The Atlanta Braves beat the New York Mets 3-0 Monday afternoon to make their seventh straight postseason appearance.
The injury-riddled Braves completed an unexpected season with a dramatic finish, beating the Mets in their final game of the season to punch their ticket to this season’s playoff action.
Earlier in the day, the Braves lost the first game of their doubleheader against the Mets in a match that saw four lead changes. Mets starting shortstop Francisco Lindor hit a two-run homerun off of Braves relief pitcher Pierce Johnson in the ninth inning to give the Mets a lead they would not relinquish.
With the sudden news that projected National League Cy Young winner Chris Sale was scratched from the Braves’ second game of the doubleheader due to back spasms, it was rookie pitcher Grant Holmes who made the start, going four scoreless innings with seven strikeouts, one hit allowed and one walk issued.
Now the Braves see themselves as the fifth-seed in the National League and will go on the road for a best-of-three Wild Card series against the fourth-seeded San Diego Padres. The winner of this series will go on to play the top-seeded Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Division Series in a best-of-five game matchup.
With the news that Sale is “likely unavailable” for the Wild Card series, Braves manager Brian Snitker will have to make big decisions on the starting rotation for the series. Max Fried and Reynaldo Lopez will be the likely candidates to start game two and game three (if necessary) of the series, but recent starts from Spencer Schwellenbach and Charlie Morton will leave them unavailable for a game one start, due to insufficient rest. This could lead Snitker to call up a familiar arm from Triple-A with the likely candidates being Ian Anderson, AJ Smith-Shawver and Bryce Elder.
Padres manager Mike Shildt announced his team’s plan for the rotation on Monday during a team workout day in which he said to reporters that Michael King would start game one. Joe Musgrove will get the start for game two and if a third game is needed, Dylan Cease will get the start. Yu Darvish is expected to serve a role in the Padres’ bullpen for the series.
This is the first meeting between the Braves and Padres in the playoffs since the 1998 National League Championship Series, which the Braves lost in six games.
The Braves will be looking to reverse the outcome of that series, as well as their regular season matchups against the Padres this season, in which they lost the season series to San Diego four games to three.
The Braves will have to capitalize on the strengths that led them to the playoffs this season, if they want to win this series. With a league leading 3.49 team earned run average across the rotation and bullpen and the second least errors in the league, pitching and defense will have to be the Braves’ focus to offset their offensive woes this season.
The series will also show a prominent battle of the bullpen with the Braves bullpen ranking third best in the league in ERA rankings and the Padres bullpen ranking 11th. This will be significant following the Padres active trade deadline this season, in which they added three prominent relief pitchers to their bullpen. Meanwhile, the Braves will be without prominent set-up pitcher A.J. Minter for the playoffs.
The Braves series against the Padres will start Tuesday night at 8:38 PM at Petco Park in San Diego.