Mike Yastrzemski moves up to sixth as Braves open St. Louis set
· Yahoo Sports
The Braves open up a set in St. Louis on Friday night, and have moved Mike Yastrzemski to sixth on the heels of his grand slam in Thursday’s win over the Pirates:
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Yastrzemski started out hitting fifth, but quickly dropped down to the bottom of the lineup amid struggles in April. He last hit as high as sixth back on May 4. It hasn’t been a good year for him overall, as he posted sub-.300 wOBAs and xwOBAs in both April and June. He hit okay in May (.338 xwOBA) and got very fortunate (.414 wOBA), but slumped with the rest of the team the following month. That said, he’s been on a heater in July (.409 wOBA, .442 xwOBA), so him moving up in the lineup amid the ongoing struggles of Austin Riley and Dominic Smith makes sense given the way the Braves shuffle things. As a result, this is a novel lineup, the Braves’ 93rd in 76 games.
The Cardinals haven’t tweeted out their lineup, with their press folks probably preparing to cover the rumored JJ Wetherholt extension.
The now-flush-with-cash Wetherholt remains in the leadoff spot — the rest of these names are familiar if you watched any of the prior series between these two teams in Atlanta. That said, it’s also a new lineup for St. Louis, who actually doesn’t shuffle things around that much (62nd in 93 games), with a bunch of righties stacked at the bottom against Chris Sale.
The Braves’ lineup has only a handful of collective PAs against Leahy, though everyone but Michael Harris II and Jim Jarvis have faced him at least once. It’s a funny collective .201 wOBA and .518 xwOBA in 15 total PAs, with that disparity driven by both Yastrzemski and Riley once crushing a ball off him that went for an out instead of an extra-base hit or whatever.
Among the entire St. Louis lineup, the only player to have ever faced Chris Sale before is Nelson Velazquez, who had a weak flyout and a walk against him back in 2023. Kinda weird.