The Atlanta Braves and Washington Nationals were set to finish their two-game series Wednesday afternoon, with Grant Holmes on the mound for Atlanta against Jackson Kent. For the Braves, the game arrived with a three-game lead over the Philadelphia Phillies in the NL East and with little margin for another slip.
That is why this matchup drew attention. Atlanta was coming off a 9-5 loss on Tuesday, while Washington had just scored nine runs and was trying to back up one of the strongest lineups in MLB. Holmes, who has a 3.71 ERA and an ERA under 4.00 this season, still came in with a warning label attached: his expected numbers were shakier, he ranked in the 23rd percentile in expected ERA and the 30th percentile in expected batting average against, and the Nationals had already knocked him out of back-to-back games before he could record a 16th out.
Kent, meanwhile, was making his fifth start of the 2026 season after a sharp last outing, when he threw seven innings of three-hit, one-run ball in a win over Miami. The 2024 fourth-round pick had given Washington a reason to keep him in the rotation, and this start offered another chance to see whether that recent form could hold against a team still trying to stay ahead in the division.
The Braves have led the NL East for much of the season, but the race has tightened enough that every start now carries weight. Washington, for its part, has scored the second-most runs in MLB and ranked in the top 10 in both batting average and OPS, which made the possibility of James Wood returning from the injured list part of the backdrop to the finale. Whether Wood was actually activated was not clear, and that left one more layer of uncertainty around a team that had already shown on Tuesday how quickly it can change a game.
For Atlanta, the question was simple: could Holmes get deeper into the game than he had in his recent meetings with Washington? For Washington, it was whether Kent could keep matching the last outing that turned heads. The series ended with those two answers waiting on the field.
