The series wraps Thursday at 7:15 PM ET with Landen Roupp (5-7, 4.24) toeing the rubber for the Giants against Martin Pérez (5-3, 2.90) for the Braves. Pérez has been quietly excellent — a sub-3 ERA in a rotation that desperately needed someone to be exactly that. Roupp has been a mixed bag of strikeouts and traffic on the bases, and Truist Park is not the park to find out which version shows up. The bigger story for Atlanta is what isn't on the mound. Spencer Strider hit the 15-day IL with right elbow inflammation and is heading to Dr. Keith Meister for evaluation, which is the sentence Braves fans were hoping never to read again. JR Ritchie, the org's No. 2 prospect, has been slotted in to cover Strider's turns. Stack that on top of Spencer Schwellenbach and AJ Smith-Shawver still rehabbing on the 60-day, and Walt Weiss is basically running a rotation held together with duct tape and Pérez. The lineup isn't much better. Ronald Acuna Jr. is on the 10-day with hamstring tightness, Sean Murphy is still healing a fractured finger, Drake Baldwin is on a rehab assignment in Gwinnett, and Jurickson Profar is gone for the year on the PED suspension. The Braves have still been good enough to sit at 46-25, but they just lost 2 of 3 to the Mets and got walked off by the White Sox last week. Even great teams have ugly weeks, and Atlanta is in one. The Giants are the kind of opponent that should be a soft landing — except this Giants team can't hit. They scratched out a 5-1 win over the Cubs in the finale, but the two losses in that series were 1-5 and 1-6, and the Nationals took 2 of 3 from them at Oracle before that. The injury report is a horror movie too: Tyler Mahle, Harrison Bader, Heliot Ramos, and a bullpen with five arms on the 60-day. There is no calvary coming this week. The matchup tilts heavily toward Atlanta on paper, but the version of the Braves we've seen the last 10 days is not the juggernaut from April and May. If Roupp limits the damage early and the Giants can get to the back of a thinned-out Braves bullpen, this is the kind of getaway-day game where weird things happen. Probably won't. But could.