The Braves look to get back into the win column and Max Fried looks to pick up where he left off in his last outing
After the Atlanta Braves fell into a deep hole against the Washington Nationals on their way to an 8-4 defeat, Atlanta will now be hoping that Max Fried can help them get back to their winning ways in the second game of this four-game tilt against their divisional foes from the nation’s capital.
Considering how Charlie Morton’s day went yesterday, it had to be a great relief for everybody who’s with the Braves to see that Max Fried’s day in the rotation was coming up the day after. Fried is coming off one of his best starts of the season, as he tossed his second complete game of the year while striking out nine Cubs batters and giving up two runs (only one earned) and three hits in the process. It wasn’t quite as sparkling as the complete game shutout that he threw back in April against the Marlins but Fried still has bragging rights as the only pitcher in baseball with more than one complete game thrown this season.
The Nationals will surely be hoping that two things can happen simultaneously tonight: One being that they can keep up the offensive performance that they broke out with yesterday, which saw them rack up 15 hits with five of them being of the extra-base variety and one of those being a home run. They’ll also be hoping that Fried doesn’t bring his stuff with him to the mound. When Fried has been good this season, it’s been obvious and very quick to tell that he had the goods for the day. When he’s been bad, it’s been rough and he’s struggled to even make it through five innings. While the good times have definitely outweighed the bad for Fried so far this season, the Braves are definitely in need of Maximum Fried to show up at the ballpark tonight while Minimum Fried stays at home.
Meanwhile, Washington will be placing their trust in starting pitcher Jake Irvin to help push them towards a guaranteed split of this four-game series. Irvin has been steady but not exactly spectacular so far for the Nats this season and his 94 ERA- and 90 FIP- seems to indicate that he’s been floating around being slightly above average as a pitcher here in 2024. Perhaps the best indication of what Irvin is capable of as a starter came during late-April when he faced off against the Dodgers in two straight starts.
The first start saw Irvin pitch six shutout innings as the Nationals picked up an impressive 2-0 win in Chavez Ravine. Then it all came tumbling down a week later in D.C., as the Dodgers got their revenge on Irvin and scored six runs while running him from the game in the fifth inning. So while Irvin is perfectly capable of shutting down such a strong offense like Los Angeles’, he’s also capable of getting lit up by those strong lineups as well. A more local example was his performance in September last season against the Braves, as Atlanta lit him up for seven hits and five runs over just 2.2 innings of work. It’s been a while between now and this past September but hopefully whatever the Braves had working against him back then will come back to the forefront here in the final days of May.
Atlanta will clearly be heading into this game looking to set the record straight. While they haven’t exactly been setting the baseball world on fire as of late, it’s clear that this is a team that can do a lot better than going 4-6 over any given 10-game span. The Braves are also usually pretty good about taking care of business within their own division, which is why I’d be expecting a bounce-back performance tonight against their divisional foes. Max Fried is going and if he’s good then that might be enough to put the Nationals behind the proverbial 8-ball already. The lineup just needs to come to life a lot sooner and hopefully this will be a productive and victorious night for our Braves.
Game Info
Game Date/Time: Tuesday, May 28, 7:20 P.M. ET
Location: Truist Park, Atlanta, Georgia
TV: Bally Sports South
Streaming: MLB.tv
Radio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan