup has been raking like it has been for Arizona so far this season. The Diamondbacks will be entering into this series with a team wRC+ of 114, which is tied for fifth in all of baseball. A lot of this as to do with Corbin Carroll having a fantastic start to the season. Aaron Judge is currently the MLB leader in fWAR at 2.5 and that’s because Judge is currently hitting at a Bondsian level and that’s the only thing preventing Carroll from leading baseball in fWAR at 2.0 on the season so far.
Carroll is leading baseball in home runs (9), he’s second-place in Isolated Power (.349), he’s top-five in RBIs (23) and wOBA (.452) and he’s top-10 in wRC+ (188). He also has five stolen bases on top of all that. Simply put, Carroll has been on a tear and has been getting it done for Arizona in all facets of the game. If the Braves are going to come out of Arizona with anything, limiting Carroll will be the key.
The bad news is that Carroll isn’t the only one raking for Arizona at the moment. Pavin Smith has been on a tear, Josh Naylor has been formidable at the plate, Geraldo Perdomo has been an all-around threat, and they’ve also had guys like Alek Thomas and Tim Tawa come through for them when needed. The Diamondbacks have come up with a lineup where it’s pretty tough to figure out where you’ll get the consistent outs at. Needless to say, Atlanta’s pitching staff will have their hands full this weekend while dealing with this crew.
Friday, April 25, 9:40 p.m. ET (FanDuel Sports South/Southeast, MLB Network)
LHP Chris Sale (5 GS, 23.1 IP, 29.1 K%, 6.4 BB%, 6.17 ERA, 152 ERA-, 3.79 FIP, 99 FIP-, 0.3 fWAR)
We keep on hearing it after each start: Chris Sale is frustrated. He has good reason to be frustrated, too. Sale’s season so far seems like a good example of how sometimes good process doesn’t guarantee good results. However, his start against Minnesota appeared to be the closest that he’s come to the process matching the results — he only gave up two runs but he was still unable to get past the fifth inning. He has yet to do so in any of the five starts that he’s made so far and he’s going to have to pull out a vintage performance if he’s going to do it against this Diamondbacks lineup.
The Diamondbacks themselves didn’t exactly roll over for Sale last season, either. Sale made two starts against Arizona last season and both of them were pretty similar: He went 5.1 innings in both starts, he gave up two runs in both starts, and he struck out plenty of batters while keeping walks at a minimum. At this point, both Sale and the Braves would gladly take a performance that looked similar to what he did against Arizona in 2024.
RHP Zac Gallen (5 GS, 27.1 IP, 23.8 K%, 10.7 BB%, 5.60 ERA, 137 ERA-, 4.81 FIP, 126 FIP-, 0.0 fWAR)
Zac Gallen has had a boom-or-bust season so far. His best start of the year (by far) came on April 2 in the Bronx, which is when he made it into the seventh inning with no runs allowed and 13 strikeouts — seemingly ending the whole “torpedo bat” craze in the process. He also has a six innings-and-two-runs-allowed start against the Brewers back on April 13. Other than that, he’s gotten knocked around a bit. The Cubs got to him twice (once for four runs over four innings in Arizona and then six runs over six innings at Wrigley) and he was very underwhelming against the Orioles on April 7.
The Braves also have had a decent amount of success against him in the recent past, though those results may be a bit deceptive. Across 2023 and 2024, Gallen’s biggest tormentors in Braves uniforms were Eddie Rosario and Adam Duvall, both of whom are gone. With that being said, Austin RIley and Matt Olson have both homered off of Gallen, so hopefully we’ll see a repeat of that in the future.
Saturday, April 26, 8:10 p.m. ET (FanDuel Sports South/Southeast)
RHP Grant Holmes (4 GS, 22.1 IP, 23.7 K%, 15.1 BB%, 3.22 ERA, 80 ERA-, 4.23 FIP, 110 FIP-, 0.1 fWAR)
It appears that Grant Holmes is starting to get into a groove himself after making two straight strong starts. He reached seven strikeouts in a game for the fourth time in his career in his last time out while only giving up one run. Still, he had to deal with a lot of traffic as he gave up four hits and four walks while he was out there — and he’s walked at least four batters in three of his five starts so far this season. So while it’s still not all sunshine and lollipops for Holmes at the moment, he appears to be getting to a point where he can serve as a reliable member of this rotation and that’s something that Atlanta badly needs.
RHP Merrill Kelly (5 GS, 26.2 IP, 18.8% K%, 9.8 BB%, 4.73 ERA, 116 ERA-, 4.26 FIP, 112 FIP-, 0.2 fWAR)
Similarly to how Chris Paddack came to Atlanta trying to recover from an absolute dragging by the White Sox, Merrill Kelly is still recovering from getting torpedo’d by the Yankees the day after Zac Gallen shut them down — Kelly got bombed for nine runs over 3.2 innings. With that being said, he’s been pretty solid since then and has only given up two runs over his last 11.2 innings pitched over two starts.
What makes Kelly such an interesting pitcher is that similar to Spencer Schwellenbach, he’s got a ton of pitches in his arsenal. Unlike Schwellenbach who appears to be a RNG pittcher with the way he selects from his arsenal, Kelly appears to lean on the four-seamer and change-up for the most part. We’ll see if it’s enough to fool the Braves on Saturday night.
Sunday, April 27, 4:10 p.m. ET (FanDuel Sports South/Southeast)
RHP Spencer Schwellenbach (5 GS, 31.2 IP, 21.8 K%, 4.0 BB%, 2.56 ERA, 63 ERA-, 3.11 FIP, 82 FIP-, 0.6 fWAR)
Speaking of Schwellenbach, he’ll be going on Sunday afternoon and the obvious hope for the sophomore hurler is that he’ll be able to pick up where he left off earlier this week against the Cardinals. That’s when he went seven innings while only giving up three runs (two earned) with five strikeouts and, once again, zero walks. Schwellenbach will give up his fair share of his but it seems like he’d rather die before he’d walk someone, so there’s that.
This’ll be a fascinating contest since, with the way things have been going for this rotation so far, this’ll seemingly be Atlanta’s best shot at stopping Arizona’s lineup. It’ll also be interesting since this’ll be the first time that Schwellenbach has faced the Diamondbacks in his career. He’ll be doing so in the snake pit that is Chase Field and the hitter-friendly Park Factor that comes along with it. This’ll be a true test for Schwellenbach here in his second season.
RHP Brandon Pfaadt (5 GS, 29.2 IP, 20.0 K%, 4.3 BB%, 2.73 ERA, 67 ERA-, 4.37 FIP, 115 FIP-, 0.1 fWAR)
Just like Schwellenbach figures to be Arizona’s toughest test on the mound this weekend, Brandon Pfaadt might be the starter who will give Atlanta the most amount of fits during this series. Ever since he started the season with two starts where he gave up three and four runs in two separate six-run stints, Pfaadt has been incredibly tough to deal with since then. He’s made three starts since April 9 and he’s only given up two runs over 17.2 IP, with 14 strikeouts and just four walks. He’s definitely locked in at the moment and if he brings that form on Sunday then it might be a long day at the ballpark for Atlanta.
Again, we should probably anticipate that we’re not going to see a ton of walks on Sunday. Pfaadt is heading into this game in the 89th percentile when it comes to walk percentage and Schwellenbach is in the 91st percentile. If either of these pitchers are going to get knocked around, it’ll have to happen the old-fashioned way with the bats. We’ll see what happens but I’d anticipate a low-scoring affair on Sunday if everything holds up like it has for these two hurlers so far.