Kyle Wright looks to bounce back for Braves, both in general and against Red Sox

Following an exciting win in extra innings last night, the Braves are now looking to depart Boston with a two-game sweep of the Red Sox as they are set to do baseball battle tonight at Fenway Park.

The obvious big news today is that Vaughn Grissom has been called up to The Show following Orlando Arcia’s hamstring injury. It’s a bit of a shock when you consider that he’s had even less experience at the Double-A level than Michael Harris II did but similar to Harris, the Braves are showing that if they think a player is ready, they’ll call them up whenever they want. Clearly they feel that Grissom is ready to contribute to the big league squad and it’ll be interesting to see if this is the beginning of a cup of coffee for Grissom or if this is a long stint for the newest Braves rookie.

A bit buried in the excitement of Vaughn Grissom’s call-up is the activation of Kirby Yates. We’ve mentioned countless times on this blog that the eventual return of Yates was something to look forward to, as he was absolutely lights-out during the last full season that he pitched in 2019. Unfortunately, he’s only thrown 4.1 innings since that crazy season where he had a 1.19 ERA and a 1.30 FIP that contributed to him contributing 3.4 fWAR as a reliever. If Yates can return and reach a level that’s anywhere near where he was in 2019, this will be a huge addition to what is already a very good bullpen. Kirby Yates has traveled a long, long road to return to the bigs and hopefully his return will be a successful one.

While there’s no guarantees that either Grissom or Yates will be playing tonight, we do know that Kyle Wright will be starting again. Like most of the rotation, he’s looking for a bounce-back performance after getting battered by the Mets last weekend. While Wright hadn’t been spectacular in the handful of starts that he made before the calamitous outing in New York, he was steady and solid and doing his part to keep the Braves right in the game in each of those starts.

Kyle Wright will also be looking for redemption against the Red Sox in particular. Wright faced Boston back on May 10 in Cobb County and all it took was one bad inning for things to go off the rails. Wright pitched a 1-2-3 first inning against Boston and then gave up six runs in the second. Not to get super reductive here, but let’s just hope Kyle Wright can get through the second inning against the Red Sox and then we’ll go from there.

Meanwhile, Nick Pivetta will be making his first start against the Braves since early on in the 2021 season. That didn’t particularly go super well for Pivetta — while he struck out nine batters, he gave up four runs over six inning and was saved by his offense going off on Drew Smyly in that one. His most recent two starts haven’t been particularly great, either — Pivetta gave up four runs in five innings against the Brewers and then followed that up with three runs in another five innings against the Royals. If the Braves pick up where they left off from last night in terms of offense, then this could be another night where Pivetta only ends up with a few innings under his belt. He hasn’t made it into the seventh inning since June and hopefully we don’t see it happen for him in this particular game.

Atlanta’s lineup responded last night big-time in order to snap the team’s first three-game losing streak of the season. Now that that’s behind them, this would be a good time to try to start up a winning streak in response to that three-game skid. There’s a lot of excitement surrounding tonight’s game due to the call-ups and hopefully the team lives up to the expectations with another good performance on the field tonight.

Game Info

Game Date/Time: Wednesday, August 10, 7:10 p.m. ET

Location: Fenway Park, Boston, Massachusetts

TV: Bally Sports South

Streaming: MLB.tv

Radio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan