The Atlanta Braves will wrap up a long homestand this weekend with a three-game series against the Cleveland Guardians. The series will be a matchup of the two best teams in the majors over the first month of the season. While it’s not surprising to see the Braves involved in that series, it is a little strange for the other team to be the Guardians, who were projected to be essentially a .500 team on Opening Day.

The Braves come into the series fresh off a three-game sweep of the Miami Marlins that gave them a 17-6 record. Atlanta is 9-1 over its last 10 games and leads the National League with a +44 run differential. The Guardians just took two of three from the Boston Red Sox and are 18-7 with a majors-best +49 run differential. Interestingly, the Guardians have a pretty poor BaseRuns record (13-11), which suggests that their run differential, and their record, are the result of good sequencing on their end (and/or bad sequencing on their opponents’ ends) moreso than strong context-neutral outcomes. You can kind of see why when looking at their team ranks so far — seventh in position player fWAR and 12th in pitching fWAR, while the Braves are first in the former and 16th in the latter.

Atlanta is expected to get a boost to its lineup in time for the series opener. Infielder David Fletcher was sent to Gwinnett Thursday, paving the way for the return of Ozzie Albies from the Injured List. Albies suffered a fractured toe on the last road trip but has ramped up his activity this week and it appears that he will be ready to go Friday when he is first eligible to return.Cleveland has been paced by Steven Kwan (1.2 fWAR, .370s wOBA, .340s xwOBA) and Josh Naylor (0.6 fWAR, .390s wOBA, .410s xwOBA) offensively, but continues to field a lot of offensively-challenged bats. Emmanuel Clase and Hunter Gaddis have been incredible out of the bullpen in April, and the Cleveland pitching factory continues to churn out effective arms.