The Atlanta Braves are coming off a disappointing series against the Arizona Diamondbacks and will stay out west to face the Angels. Chris Sale will be taking the mound facing off against José Soriano, who has firmly cemented himself as the best pitcher in the Angels’ rotation.
Soriano has started the season of in incredible fashion. He has made two starts and pitched a total of 12.0 innings and has only given up four hits. He has yet to give up a single earned run this season. His only blemish is that he has walked four hitters to striking out eleven. Hitters so far have a .105 average against him, and he is inducing ground outs at twice the rate of outs in the air.
With Soriano spending his entire career so far with the Angels, the players on the Braves’ roster have not seen him much. Jonah Heim has twelve at-bats against him, but those were not in a Braves uniform. Outside of Heim, no other player on the roster has seen Soriano more than six at-bats.
Even though Heim has seen him the most, it has not helped. He has a .083 average in his limited action. Acuña, Albies, Farmer, and Harris are all hitless against Soriano, although it is hard to make any type of conclusion after only seeing him a few times.
The player with the most success against Soriano is Matt Olson with a .333 average and 1.000 OPS, but that is in only three at-bats. On paper the Braves’ offense does not have an upper hand in this matchup. The only area that sticks out in terms of hope for a fun night offensively is that there is a large gap in Soriano’s wOBA against him versus his xwOBA. His wOBA against of .175 is in the best 9.0 percent in MLB, but his xwOBA against is much higher at .266. An xwOBA against of .266 is still very good. For reference the league average over the past four seasons is .315.
Chris Sale is taking the mound with a pristine ERA of 0.75 after two starts and 12.0 innings pitched. His strikeout rate so far this season of 21.4 percent is well below his career average of 32.3, and his walk rate of 7.1 percent is the highest of his career, so both of those are concerning.
There is a bright spot to his metrics outside of the obvious ERA. He is inducing ground balls at a 48.3 percent clip. That number is 12.0 percent better than league average and is well above his career rate of 42.3 percent. We also need to consider that in his last game he was battling flu symptoms. If last game he was actually feeling poor and he is inducing a ton of grounders, it is a good sign of things to come this evening.
Most players on the Angels have faced Sale before, but only two have faced him fourteen times or more. 2021 World Series hero Jorge Soler has fourteen at-bats against Sale but has struggled with a .143 average and .536 OPS. Mike Trout has twenty at-bats with a HR, .300 average, and .940 OPS. However, Trout is day-to-day, so we don’t know for sure if he will play or not.
We can hope that the Braves offense can kick it into gear again tonight, but Soriano has been on fire. It looks like we may be in store for a fun night filled with great pitching.
First pitch is at 9:38 PM EDT
Game Info
Game Time: Monday, April 6th, 9:38 pm EDT
Location: Angel Stadium, Anaheim, CA
Watch: BravesVision
Radio/Audio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan