It’s Max Fried Day in Atlanta as the Braves look to bounce back against the Nationals

After the Atlanta Braves fell into a deep hole against the Washington Nationals on their way to an 8-4 loss, Atlanta is now hoping Max Fried can help them get back to winning ways in the second game of this four-game series. against their divisional enemies from the national capital.

Considering how Charlie Morton’s day went yesterday, it must have been a big relief for everyone with the Braves to see that Max Fried’s day in the rotation was approaching the next day. Fried is coming off one of his best starts of the season, as he pitched his second complete game of the year while striking out nine Cubs batters and allowing two runs (only one earned) and three hits in the process. It wasn’t as stellar as the complete game shutout he threw in April against the Marlins, but Fried still has bragging rights as the only pitcher in baseball to throw more than one complete game this season.

The Nationals are surely hoping that two things can happen simultaneously tonight: one being that they can maintain the offensive performance they broke out with yesterday, which saw them rack up 15 hits, five of which were of the extra variety -base and one of them being a home run. They also hope Fried doesn’t take his stuff with him to the mound. When Fried has been good this season, it has been obvious and very quick to say that he has the goods for the day. When he was bad, it was rough and he even struggled to get through five innings. Although the good times have far outweighed the bad for Fried so far this season, the Braves definitely need Maximum Fried to show up at the ballpark tonight while Minimum Fried stays home.

Meanwhile, Washington will trust starting pitcher Jake Irvin to help lead them toward a guaranteed seeding of this four-game series. Irvin has been steady but not exactly spectacular so far for the Nats this season and his 94 ERA – and 90 FIP – seem to indicate he’s floating slightly above average as a pitcher here in 2024. Maybe The best indication of what Irvin is capable of as a starter came in late April when he faced the Dodgers in two consecutive starts.

The first start saw Irvin throw six shutout innings as the Nationals earned an impressive 2-0 victory at Chavez Ravine. Then it all came crashing down a week later in Washington, as the Dodgers got their revenge on Irvin and scored six runs while knocking him out of the game in the fifth inning. So while Irvin is perfectly capable of shutting down an offense as strong as Los Angeles’, he’s also capable of lighting up with these strong lineups. A more local example is his September performance last season against the Braves, as Atlanta lit him up for seven hits and five runs in just 2.2 innings of work. It’s been a while between now and last September, but hopefully what the Braves played against him back then will come to the forefront here in the final days of May.

Atlanta will clearly go into this game looking to set the record straight. While they haven’t exactly set the baseball world on fire lately, it’s clear that this is a team that can do a lot better than going 4-6 over a 10-game span given. The Braves are also generally pretty good at handling business within their own division, which is why I would expect a bounce-back performance tonight against their division foes. Max Fried is leaving and if he’s good, that might already be enough to put the Nationals behind the proverbial 8-ball. The lineup just needs to come to life a lot sooner and hopefully it will be a productive and winning night for our Braves.