Atlanta Braves Shut Out By Former Stanford Righty

The Atlanta Braves are off to a tough start this season, sitting at 1-8. That said, they began the year by facing two of the best teams in the National League, the San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers on the road.

They also had to deal with Jurickson Profar's suspension and Reynaldo Lopez's injury along the way. Obviously, it's not an ideal start.

Still, the Braves will see the returns of Spencer Strider and Ronald Acuña Jr. before long. Atlanta is still projected for the third-most wins in baseball, behind the Dodgers (98) and the Philadelphia Phillies (91), with 89 of their own. FanGraphs' projections still believes this team has 88 more wins in them.

Yet, after getting their first win of the season in their home opener against the Miami Marlins on Friday, 10-0, they were completely shut out by former Stanford right-hander Cal Quantrill and the Marlins bullpen.

That may not have been part of the calculus for the Braves' season. That said, baseball is a funny sport that's difficult to predict, which is why building a dominant team can be so difficult.

In his second start of the season, Quantrill went five innings, giving up just four hits and striking out four. He was able to mostly limit the hard contact against him by mixing his pitches well on Saturday, relying on his four-seamer and splitter primarily, whle also working in his curveball, cutter, and sinker.

The big change from his first start to his second was that he seemingly scrapped his slider, according to Baseball Savant, a pitch he threw 20% of the time in his Marlins debut. Still, the Braves bats weren't fooled by his pitch mix enough to swing and miss often, with Quantrill generating just three whiffs on 29 swings. The contact they made by and large just wasn't hard enough to do damage.

Quantrill ended up throwing just 66 pitches before giving way to the bullpen, who combined to allow three hits and two walks while striking out seven over the final four frames.

Another former Cardinal, Kyle Stowers, went 1-for-5 with a strikeout in this one. The 28-year-old is 7-for-28 to begin the season.

The loss to the Marlins drops Atlanta to 1-8 on the year, while the Marlins are now 5-4 and sitting in third place in the incredibly tough NL East. Those two teams figure to trade places at some point this season, but for right now, Atlanta is really struggling to gain any kind of momentum.

It likely doesn't help matters that it was the rival Phillies that were the team to break up L.A.'s perfect season, handing them a loss on Friday night.