Braves 5, Phillies 0

Atlanta Braves vs. Philadelphia Phillies – Box Score – July 6, 2012 – ESPN.

Time of game: two hours, 33 minutes. Pretty much nobody did anything till the starters came out of the game. Tim Hudson was clearly hurting, but he gutted through a masterpiece, 7 scoreless innings, allowing just three singles, a double, and a walk. Eric O’Flaherty and Chad Durbin finished it up with two more scoreless innings. The Phillies are in last place, and pretty much their only good hitter is catcher Carlos Ruiz, so these are the teams we should beat up on. But still.

Kyle Kendrick continued his mystifying habit of beating up on the Braves. He has a 4.46 career ERA, but in 16 games including 11 starts against the Braves, he has a 6-1 record with a 2.29 ERA. It’s like the Braves think he’s left-handed or something. He pitched 7 scoreless innings and left with the game knotted 0-0.

Then the Phillies brought in an actual breathing left-hander, Antonio Bastardo, who had had plenty of success against the Braves in the past, holding the Braves to a .140 batting average against, seven singles and no extra-base hits in 55 previous plate appearances against us.

However, thank goodness, he didn’t have it last night, and Charlie Manuel had a Grady Little moment as he allowed Bastardo to do this: single, walk, flyout, popout, walk, walk, homer. That was all the Braves got and all they needed.

The grand slam was by Brian McCann, who has had enough of your lip for at least one day. (And my lip, too; after he and Uggla failed to take advantage of men on first and second with no outs in the top of the 7th, I said they both should be batting 9th.) If he goes ohfer the weekend you can start grousing again.

98 thoughts on “Braves 5, Phillies 0”

  1. In fairness to Bastardo, he wasn’t crazy-wild. IMO, he got squeezed on a few of those pitches to Chipper & Freddie.

    By the time he faced McCann—and lucky for B-Mac—I think he was getting a little exasperated, and he pumped in a fat one.

  2. It sure would be nice to see the Nats get swept this weekend. I like going into the break only 3 back…assuming our boys win out as well (big assumption).

  4. Alex, I know you are accomplished in your own right, but that recap was Mac-esque. Great job!

  5. And Bastardo was a pitch away from getting out of it, ahead against Chipper, with scuffling against lefties Freeman and McCann on deck. Great win, but really, a bolt from the blue there.

  7. I live in Philly, and after last night, I’m on text-silence with all my Phils fan friends.
    Both the team and the fans have lost their swagger. Even Manuel has addressed this. They go into games assuming the worst. I still think they’re the most dangerous team in the NL and I will feel that way until they post a couple of sub .500 seasons in a row, but they (the fans) are looking at this series hoping against hope that they won’t get swept. Very interesting times.

  10. Just got a tweet from my friend in DC….

    “Bryce Harper handing out popsicles to sweaty fans. As if DC didn’t like him already. #Nats”

    What a suck-up.

  13. I have no idea what we’d do with Justin Upton, but that’s something we could worry about after we acquire him, right? Right?

  14. Yep, we stash him in LF and then extend Prado. At the same time we tell Prado that he’ll shift himself between 3B/2B/1B until next year.

  15. Yep.

    However, the Diamondbacks may be crazy, but they’re not stupid. Upton’s owed just $6.75 million this year, and $38.5 from 2013-2015, which is exceedingly reasonable for a guy who was 4th in the MVP voting last year. A lot of people would want him and would be willing to pay quite a high price to get him.

    Would you send Teheran over, despite the fact that he’s really the only potential ace in our system? Sure, he’s struggled, but he’s also 21. What would you pay for Upton?

  17. Nevermind, he was ejected by Holbrook. Greinke spiked a baseball and was ejected.

  18. I actually don’t think the Braves have enough in their system to get him. Plus, the D’Backs are already flush with high end pitching prospects.

  19. Yeah, I believe that the Dbacks would want/ask for position players that are under team control. I dont see us making Freeman or Simmons available either and there’s not much else.

  20. DOB said that Bourn just had his picture taken with other Braves All Stars and thinks he made the team.

  23. Awesome news, good for him. Well deserved. I was thinking he may get Stanton’s spot. He left due to another knee/leg injury today.

  24. The instructions for the Final Five fan vote should read “Don’t worry! At least three of these guys will make the team.”

  25. Great news for Bourn!

    I’m not sure we have anything other than Teheran to move to try and get any top shelf players.

  27. I believe Teheran was #4 on the top 50 list last year behind Harper, Trout, and Moore. He’s now #24. Not that it really matters.

  28. @26
    I bet we aren’t in the top 15 after this year. There’s hardly any real success stories in our entire Minor League system.

  29. Just got off the phone with Smitty’s barber, he says: Prado, Teheran, Salcedo, and Nick Ahmed for JUp.

  30. @26, most farm system rankings put us in the middle of the pack. A good bit of our young talent is in the majors now, and Teheran probably will join them at some point again this year if he’s not traded. Pretty much all of our position player prospects are question marks with the bat.

  31. Yeah, our upper minors are basically tapped out, other than Teheran, Tommy John Vizcaino, and whatever Sean Gilmartin might happen to be. It’s gonna be a bit of a dry patch for our minor leagues unless we get lucky with one of our guys in the low minors or we do some serious trade restocking.

