Well, this has certainly been an eventful series so far! The Atlanta Braves bounced back on Tuesday evening from what was absolutely their worst loss of the season on Monday night and now they’ll surely like their chances now that Chris Sale is starting tonight’s game against the Miami Marlins.
Chris Sale and Bryce Elder (!) have been the two most consistent hurlers in Atlanta’s rotation so far this season, so it’s always good news whenever either of thee two get the ball. With that being said, Sale’s going to need some help — he’s pitched well enough to win in both of his past two starts against the Dodgers and Cubs but in those series wins, those wound up being the two losses for the Braves as they scored a grand total of one (1) run in both of those games. I’m hoping that this won’t be the start of an unfortunate (yet somewhat familiar) trend where a great pitcher gets barely any run support so hopefully we’ll see the Braves do some damage against Janson Junk and the rest of Miami’s pitching staff.
The Braves might be catching Janson Junk at a good time, though. Junk has given u[ at least three runs in four of his nine starts so far and two of those starts were his most recent ones. He got tagged for four runs over six innings against the Nationals on May 9 and then he got absolutely tagged for seven runs over 5.2 innings by the Rays five days ago. If the Braves can avoid falling into a ground ball vortex against Junk then they could do some work in this game if he continues to stay in the form that he’s currently in.
What is a bit concerning is how the previous encounters between these two teams went for both pitchers. Janson Junk last saw the Braves in June of last season and he went five innings and only gave up one run in a game that Miami ended up winning comfortably. Meanwhile, Chris Sale’s last start against Miami went very poorly as it was back in that early period of April 2024 where we were wondering if this was “it” for Sale. The good news is that Sale has been fantastic ever since that bump in the road early on and a lot can change between now and a year ago — much less two years.
Because of that time discrepancy, a lot of Miami’s hitters have little-to-no experience against Sale and hopefully that’ll lend itself to Sale’s advantage during this particular contest. The same could be said about Junk and the Braves, though. Mike Yastrzemski has the most experience against Junk — a grand total of five ABs and an inauspicious slash line of zeroes across the board. Ronald Acuña Jr. has two hits in three previous plate appearances against Junk because of course Ronald Acuña Jr. has a good record against [insert any Marlins pitcher that you, the reader, would like here].
With the way this series has gone so far, it’s fair to assume that anything can happen in this game. We could see the Braves absolutely tear into Janson Junk and pick up where they left off during the latter stages of yesterday’s game. We could also see Otto Lopez continue to make things very tough on the Braves during this series and we could have another nervy evening on our hands. Either way, it would be nice to see the Braves win this one so that they don’t have to go into tomorrow’s series finale having to salvage a split. Let’s see what happens, y’all.
Game Date/Time: Wednesday, May 20, 6:40 p.m. ET
Location: loanDepot Park, Miami, FL
Radio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan, La Mejor 1600/1460/1130 AM
