The Atlanta Braves are back from their quick road trip to Washington D.C., where they picked up a split against the Nationals. In order to keep pace with the Mets and the two wild card contenders from the NL West, they’ll have to find a way to trip up the current leaders of the NL West: The Los Angeles Dodgers.
We’ve got a very interesting pitching matchup for tonight’s game, as we’ll be seeing two rookies square off against each other. Atlanta’s rookie of choice for tonight is Spencer Schwellenbach, who will be looking to bounce back after having a bit of a rough go of it against the Blue Jays in his last time out. The good news is that outside of his first full month as a big league starter, Scwhellenbach has done a pretty good job at making sure that one bad start doesn’t turn into two.
With that being said, this figures to be a pretty stern test for Schwellenbach. The Dodgers are coming into this game with a collective wRC+ of 115, which is only one point behind the Yankees for the top spot in all of baseball and tied with the Diamondbacks for the NL lead. If Schwellenbach can keep this lineup quiet tonight then it’ll be a pretty big feather in his cap as far as his rookie season is concerned.
Meanwhile, the Braves are going to have deal with a rookie from Los Angeles as the Dodgers are going with Landon Knack for tonight’s game. Knack has been pressed into duty due to LA’s starting rotation having a bunch of injury woes here in 2024 and so far, he’s been performing exactly how you’d imagine a spot starter for the Dodgers would perform. That’s to say that he’s been going out there, making it into the fifth inning and sometimes through six and doing just enough to make sure that the Dodgers offense is still right in the thick of things.
Knack’s worst start came on July 4 when he gave up four runs in just 4.1 innings against the Diamondbacks but he’s been doing fine ever since then. He’s given up just four runs over his past 15 innings over three starts — including 16 strikeouts and just three walks. Just like Schwellenbach, just because Knack is a rookie doesn’t mean that this is going to be an easy day at the plate for the Braves. Basically, easy days for Atlanta at the plate have come few and far in between no matter who the opposing pitcher is. All we can do is hope that today is one of those days where the lineup wakes up and comes to play.
