The Braves will play in two not-technically-MLB-level parks this year, and this series features one of them.
We don’t know yet exactly what the 2025 season will be remembered for, but one possibility is that it features official, run-of-the-mill MLB games in not just one park not originally built to host such games, but two. There’s whatever is going on with the Athletics, and then there’s the Tampa Bay Rays situation, which the Atlanta Braves will play party to this weekend: due to hurricane-related damages, the Braves will play their next three games at George M. Steinbrenner Field.
Due to a quirk of scheduling, not only are the Rays in a home-away-from-home (their Spring Training ballpark, and the home of Florida State League affiliate, the Tampa Tarpons, which I typed very carefully…), but they actually start their season with 19 of 22 games there. The Braves will be the fourth visitor to Steinbrenner Field in regulation this season: the Rays took their opening series against the Rockies, then also bested the Pirates, and after a sweep on the road at the hands of the Rangers, lost two of three to the Angels there earlier this week.
We don’t have a lot of data on how the park plays, and the automated data we do have doesn’t really do park factors the right way, but if we are comfortable with potentially being misled by small samples and rudimentary calculus, then it looks like Steinbrenner Field plays like a solid pitcher’s park, dampening results on contact to a decent degree. I’ve also seen some stuff suggesting that some of the increased drag readings for the baseball overall are driven in part by the specific windy conditions at the park, but I don’t know enough about how the drag data are put together to know whether that’s verifiable or not. In any case, it’s gonna be an adventure, and not just because the Braves will be starting the opener of this series on the same day that they technically concluded their last game.
Oh, I guess we should also probably talk about the Rays too, yeah? At 5-7, the Rays are fourth in the AL East. They’re projected to finish right around .500, and have playoff odds of around 30 percent. To date, they have a teamwide 108 wRC+ and are 13th in position player value, but have struggled with giving up homers a bit, such that their team pitching line is a this-would-be-weird-if-it-wasn’t-mid-April 100 ERA-, 109 FIP-, and 87 xFIP-. You could say something about how the Braves struggling to hit homers might make it a challenge for them to victimize the Rays in the same way other teams have so far, but it’s three games at a weird park and anything might happen.
A bunch of Rays are off to blazing starts: Jonathan Aranda, Jonny DeLuca, and Kameron Misner all have 200+ wRC+s; Aranda, Misner, and Brandon Lowe have .400+ xwOBAs as well. On the flip side, Yandy Diaz and their catching unit are off to horrible starts. Pitching-wise, well, it’s the Rays: Drew Rasmussen and Shane Baz are killing it in the rotation so far, while Pete Fairbanks and Manuel Rodriguez have been great in relief, but again, it’s mid-April.
Friday, April 11, 7:05 p.m. EDT (FanDuel Sports South/Southeast)
RHP Bryce Elder (1 GS, 4 IP, 170 ERA-, 245 FIP-, 121 xFIP-)
Bryce Elder will presumably be booted from a permanent rotation spot once Spencer Strider returns to the major league roster, but he’s here and going to make another start in the series opener. Elder got blasted by the Dodgers in his season debut, giving up two homers in four frames. Is it surprising that he had fewer walks than strikeouts in the game? I’ll leave that up to you to decide.
Elder had a super-horrible start against the Rays during the decline phase of his 2023 season, lasting just ten outs with an absurdly bad 0/4 K/BB ratio and two homers allowed. We don’t want to see that again, no thanks.
RHP Taj Bradley (2 GS, 11 IP, 131 ERA-, 110 FIP-, 80 xFIP-)
Poor Taj Bradley — he underperformed his league average starter-y peripherals in 2023-2024, and guess what? It’s happening again, to an even more extreme degree in 2025. Now, this is mostly the result of his last start, where he was charged with four runs on a 7/4 K/BB ratio with two homers allowed, but still. Maybe fortune will smile on Bradley this time around, but for the sake of the Braves and their quest to get back to where they should’ve been all along, I hope not.
The Braves also faced Bradley back in 2023, where he was on the wrong end of both that historic offensive unit, and a Spencer Strider start. He lasted five innings, had a 4/2 K/BB ratio with a homer allowed (three-run variety, by Sean Murphy), and the Braves ended up with a 6-1 win.
Saturday, April 12, 4:10 p.m. EDT (FanDuel Sports South/Southeast)
RHP AJ Smith-Shawver (2 GS, 8 2⁄3 IP, 131 ERA-, 110 FIP-, 95 xFIP-)
Smith-Shawver remains a work in progress, but the good news is that his peripherals have been fine — though his actual runs tally and especially his (lack of) contact management have been a bummer. Oh, and the walks. Yeah, a work in progress. Smith-Shawver had a 4/3 K/BB ratio against the Padres in his season debut, and then a 6/3 K/BB ratio with a homer allowed against the Marlins.
RHP Drew Rasmussen (2 GS, 10 IP, 24 ERA-, 44 FIP-, 84 xFIP-)
Rasmussen has always been good when healthy — he has a career 73/74/83 line in 320 career innings, but it’s taken him parts of five seasons to get that many innings logged, and he’s completed just 83 innings from 2023-onward. Still, he’s been great again this year, with a couple of five-inning efforts that have featured four strikeouts each, and just one walk; he’s yet to give up a longball. Rasmussen dominated the Braves back in 2021 in two separate relief appearances, but hasn’t faced them as a starter to date.
Sunday, April 13, 1:40 p.m. EDT (FanDuel Sports South/Southeast)
LHP Chris Sale (3 GS, 14 2⁄3 IP, 170 ERA-, 79 FIP-, 80 xFIP-)
Chris Sale has a pretty dumb line at this point, as he’s had a .400+ BABIP-against in two of his starts, and hasn’t had anything resembling a normal strand rate in any of them. Meanwhile, his K/BB ratio is 17/1. There have been some velocity concerns, too, but the actual issue has been “the universe now apparently hates Chris Sale” and not actually anything related to his pitching. Maybe things will start to even out at this point. Sale had a ho-hum, standard Cy Young winner fare outing against the Rays last year, with a 7/2 K/BB ratio in seven innings as the Braves cruised to an easy victory.
RHP Shane Baz (2 GS, 13 IP, 37 ERA-, 64 FIP-, 74 xFIP-)
Like Rasmussen, Baz also hasn’t been on the field very consistently. He also hasn’t been as good, but still quite fine, with a career 83/101/96 line in 25 career starts spanning parts of four seasons. He’s off to a much better start this year, although a lot of that was driven by an evisceration of the Pirates (10/0 K/BB ratio in six shutout innings). His follow-up start was a lot less interesting, with a 6/4 K/BB ratio and a homer allowed in seven frames against the Angels, but the Braves could have their hands full with him nonetheless.