The Braves kept rolling with seven straight wins and were chasing an eighth in a row and a sweep of the Marlins, with Martin Perez moving into the spotlight after a late change to the game plan. Perez was tapped to start less than an hour before first pitch after Reynaldo Lopez went down with a knee issue, and he had already shown he could steady a game on short notice.
That search is happening now because the Braves have turned run prevention into a daily habit. They had allowed four or fewer runs in eight straight games and three or fewer in each of the last five, a stretch that made their league-best ERA since July 29 the cleanest number on the board. Perez was part of that picture, but not the whole explanation: his season line sat at a 77 ERA-, 104 FIP-, and 99 xFIP-, which means the results have been excellent without every underlying measure lining up in the same place.
His last start made the case for why the Braves were willing to lean on him. Last Saturday, Perez dominated the Nationals with six strikeouts, two walks, and no runs in seven innings, his longest outing in nearly a calendar year. For a club trying to complete a sweep, that mattered because the game against the Marlins was no longer just about one emergency start; it was about whether the streak could hold with a pitcher who had answered pressure before.
But the broader picture is less tidy than the recent scoreless frames suggest. The Braves were still only seventh in FIP going back to July 29 and remained firmly middle of the pack by xFIP, which is the reminder that run prevention can travel farther than one game while still being vulnerable to regression underneath. That is why Perez’s start against Miami carried extra weight: earlier in the season he had allowed four runs in five innings there despite a 10/2 K/BB ratio, and the Braves had already clobbered Janson Junk in May when Austin Riley and Dominic Smith each hit a three-run homer.
The Marlins entered at 58-57 and trailed the Phillies and Diamondbacks by three games for the final NL Wild Card spot, so avoiding the sweep mattered to them as much as extending the streak mattered to Atlanta. Miami was set to turn to Junk again, and the matchup left one simple question hanging over the afternoon: whether Perez’s strong recent work was the start of something sustainable or just the latest sharp outing in a run built on results that have outpaced the deeper numbers.
