After a solid win last night, the Rockies look play spoiler by taking a lead in this four game series against the Braves. Atlanta currently occupies the first of two wild card spots in the National League. They have been playing fairly average baseball as of late, but so have all of the wild card contending teams in the league.
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Alex White's August was not especially great, but the Rockies have played well behind him and have won several of his starts. The pitcher is coming off one of his weaker starts of the season, in which he walked more batters than he struck out. Like his Cleveland comrade Drew Pomeranz, White has struggled to be efficient under the 75 pitch count, though not quite to the same extent. He has only made it past the fourth inning one time under the system. Thus far, White's MLB career is significantly disappointing compared to his minor league performance in just about every possible way; fewer strikeouts, more walks, way more hits and home runs, etc, though both are fairly small sample sizes in terms of long-term projection. White has not faced the Braves before.
Mike Minor is currently in the midst of his first full season at the MLB level. While the lefty pitcher has lowered his hit rate this year, he has been hit harder overall than in his career. Minor still features very good control, but his walk and strikeout rates haven't seen a bump with the reduced contact. Against Minor, the Rockies will likely have to rely on extra base hits to score. The Rockies did just that against Minor earlier in the year. In his first appearance against Colorado, Minor allowed eight runs on five innings on ten hits, good for the worst start of Minor's season, though the Rockies were also gifted an extra amount of walks. Minor's control has returned to much better levels over the past six weeks. He is coming off his worst start since June, a four run outing against the Phillies.