July 22-24, 2022 vs. Los Angeles Angels
The Braves will have the chance to play every team in the AL West division this year (spoiler alert: one team in particular will be highlighted in the next slide). Games against the Oakland A’s, Seattle Mariners, and Texas Rangers will be on the road.
Two of the most exciting players in baseball today will be coming down south in July, as the Braves will get the chance to square off against Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani, and the rest of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Fellow Tomahawk Take writer Alan Carpenter wrote about this highly anticipated series a few months ago.
Trout has been the best player in baseball for the better part of a decade now. He has accumulated 76.1 bWAR, hit 310 home runs, and won three AL MVP awards. He is only 30 years old. Sadly, he has only been to the postseason one time in his career.
Trout spent much of the 2021 season injured, and the Angels missed his presence in a big way. They wound up finishing with a 77-85 record.
Ohtani is coming off of a historic season as a two-way player. The reigning MVP had 46 home runs and a .965 OPS on offense. He also pitched 130.1 innings with a 3.18 ERA, 156 strikeouts, and 141 ERA+. He also participated in the 2021 Home Run Derby and was the starting pitcher for the AL All Star team.
Combine these two with superstars on the Braves like Ronald Acuña Jr. and Freddie Freeman (#re-signFreddie) and we could be seeing a mini All Star game at Truist Park.
The vibes for this series are similar to the game between the Atlanta Hawks and Chicago Bulls in March 1998, when over 62,000 fans flocked to the Georgia Dome to see Michael Jordan take on the Hawks one last time (as a member of the Bulls) before his second retirement. None of the above-mentioned players are close to retiring yet, but the star power in Atlanta this weekend should be a massive draw for baseball fans in Braves country.