Baseball's best-in-the-NL-East club against a Giants team going nowhere in the West — this one's about stakes on only one side of the diamond.
Show fees
Whale Buys
Alerts
Our Picks
MON AUG 31, 6:05 PM
Spread
WIN
Total
Giants
Braves
Before either club gets here, there's real business to take care of. San Francisco has 3 more games against Arizona, and Atlanta hosts Colorado for a 3-game set of its own. Both series will shape who actually shows up for this one — bullpen arms get used, rotations get bumped, and injury situations get clearer or murkier in the meantime.
Neither team has a starter locked in yet for Monday, so no sense guessing who's on the mound. What's not in question is the gap between these two rosters right now. Atlanta is 79-55 and playing like a team that knows exactly what it's chasing; San Francisco is 55-79 and mostly playing out the string, injuries piling up by the week.
The Braves have won 4 straight, capped by a 1-0 win over the Dodgers, and they've beaten Los Angeles in the first 2 games of that set outright. That's about as good a stretch as a team can put together against a division rival in the thick of a playoff race. The Giants, meanwhile, just took care of business against Cincinnati and Arizona, but injuries have gutted their roster to the point where good week-to-week form doesn't mean much.
