Braves hope to start second half with a series win behind Owen Murphy

We have a pretty interesting pitching matchup today, as Owen Murphy gets his first major league start for Atlanta and major offseason trade acquisition MacKenzie Gore will start for the Rangers.

Murphy was the Braves’ 2022 first round pick, ahead of JR Ritchie, but injury timelines and development curves meant that Ritchie beat him to The Show. Ritchie is more of a prototypical pitcher, but Murphy has some intriguing traits that led him to be that first round pick. His low/mid 90s fastball has exceptional induced vertical break, coming out of the arm of a shorter pitcher in Murphy, allowing it to play up as a swing-and-miss pitch. He throws a four-seamer, curveball, slider, changeup mix, with the slider being the least used pitch so far in his two major league appearances out of the bullpen. While he’ll almost certainly have to be less fastball-reliant than he has been out of the bullpen, his results have been solid, with 4.0 scoreless innings, 4 strikeouts, and no walks in the majors. His stats in the minors haven’t been especially impressive this year, but he has the prospect pedigree and traits to hope that he can be a solid major league pitcher, which would go a long way to bolstering Atlanta’s struggling rotation as we exit the All-Star break.

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While Gore has a 4.63 ERA on the season, his xERA, xFIP, and FIP all indicate that he is more or less the same quality pitcher that he was when the Rangers traded for him, all sitting in the mid/high 3s. The Rangers’ lefty pitches primarily off of his four-seamer and curveball, which he throws a couple ticks above league average in terms of velocity and with great extension, despite average movement. He mixes in four other pitches (changeup, slider, cutter, and sinker) for the rest of his pitch usage. His changeup and slider have been quite effective in a smaller sample, and his fastball has been good as far as fastballs go. This will be a challenging matchup for Atlanta, but perhaps Drake Baldwin has found his form again and can get back to absolutely crushing lefties with his reverse splits.

Game Info

Game Date/Time: Saturday, July 18, 4:10 p.m. ET

Location: Truist Park, Atlanta, GA

TV: BravesVision

Streaming: MLB.tv

Radio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan, Los Bravos