ESPN.com – MLB – Box Score – Braves at Cardinals
This is fun. Scary, because nobody can stay this hot and eventually the pitching will have to be addressed, but it’s still fun. There was some bad news: Horacio left the game after five innings when his hamstring acted up, and Chipper’s extra-base hit streak came to an end. He did have three singles and a walk.
Shutout through two innings, though the Braves got baserunners. In the third, they loaded it up with Betemit and Renteria singles and an Andruw walk. The Cards should have gotten McCann, maybe, on a pop foul near the screen, but didn’t. He followed by hitting a long fly ball that looked at first like a sac fly, but kept going and wound up his first career grand slam. Francoeur followed with a triple, then scored on a sac fly to make it 5-0.
Betemit homered in the next inning; the Cards got that run back on their first hit, a solo homer by Edmonds, then the Braves turned on the afterburners, scoring four in the fifth and three in the sixth, and finally two in the eighth. The Cards got runs off of Kim Jong-Il, who pitched innings six through eight, and Moylan finished it off.
Betemit was 4-6 with five RBI, three runs scored, and missed the cycle on the triple. LaRoche and Kim had solo homers in the eighth. LaRoche finished 4-4 with the sac fly, Francoeur had three hits, and the Braves had a season-high 20 hits in all.
Horacio walked three but only allowed two hits. Kim gave up two walks and four hits, and was lucky to allow only two runs, though I’m sure this will be spun as a “promising” outing. Hudson will try to right himself tomorrow.
There is a negative correlation between talent/ability and Rick Sutcliffe liking you.
Of course he hates Sosa so now im not so sure
When we call up the spot starter from the minors, how about we send down Pete Orr and move Sosa to second base?
I really don’t think Sosa would play second base well at all, but neither can Pete Orr. Sosa has 3 RBI’s, Orr has 4 (Sosa’s outhomered him 3-1) so it’s advantage Sosa there.
Not having Sosa pitch would make the bullpen better (addition by subtraction) and the wild move would get us headlines, which would keep the media second-guessing us and proclaiming we suck.
And mr Gong-Il got his third hit of the year, which just like the two before it was a HR…this one was a 430 footer though (or so says the TV HR distance guesstimators)
Erm,
Jong-Il that is
Oh yeah, and if we get the Wild Card, we’d have a very good chance at playing either the Padres or Cardinals in the first round (thanks to the stupid you can’t play the team in your own division rule) – I’d take that.
Well I am glad we decided to start playing baseball again! Well we gave everyone a head start in June..GAME ON!
LOL, BMAC just said all of his homers are “wall scrapers”, very true.but they are hit very high.
We just had to make it interesting, Smitty.
Sosa could be our Brooks Kieschnick, who pitched and hit for the Brewers for a few years.
I’m serious – I really think the move would work well. Orr doesn’t do anything particularly good, and Sosa could be a feast-or-famine power bat for late inning situations.
To be serious, Wryn, there would have to be a chance it could happen. Everyone knows it won’t.
Where was all of this back in June…. I can bet that there are some teams now in the N.L that are looking in their mirror and not liking what they’re seeing..
Sosa really needs to start doing something else than pitching. Cricket, javelin.. jai alai…i don’t care, just don’t pitch for us anymore.
Funny story I have to pass on (at least, I hope it comes across as funny as it was when it happened).
I have two younger sisters and have done my to make them into Braves fans. For the most part it’s worked (except for when one of them played on a T-ball team named the “Cubs” and she decided she wanted to become a Cubs fan, then when Brian Jordan, her favorite player, was traded to the Dodgers, she decided the Dodgers were better than the Cubs. Now I think she’s back to the Braves…) Tonight, though, my 11-year-old sister was quite unimpressed with my team.
She had made up a schedule assigning different people to clean up supper different nights of the week. Monday’s happen to by her and my night. We ate an annoying late supper and I kept running downstairs to check the score. I knew Chipper would be up in the 3rd and told her I wanted to go watch his at-bat then I would go help clean up.
After Chipper batted though, I couldn’t tear myself away. While Andruw was batting I yelled I would be right up. Then when McCann got up with the bases loaded I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. During that at-bat I hear her grumbling to my dad that I wasn’t coming. So I yell,
Me—I’ll be right there.
Kaitlyn—You already said that once!
Me—Well, the Braves aren’t cooperating.
Kaitlyn—Then you just get them to come help clean up supper!
She wasn’t even impressed after my shout of glee when McCann’s hit went over the fence. Maybe I need to try a different tactic with my brainwashing when it comes to baseball.
Bobby coming out to yell at Sosa after the leadoff double in the sixth was the highlight for me. Long time coming.
I hope that the alien that is taken over LaRoche’s body can hang around for the rest of the season. We are going to need him.
Pretty funny, ‘Rissa.
I just saw on ESPN that the Braves are the BURGER KINGS OF THE DAY.
And if that doesn’t make you feel warm and fuzzy, well… then you might just be sane.
This is the funniest quotation I have ever read coming from Bobby:
“Ever since I became the hitting coach in the second half, we’ve been hitting the ball pretty good,” joked Braves manager Bobby Cox.
Just got back from the Yankees/Mariners game…
When I got to Yankee Stadium, it was 97-degrees; but the good news was that it got down to only 91 by 10 p.m. Whew.
Great crowd, really entertaining game, despite the fact that A-Rod played like he’d guzzled a bottle or Robitussin. Once again, Chien-Ming Wang was a ground-ball machine. (That’s 10 wins for him.)
My Yankee-pal friends thought they were trying to be nice, saying conciliatory things every time the Braves side of the out-of-town scoreboard improved. “I don’t want to hear it,” I said. “Your closer is going to the Hall of Fame; our closer only hits home runs—not fair.”
