Charlie Morton starts as Braves look for another series win

Texas Rangers v Atlanta Braves — Kevin D. Liles/Atlanta Braves/Getty Images

Atlanta will hope their elder statesman can hold the Guardians’ bats down again in game two as they seek the series win at home

In a big series between the teams with the top two records in baseball entering the series, the Braves took game one behind a strong outing from Chris Sale and some all-around offense. Atlanta will hope their elder statesman can hold the Guardians’ bats down again in game two as they seek the series win at home.

The young Tanner Bibee gets the ball for Cleveland as the former top prospect looks to get back to his strong rookie level in his sophomore year. Bibee makes his living on a strong slider and changeup that he pitches behind a pretty hittable mid-90s fastball with the occasional curve mixes in. The 25 year old righty has pretty average strikeout and walk rates and a below average ground ball rate. Mostly he just has seemed to do well at avoiding barrels but has largely been a pretty average pitcher so far in his major league career, but worse than that so far this season. Hopefully the Braves can continue his early season trend for this game.

Meanwhile Charlie has largely been himself this season, pitching at a solid but unspectacular level. His strikeout rate is currently the lowest that it has been for a season in almost a decade, although it is still quite early. That trend will be somewhat difficult to reverse against a team in Cleveland that had the lowest strikeout rate on offense in the league last season and is near the bottom again this year. Charlie’s walks are also up again from his career level, although a decent bit down from his number last season that was a career high outside of his rookie year. The Braves’ rotation has been incredible for the last four games, giving length and quality, so hopefully Charlie can continue that trend.

Ronald Acuna continues to get on base at a spectacular clip, but has not found his power stroke yet this season, similar to early last season. Hopefully he can start hitting some home runs and perhaps be joined by Matt Olson, who has been scuffling at the plate for a while now. Jarred Kelenic is also still waiting on his first home run of the season. It really is incredible that the Braves currently lead the league in position-player WAR and wRC+, despite a lack of power from Acuna and Kelenic, as well as struggles from Olson and Riley relative to their baselines and having missed meaningful time from Sean Murphy and Ozzie Albies.

Winning this series would be a further statement of the Braves’ elite talent level, taking down the other best team in MLB to start the season in Cleveland.