MLB-UPDATE: The Braves, who welcome two outstanding outfielders back from injury this morning, expect to keep up their momentum behind Grant Holmes.

The Braves are on a roll and hope that Grant Holmes can keep it flowing in his rookie year.

The Braves are on a roll and hope that Grant Holmes can keep it flowing in his belated rookie year. After another Braves win and Phillies loss on Friday, the division lead is down to 5 games.

Holmes has bounced around the minors for years, but the Braves may have unlocked something with him in 2023 and he finally made his debut in 2024 as a 28 year old, a full decade after being drafted by Oakland in the first round. It’s a great story and he’s been impressively effective in a fairly small sample so far this season, with a a 3.18 xFIP and a 2.21 FIP. He got his first start in the

majors Monday and was fantastic, pitching 5.0 innings with 8 strikeouts and allowing one solo home run, with the home run coming in his fifth and final inning. He’s been throwing largely a four pitch mix, with a four-seamer being used 37% as his primary offering. Meanwhile he throws his two breaking balls, a curveball 29% of the time and a slider 22% of the time. He mixes things up with a cutter 12% of the time. His arsenal is very vertically inclined, with each pitch having less horizontal movement than league average, but is throw pretty hard, especially the non-fastball offerings. It will be interesting to see how his results settle over a larger sample.

On the other side, the Marlins are starting the journeyman 6 foot righty, Kyle Tyler. Tyler has been a pretty replacement-level pitcher over his 41.0 major league innings, walking 4.17 batters per 9 and striking out 6.15 batters per 9. He has a decent ground ball rate at close to 50%, but he’s not a particularly impressive pitcher by any metric. He throws a cutter nearly 50% of the time, with a curveball nearly 30% of the time and a four-seamer and slider split the rest of his pitches. Along with some good extension, his cutter actually has some pretty good movement, as does his slider, even though it is a very slow slider. While Tyler has an interesting profile, he should be considered a fairly soft target for the Braves’ offense that seems to have found its mojo again, hitting homers and getting some trade deadline support.

Even though Grant Holmes is not exactly Chris Sale, the Marlins sold off half of their team at the deadline and nothing about this pitching matchup should give anyone the impression that the Braves are anything other than solid favorites in the game.