Series Preview: Seattle Mariners vs. Atlanta Braves

The Mariners stunk it up real bad at home against the Royals and now have to face one of baseball’s hottest teams in the Atlanta Braves. Should be fine, right?

Both of these teams are banged up pretty badly so we might as well do an injury roundup for both teams:

The Mariners will remain without Brendan Donovan for the series, although he’s set to begin a rehab assignment this week and will hopefully join the team this weekend in Chicago. Victor Robles is also nearing a return, but likely not for this series as he’s just started rehabbing in Tacoma. Cal Raleigh remains day-to-day with side tightness. The Mariners will also be missing setup man Matt Brash for a while longer as he deals with lat inflammation.

For Atlanta, they recently put Ronald Acuña Jr. on the 10-day IL with a hamstring strain. As obliques and lats stalk the Mariners, leg injuries seem to the the Braves’ běte noir; Michael Harris Jr. also has a balky quad and will likely be limited to DH duties during this series. However, that creates a logjam with catcher Sean Murphy, who will return this series after off-season hip labrum surgery and will also need to be limited to DH duties. Ha-Seong Kim has just begun a rehab assignment and won’t make the trip to Seattle. Spencer Strider returned from the IL to make his first start of the year on Sunday, but was battered in Coors Field, leading to a heavy bullpen day on Sunday. Atlanta is also currently without their closer Raisel Iglesias, albeit a less bitter pill thanks to their signing of former Padres bullpen ace Robert Suarez this winter — though it sounds like Iglesias will be activated off the IL on Tuesday as soon as he’s eligible. That’s all compounded by Atlanta missing four of its potential rotation arms due to major surgery this spring or last fall, with AJ Smith-Shawver, Hurston Waldrep, Joey Wentz, and Spencer Schwellenbach all sidelined still for months to come.

All those absences and a few more from their bullpen depth have left Atlanta with a pathway to victory forged in prodigious offense outlays. The Team of the South spent several years as the most viable peer on paper to the Los Angeles Dodgers, boasting a blend of stellar players from their internal development and savvy external acquisitions, with extensions signed on their core players well below market rate allowing them to pay far less than the performance they’ve received would suggest. This year, their glovework in particular has helped them buoy a beleaguered rotation, with Gold Glovers at shortstop, first base, and even on the mound in Chris Sale, alongside strong defenders around the outfield.

Perplexing at the time and blessed in hindsight, Houston traded away Mauricio Dubón to Atlanta for light-hitting infielder Nick Allen this winter. The cost-saving move also saved the Astros from the indignity of paying a good player, allowing Dubón to slot into a roster so well I had to double-check he’d not been a Brave before. With Acuña out, Seattle gets a reprieve in the slightest degree, but he’s been a more modest engine for the Atlanta offense. Matt Olson and Ozzie Albies are longtime stalwarts, albeit Albies having a scalding hot opening to the year. Drake Baldwin and Michael Harris II look like their Rookie of the Year (or RoY-caliber) selves. Harris has been nursing a quad injury, so he’ll cede defensive ground to the speedy-but-thumpless White. Hotlanta is slightly more vulnerable as such, but it’s a bit like saying fighting a leopard in the daylight is easy compared to doing so at night.

Due to all the injuries the Braves have suffered in their starting rotation, JR Ritchie made his major league debut a little ahead of schedule. A 2022 first round pick out of Bainbridge High School, he quickly bounced back from a serious arm injury in ‘23 and jumped through Atlanta’s farm system. None of his skills truly stand out, but the sum of the whole package is an above average pitcher. His command is good enough, his fastballs have decent enough shape, and he has a deep enough repertoire to work through a lineup a couple of times. He won’t be dominant, but he’s good enough to hold down a spot towards the back of a rotation.

Bryce Elder has been a surprising stabilizing force in the Braves rotation. An All-Star back in 2023, he’s really struggled over the last two years, putting up a combined 5.59 ERA and a 4.55 FIP in ‘24 and ‘25. He’s made some subtle tweaks to his pitch arsenal and has looked solid across his first seven starts of this season. He added a cutter to his mix, and even though the pitch doesn’t really stand out, it has allowed him to cut back on the usage of his sinker. He’s now throwing his slider, his best pitch, as his primary pitch and increased the usage of his four-seamer as well. The results have been fantastic even if the underlying peripherals aren’t as impressed with his skills. Still, it’s vastly improved over his ugly performance from the last two years; that’s all the Braves needed at this point in the season.

Grant Holmes made the leap into the big leagues back in 2024 after a long and winding minor league career. The key to his late-career breakout was a revamped slider that helped him boost his strikeout rates up into the 24–25% range. An elbow injury affected his command last year and his results slid a little and he’s continued to struggle to start this season. He’s got a deep repertoire to work with, though the rest of his pitches are merely average at best. The slider is devastating, however, returning a whiff rate approaching 50% this year.

Seattle’s embarrassing sweep – The Big P-Unit – at the hands of the Royals was another masterclass in what’s ailed these M’s. One-run and close losses with meat left on the bone. And yet, it lost them a whopping single game of positioning against the Athletics and Rangers. They saw their faces rubbed in the mud by the joint division leaders of the AL Central, the Guardians and Tigers respectively. The Lastros are no more, having sludged their way out of the sewer, taking two out of three from the similarly moribund Red Sox. Anaheim is in free-fall, dropping two of three to the Mets and having lost 12 of their last 14 games since their 11-10 start.