  37. Awesome, thank you. So, any minute I guess?

    Im gonna try freebaseballradio.com for the first time to listen tonight. Ive got the hone dealie, but hooking my stereo to my phone is a project I’d like to avoid.

    Anybody use this site before? Any station in the network a reliable go-to?

  41. Take a god damn pitch. 9 pitches, 4 outs. Bowman just tweeted that 6 of the 10 innings Blanton has pitched against us this year have been 8 pitches or fewer.

  47. I got called out in softball because my third base coach touched me while I was running the bases, so I think the same should apply to Pence.

  55. I think McCann doesn’t like not being an All-Star. I’m glad he’s found an appropriate target to take his frustrations out on.

  60. For those keeping count, that’s four of the Final Five who are now in the ASG, rendering it appropriately silly.

  62. Apparently washington wont allow Desmond to play. They think him coming off thhe bench for an inning can cause an injury.

    Stanton is about to have knee surgery.

  64. Two short of the doubleheader record, I believe held by Musial and Nate Colbert, although someone may have joined them

  65. I think Andruw should sign with Boston and hit another 100 homers over the Monster to finalize his HOF candidacy. Also the Sox are somewhat less loathsome than the Yanks, IMO.

  70. It looked to me as if Andrelton was already moving up the middle as the pitch was thrown.

  71. @ 68,

    I know, right? I’m reduced to commenting on the GD NY/BOS game. Gross.

    Yay Andruw, though.

  73. Prado delivers again. I like having a productive outfield once more.

    Man, the Yanks are just getting shelled.

  76. Get somebody throwing, Fredi. Hanson’s already gone six, and that’s about his limit.

  81. He being Fredi, I mean. Not Tommy; I’m sure he wants the ball as long as he can throw it.

  88. I just read through the comments before being able to check the boxscore. And I see our starting pitcher threw 99 pitchers, 63 for strikes. He went 7 IP, gave up 1 BB and 6 K, and in the more luck-influenced outcome-related areas of the box score, gave up 6 H and 3 ER and got a GIDP. Which strikes me as a pretty solid performance overall.

    And which makes me feel like some of you don’t think that good pitchers give up runs or have bad innings or something. Like, what is this ‘clutch’ thing? Fangraphs, I think, has a good quantifiable definition of clutchness, and it turns out Tommy is somewhere between average and above-average this year and pretty distinctly average for his career.

    Unless you want ‘clutchness’ to mean ‘never gives up any runs’…

  89. I personally think Hanson is getting some unfair criticism here, but his performance is solid today. Sweep those Phillies tomorrow guys…

  90. This is the same place that criticizes Hanson for giving up a home run to Jose freaking Bautista so it’s possible we’re a little hard on him.

  91. #89 – Its always fun to come read the comments after a Hanson outing. 7IP 6H 3ER 1BB 6K. Not bad in that little league park.

  92. Hanson has been, and continues to be, our best pitcher. He’s the least of my worries with this team.

  93. They did say today that its possible that Sheets will get the Sunday July 15th start. That would have Hudson, Hanson, Sheets lined up for the Mets series. Unless of course a trade is made for a starter before then.

  94. After a fairly disastrous 2nd inning, Hanson really locked in.

    McCann threw out Rollins stealing to finish the 2nd inning, and then Hanson faced the minimum 3rd thru 7th inning (including 12 batters in a row thru 6), allowing his team to take the lead.

    Call that performance whatever you want, but it’s pretty good in my book.

    Let’s hope JJ can keep the ball down tomorrow.

  95. McCann threw out Rollins stealing to finish the 2nd inning

    Now you’re forcing me to acknowledge that either Hanson or McCann did something good? On Braves Journal? What good is this place if I can’t root against the players on the team I’m supposed to be rooting for? I might have to start hating actual eminently detestable Braves villains like Cody Ross or something.

  96. Top 2, McCann homers to give the Braves a 1-0 lead. In the bottom of that very inning, Hanson gives up 3 runs. The first out was recorded when Chipper made an improbable throw to the plate. The third out was recorded on a caught stealing.

    He just has a knack for giving up leads the very inning he gets them. That’s what I meant by unclutch.

    Obviously you can’t complain about a 7 IP, 3 ER performance after the fact.

    Can’t believe I’m defending venting frustration in the middle of a three run inning, on the internet.

  97. Likewise, I can’t believe I feel an urge to tell people, “Chill, it’s a long season,” on the internet. But here I am.

    If you feel like you have to vent every time there’s a bad outcome for a player on a team that you’re rooting for — who also happens to be pretty indisputably good overall, or maybe the player’s just having a bad half-season in an otherwise HOF-worthy career thus far — maybe you might want to consider following a different sport or something else that aggravates you a little less?

    I know, you all really don’t hate Tommy Hanson. If you saw him in public, you probably wouldn’t even think to heckle him, let alone tell him what you post about him here. And I get that a blog like this with an active commentariat is ultimately going to make itself the minute-by-minute emotional history of the team that it’s following. Again, it’s a free country, etc, but you can’t get too surprised if you’re yourself being criticized for incessant and sometimes unfounded criticism of pretty good players whenever they happen to perform poorly over the course of a very, very long season.

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