Murphy sits, Rosario starts in left, Ozuna at DH as Braves open set with Cardinals

Another day, another instance of... Sean Murphy not starting? Instead, Marcell Ozuna gets the start at DH, Eddie Rosario starts in left field, and Travis d’Arnaud gets both backstop duties and the cleanup spot.

Ozzie Albies will hit somewhere other than cleanup for the first time this season, and will hit sixth for the first time since June 10 last year. d’Arnaud hit cleanup 12 times last year.

In this lineup, Acuña, Riley, Albies, Rosario, and Arcia each have a single PA against Jake Woodford; Rosario singled and everyone else made an easy out, with both Albies and Arcia striking out.

Meanwhile, for the Cardinals...

This isn’t the same lineup the Braves have used at any point so far this season, but it attempts to do the same thing of rotating a bunch of quality pieces. Tyler O’Neill gets his third start of the year after sitting on Sunday, while the top four are unchanged from the last two games.

Six guys in this lineup have faced Morton, and some have faced him a fair bit. Only Walker and Burleson haven’t, which makes sense because they’re rookies. Goldschmidt has a .307 xwOBA and .340 wOBA against Morton in 25 PAs; Arenado has a .324 xwOBA but a .372 wOBA, and the only homer in this lineup. Collectively, though, this group has a career .270ish wOBA and xwOBA against Morton in 69 PAs, which is way too small a number across that many players to matter at all in terms of outlook, especially considering that only about half of those PAs even occurred in the last three years.