After a quick and ultimately disappointing jaunt out to Pittsburgh, the Braves are back in Atlanta this week, which features a four-day weekday set against the Washington Nationals. The Nationals have scuffled this year — they’re 25th in position player value, 17th in pitching value, and at 17-24, are actually outperforming their BaseRuns by a game. On the flip side, they’re actually in the top ten in team xwOBA right now, but have been stymied by a combination of underperforming inputs offensively while getting triple-whammied on the run prevention side by bad defense, bad sequencing, and opposing hitters getting lucky by BABIP. Basically, the Nats shouldn’t be as bad as they are right now, but the Braves will hope that they keep getting bedeviled by this stuff, because they need some wins.
The pitching matchup for this series opener will feature Grant Holmes and Jake Irvin. Holmes does not have particularly gladdening stats on the year, culminating in -0.2 fWAR. The saving grace is that while his 109 ERA- and 134 FIP- are not anywhere near great, his 99 xFIP- is very “generic starter” territory. The problem is that he has a HR/FB rate north of 20 percent right now, and has given up six longballs in his last three starts.
Leaving his first outing against the Dodgers aside because man, it was awful, Holmes has had a funny thing going on. He had a three-start stretch with a 50/97/114 line (fine-to-good results, bad peripherals), then got blasted by Eugenio Suarez and the Diamondbacks, and has a 114/123/56 line in two starts since. It’s possible he puts it all together in a way where he has a good K/BB ratio and isn’t brutalized by HR/FB tonight, but we’ll see, as the season has not been kind to him in that regard so far. Holmes has never started against Washington, and had just a single-inning relief appearance against them last year.
Jake Irvin, well… the Braves are, let’s say, familiar with Jake Irvin. They smashed him at the tail end of 2023, but he played the role of nemesis for them in 2024, dominating them twice, having a fortune if not-so-good outing against them, and only stumbling against them once — the Braves went 2-2 in the four starts that Irvin made against them. Those dominant outings, though… woof. Irvin had a 10/2 K/BB ratio in six scoreless frames against them in Atlanta last May, and a 5/1 K/BB ratio while getting charged with just a single run in Washington last September.
In part due to those outings against the Braves, but also more broadly, Irvin had kind of a mini-breakout last year, going from a fifth starter-type as a rookie to more of a generic innings-eater in 2024 (108/108/99). So far in 2025, though, he’s taken a step back: 95/125/113. Some of it is HR/FB, yeah, but his strikeout rate has also dipped quite a bit. He’s simply not throwing as hard as he was last year, and the loss of about two ticks has been the difference between an incredibly impressive .293 xwOBA-against on his four-seamer last year compared to a horrendous .488 mark this year. He’s still elevating it, but no one’s having trouble catching up these days.
Despite the loss in velocity, Irvin’s season was actually going okay (77/105/95) but for the homers, up until his two most recent outings, in which he has a combined 2/6 K/BB ratio and has allowed three homers. He literally had two starts in 33 tries last year with more walks than strikeouts, and now he’s done it in back-to-back starts, including a horrid 0/3 K/BB ratio against Cleveland last time out. If the Braves get that version of Irvin again, it could be a tonic for their still-fresh Irvin-inflicted wounds from last year.
Game Info
Game Date/Time: Monday, May 12th, 7:15 pm EDT
Location: Truist Park, Atlanta, GA
TV: FanDuel Sports South / Southeast
Streaming: MLB.tv
Radio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan
