After facing only 11 left-handed starters in their first 91 games, the Braves are in the midst of a one-week stretch in which they’ll face five lefties, including three in the next four days against the streaking Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium, a most unfriendly place for opposing teams in 2017.
Former Brave and current All-Star Alex Wood starts the L.A. lefty parade Friday, and Clayton Kershaw finishes it Sunday.
After losing to the Cubs’ Jon Lester and Mike Montgomery in the first and last games of Chicago’s three-game sweep that ended Wednesday at SunTrust Park, the Braves flew to L.A. to enter the cauldron. They’ll face a Dodgers team that’s riding an 11-game winning streak and has not only the best home record in the majors (by a wide margin) at 39-11, but also now has the best overall record at 66-29, having moved ahead of the Astros (63-32) for that distinction.
In the four-game series at Dodger Stadium that starts Thursday night, the Braves will face not one or two but three lefties all in a row. It begins with Wood, who’s having a sensational breakout season with an 11-0 record, 1.56 ERA, 0.88 WHIP and 101 strikeouts in 86 2/3 innings. He earned a much-deserved spot on his first NL All-Star team.
The only way it could be worse facing him for the Braves is if they did so with Hector Olivera in the lineup. (The Braves, remember, traded Wood and others to get Olivera, who turned out to be a colossal bust.)
The Braves’ Mike Foltynewicz was scheduled to face right-hander Brandon McCarthy (6-3, 3.38 ERA) in Thursday’s series opener, then it’ll be all lefty opposing starters facing the Braves for three days. They are 7-6 so far when an opponent starts a lefty.
After Jaime Garcia faces Wood in an all-lefty matchup, it’ll be Julio Teheran against Dodgers lefty Rich Hill (6-4, 3.55 ERA, 79 strikeouts in 66 innings) on Saturday and another all-lefty matchup Sunday with Braves rookie Sean Newcomb facing Kershaw, who’s doing what he always does, sporting a 15-2 record, 2.07 ERA, 0.89 WHIP and 166 strikeouts in 139 1/3 innings.
Have we mentioned the Dodgers are really good?
If you thought the Astros were surging when the Braves faced them, get ready for another level of surge: The Dodgers are 31-4 with a 2.86 ERA since June 7. In those 35 games, they’ve carried an .894 team OPS while hitting 72 home runs and scoring 203 runs. That works out to 5.8 runs per game while posting a 2.86 ERA, a formula that’ll win a vast majority of games.
The Dodgers are riding an 11-game winning streak in which they’ve posted a 1.93 ERA and .216 opponents average while outscoring opponents 50-22 and out-homering them 18-7. They won three consecutive one-run games at home against NL West-foe Arizona July 4-6, then swept the Royals at home, swept the Marlins in Miami and outscored the White Sox 10-1 in a two-game sweep at Chicago, including a 9-1 rout on Wednesday.
After a modest 5-4 record in their first nine home games, the Dodgers have won 34 of the past 41 home games, losing consecutive games only once in that stretch — June 5-6 vs. the Nationals.
Since dropping those two against the Nats, the Dodgers were a stunning 18-1 in their past 19 home games entering Thursday, with a 2.51 ERA in that span supported by a whopping 37 homers and .516 team slugging percentage.