For the record, that’s 51 runs in the last 4 games. Glad we didn’t lose one of ’em.
Burger Kings of the day? What does that mean?
Another great line from DOB:
“It’s supposed to be even hotter this week. If John Thomson were pitching, he might melt.”
Was anyone thrown at in last night’s game? DId anyone see Pujols giving encouragement to Sosa last night? Even though LaRussa is a piece of crap, Pujols sure knows how to be a class act. Pujols is good for baseball and to see him talking and encouraging someone even when they are losing 15-3 is pretty awesome. Maybe LaRussa is learning something from his players, but I doubt it.
serving up the long ball – hopefully this will continue
Chipper Jones, who is in the midst of a 17-game hitting streak, has two hits, both homers, in three career at-bats against Marquis. As for Andruw Jones, he has three hits, all homers, in six at-bats against his former teammate.
Elias Says
The Braves, fresh off a three-game sweep against the Padres in which they scored 10+ runs in every game, hammered the Cardinals on Monday night, 15-3. They are the first team in major-league history to score 10-or-more runs in four consecutive games, each time against a team in sole possession of first place
That’s a great stat, Smitty. It makes me feel much better about this team than I should.
Dan, exactly.
Just some crappy ESPN promotion that I’d never heard of before last night.
Does anyone else remember when ESPN used to be great? Say around the late 80s-early 90s.
Can anyone give me the low-down on Jason Shiell? Who is he? and Where did he come from?
ESPN admits its deplorable bias:
“We didn’t count the Braves out, did we? OK, we did, but that might have been premature now that they are 10-3 in July and only five games back in the NL wild-card race.”
Robert, I loved Bobby’s 6-1 chewing out of Sosa also for a few reasons.
1. it shows that the manager with unlimited patience has had enough (you kind of saw this coming when Bobby made McDowell go out to get ?McBride? the other night).
and 2. the game was a rout at that point and the announcers were just finished noting that it was all smiles in the Brave dugout. After Bobby’s visit, no more smiles and it was back on the gas. I think the message was clear…we haven’t played well enough for long enough to enjoy things this much. Get your azzess back to work!
I love this team
Also, I wasn’t upset by LaRossa sending out Izzy in the 9th to face Chipper. The streak was bound to end soon anyways and it was a great way to end it. Chipper had a great night, and if he (or the whole team) can use Larossa’s perceived gamesmanship for added motivation…so much the better. Hammer away.
It’s being reported in more than one place that Jason Shiell will get the call-up sometime today. Yahoo already has him listed for Wednesday’s start.
So who gets sent down? Peter Moylan who replaced John Thomson? Possibly Jorge Sosa?
I just read that Todd Jones has always wanted to pitch for the Braves. He would have even taken less money to come here in the off-season, but JS (or should I say Jack Ass) wouldn’t go 2 years.
Taking a risk on Jones for two years would have been better then what we started the year with. If it didn’t work out he would still have had trade value.
I don’t get the Jason Isringhausen thing. Didn’t the Cardinals just get done sweeping the Dodgers with big leads? Maybe Isringhausen hadn’t been used since beforte the all-star break and LaRussa wanted to get him some time? I don’t know but it’s possible.
I’ve only mentioned that about a thousand times. Todd Jones is cheap and good, lives in Georgia and wanted to pitch very badly for the Braves. Why the heck didn’t Schuerholz sign him, even as a set-up man? Jones waited forever on Schuerholz. No excuses there.
Dan, that’s what the Stl announcers were saying and it makes sense. In addition maybe part of it was trying to send a message to his team.
About Jones, JS said he offered him a deal, Jones says he didn’t. We were all yelling for the Braves to avoid Jones on the message board. Stop blamming JS, he isn’t going to eay over pay for a closer.
Kruger,
I think it’s a mixed message to say the least when you take all the stars out of the line-up and then put in your star closer.
Over paying for a closer is better than not having one period.
I agree with smitty here, JS was not going to pay Toad Jones a two year contract being he is not a reliable closer, and to sign him off a career year at age 37 is not a wise investment, it may have been a mistake, but not something to scream about. Would anyone have signed him 2 years ago, no way, so to think he would repeat last year is not wise.
Todd Jones isn’t that good. He could probably help our bullpen, but he’s not worth $6M/year or what it would take to trade for him.
I missed why Bobby Cox got angry at Sosa – what happend?
I guess Bobby’s little trip to Sosa didn’t work because an inning or two later he gave up a leadoff walk with an even bigger lead. On the plus side he probably won’t be available to (fail to) close tonight’s game.
I missed why Bobby Cox got angry at Sosa – what happend?
Sosa came out to start the sixth, got behind in the count and gave up a double to Taguchi. Bobby came out (odd since it was the first batter he faced and we had a big lead) and just reamed him. The ESPN guys discussed it for a while. So Bobby exits, and Sosa gives up a ringing double to Pujols (certainly forgiveable) then gets the next three guys including a K of Edmonds. Of course he struggled again the next inning, so who knows.
Pujols and Sosa exchanged words after the inning ended, couldn’t really tell what was said. If Pujols was being encouraging I guess that’s nice. I couldn’t really tell from the body language.
What was funny was that Cox called Renteria over, reemed him out and got Renteria to (presumably) translate the message. I wonder how that exchange went?
Renteria (in Espanol): So, Bobby’s pretty pissed
Sosa: Thanks, I gathered that
Renteria: You know, if you close this baby out, you’ll get credit for a save.
Sosa: I’ll try.
The ESPN guys seemed to think that Pujols was angry with Sosa? I dunno. It’s possible that they were on the same team for the WBC (I think they’re both Dominican Republic?) and know eachother through that.
Anyhow, maybe Izzy needed some work, maybe not. Either way, it’s too bad Chipper couldn’t have gotten the record outright.