GameThread, 5/2/2022: Braves @ Mets

The Braves and Mets meet for the first time this season as they begin a four-game set at Citi Field. The Braves will throw Max Fried against Chris Bassitt today and will follow with the rest of the top of their rotation over the next two days, including a doubleheader on Tuesday. Max Scherzer, who pitched for New York yesterday, will not appear in this series.

After two days of DH duty which saw more dreadful play by the Atlanta outfield, Ronald Acuña Jr. returns to right field, which shunts Travis Demeritte into left and Marcell Ozuna into the DH spot. The Braves have no choice but to stack a bunch of righties together at the bottom of the order, but actually have a higher righty-on-righty wRC+ (110) than their season mark (103) so it may not be a huge deal. (They also have the fourth-highest righty-on-righty xwOBA at .369, better than their .359 season xwOBA mark.)

This is the same lineup and arrangement that brought the Braves their first series win with a 5-1 topping of the Cubs last Thursday. The Braves used the version where Acuña started at DH but the same nine in the same order on Saturday, when they dropped a 3-1 decision in Texas.

There are a lot of new faces for this Mets team, including Mark Canha, Eduardo Escobar, and Starling Marte, along with Bassitt, who gets the start.

Mark Canha (.367 wOBA, .318 xwOBA, welcome to the Mets) will hit second for the first time all season, flipping with Starling Marte (.278 wOBA, .296 xwOBA). Jeff McNeil has a 181 wRC+ with a massive xwOBA outperformance; J.D. Davis has a .464 xwOBA in 32 PAs. Given that the recently-DFAed Robinson Cano started a bunch in April, this is a novel arrangement for the Mets, but probably one we’ll see more often going forward.

Hopefully the Braves win.