Sean Murphy, Ha-Seong Kim in the lineup against David Peterson

Well, there’s not much to say about this lineup. David Peterson throws with his left hand. The Braves don’t have Lane Thomas on hand anymore, so it’s basically your standard lineup with Sean Murphy and Ha-Seong Kim bringing up the rear.

This is the same lineup the Braves used in what ended up being that 12-2 game against the Phillies. Given that Peterson probably won’t last long given his inefficiency, the Braves may be hoping for a similar result.

I guess I’ll talk about Ozzie Albies. He’s hitting cleanup for the 21st time this season. His season is basically tanking. He started out with a near-.400 wOBA in April while running an average xwOBA, had a poor May, an okay-ish June, and then ran another huge xwOBA overperformance on a bad xwOBA in July. Since then, it’s been absolutely grim. In August, he had a .275 wOBA and .283 xwOBA. In September, he’s down to a .212 wOBA and .218 xwOBA. As has also been the case for a while, Albies is no longer terrorizing lefties. In his first seven seasons, he had five where he hit lefties super-well, and one of the ones where he didn’t was a tiny-sample 2020 where he was hurt. In both 2024 and 2025, his xwOBA against lefties dwindled to an okay .325ish. This year? He’s down to .282. He’s only posted an xwOBA at or above .300 against lefties this season in April and July. In September so far, it’s .171. There’s not really that much time for Albies to change the script of his season, but this is a really disappointing follow-up to 2025 and it’s going to be the third straight year where Albies turns in an underwhelming season.

Anyway, should we do batter versus pitcher while waiting for the Cubs to post their lineup? Sure, I guess. These guys are very familiar with Peterson, after all. Amazingly, neither Drake Baldwin nor Mauricio Dubon have ever faced Peterson, and Kim only has four PAs against him, but everyone else has somewhere between 12 and 30. Ronald Acuña Jr. and Matt Olson have destroyed Peterson in their careers, and Riley’s been fine, but everyone else has struggled a bit. Add this all up, and you get a .318 wOBA and .347 xwOBA in 141 career head-to-head PAs.

As for the Cubs, well…

Most of these names are probably familiar to you — except perhaps Pedro Ramirez, a switch-hitting 22-year-old top prospect called up partway through the year. Ramirez hasn’t hit all that well (.290 xwOBA), but because he’s on this Cubs team, he’s massively outhitting it to an above-average batting line.

Bizarre baseball quirk: each team has only used their lineup for this game once before, and in both cases, that team had a 12-2 win when doing so.

Are the Cubs familiar with Reynaldo Lopez? Kinda, but not really. Everyone but Ramirez has faced him at least once, but only Alex Bregman has faced him more than nine times. The history, though, is brutal for Lopez — the lowest xwOBA among the octet is .349. Put it together, and it’s a .360 wOBA and .432 xwOBA… but in just 43 PAs. Let’s hope that head-to-head picture improves after today, though it could conceivably improve and still be a brutal beatdown by the Cubs at Wrigley Field.