Game Preview: Braves vs Mets

The Mets lost a tough game last night 3-2 as they fell to 1-3 on the season against the Braves. The Braves pushed Sean Newcomb back in the rotation a day, called up a kid making his major league debut against the Mets (and stop me if you’ve heard this one before, except you can’t because you’re reading this and this isn’t a conversation yet, see the game thread below for that) and baffled the Mets line up. The hero of the night for the Mets would be Cespedes who got three hits including a homer.

The Mets look to Jacob deGrom to make it all better. He’s 3-0 on the season over 6 starts and 39.1 innings with a 2.06 ERA, 2.33 FIP, 1.042 WHIP and 188 ERA+. In his last two starts he has thrown 14.1 innings of scoreless baseball allowing 9 hits and 5 walks while striking out 18. One of those starts was against the Braves where he held them to 4 hits over 7.0 innings while striking them out 10 times. The Braves have the following numbers against deGrom:

Freeman 8-31, 2 2B, 2 HR, 2 BB, 9 K
Markakis 7-25, HR, BB
Inciarte 5-21, 2B, 2 BB, 5 K
Flowers 3-7
Swanson 2-6, 3 BB, 3 K
Albies 0-5, BB
Suzuki 0-5

It was misleading earlier to say that Sean Newcomb was pushed back a day and that’s why Mike Soroka got the start yesterday. The Braves wanted to give Teheran an extra day of rest for his back and the best solution for the Braves right now was to have Soroka pitch, and his time to do so was yesterday, so Sean Newcomb got pushed back as well (not that he would complain about an extra day of rest).

In 5 starts this season Sean has pitched 27.2 innings with a 4.23 ERA, 3.65 FIP, 1.482 WHIP and 91 ERA+. He is coming off his second worst start of the season where he allowed 4 ER over 6.0 innings vs the Reds from 5 hits and 3 walks. In his one start against the Mets this year he allowed 3 runs, 2 earned over 6.0 innings while walking 3 and striking out 5. The Mets have the following numbers against Sean: