Braves Preview

As I mentioned in my last post, the Phillies numbers have been quite the opposite of what we expected this season, with our hitters hitting and our pitchers struggling (according to the numbers, that is). The Braves have been having the opposite experience thus far. Their pitchers have been on, and their hitters have been underperforming somewhat.

Brian McCann has been great so far, hitting .423 in their first 7 games. He has yet to record an extra-base hit, but I'm sure we can count on several of them against the Phils this weekend. Is it just me, or does he seem to kill us every time we play them? He has eaten up Hamels and Blanton in the past, as well as Myers when he was around. Lucky for us, he will only possibly face 1 of those pitchers in the next 3 days.

Aside from McCann, though, the Braves have yet to get going. He is the only regular hitting over .250 other than Chipper Jones. And Chipper is probably only hitting .320 because he can never hear the umpire call him out, and then everyone feels bad for him because they don't make baseball uniforms in the form of cardigan sweaters and because it takes him so long to get to and from the stadium every day (Because he's a slow driver. These are jokes about his old age. Try to keep up here).

The pitching, though, has been much more impressive. Here's a look at our matchups.

Game 1: Cliff Lee (1-0, 3.86 ERA) vs. Tim Hudson (1-0, 1.29 ERA)
This should be quite the pitcher's duel. We all know how great Lee can be, and Hudson is capable of being right up there with him. The advantage we have is Ryan Howard. I guess he's been all right so far this season (.480, 2 HR, 8 RBI), and he has very good career numbers against Hudson (.341, 6 HR, 12 RBI in 41 AB). I think we end up taking this game something like 4-1 on a couple Howard home runs.

Game 2: Roy Oswalt (1-0, 3.00 ERA) vs. Brandon Beachy (0-0, 1.50 ERA)
Beachy is making his 5th career start and his 3rd against the Phillies. Although he was fine against us last season, the Phillies generally don't treat pitchers well that they've seen a bunch of times unless they are elite. An elite pitcher would not be named Beachy. That's just dumb. Phils win 6-2

Game 3: Cole Hamels (0-1, 20.25 ERA) vs. Derek Lowe (1-1, 0.77 ERA)
This game all comes down to whether or not Derek Lowe's sinker is working for him, or if the Braves can be smart about getting him out of the game before he goes too far. He generally dominates us for the first 6-7 innings, but we can usually get to him after that as his pitch count increases and his sinker starts to get elevated (at least that's what analysts say happens to it, I know nothing about pitches to be honest). I don't think Hamels struggles in the same way in this game, and it should be a pretty good pitcher's duel again. Unfortunately, I think it's too tough to sweep the Braves in Atlanta. Prediction: 4-3 loss

Something I love about this series is that the Braves have avoided Roy Halladay, yet still managed to face 3 potential Cy Young winners. And we can look forward to this all season. I am still so excited about our starting rotation. Every series this season, teams will only get possibly 1 game off from those 4 guys. That means we should be at an advantage to win every series this season. Every. Single. Series. Say whaaaaattt??!!