What can you say about a five-game series that died? That it was overlong and ugly? That it sidelined Evan Gattis and Dan Uggla? Jonathon Niese? And us?
Mike Minor is statistically the Braves’ best starting pitcher this year and, ERA-wise, the fifth-best since mid-season last year (Kris Medlen is still first on that list). And yet, I don’t fully trust him. Maybe it’s the vacillating self-confidence. Maybe it’s the chin beard ripped off from Mr. Spock’s evil twin in “Mirror, Mirror.†Maybe it’s the fact that he went six innings plus two batters, struck out six, and gave up nine hits, including three home runs (two to David Wright, which, Good Lord, with their lineup, why are you pitching to that guy? Also, David: Call me.). Whatever the reason, The Commodore (as some have nicknamed him) was not at his best, giving up four runs for the second straight game.
Wright’s first homer came in the top of the 1st, and for a bit it looked like the hometown side would give as good as it got. Tyler Pastornicky, summoned from Gwinnett because Dan Uggla all of a sudden has vision problems (caused by “a stigmatism†that dates back to “late last year,†according to Dig Dug via Jeff Schultz of the AJC) and might need Lasik surgery, led off with an infield hit. Jason Heyward, determined to fool us into thinking he’s back, followed that with a double to center, and Justin Upton blooped in the first run. Hey, no worries! We’re totally in this!
After a nothing second inning and a top of the 3rd that featured what our own BrianJ called a “Sesame Street double play†(a.k.a. 1-2-3), Fab Five Freddie Freeman and Justin knocked liners to the outfield and came around to score on hits from Chris Johnson (remember that name) and Gerald Laird. (At one point in the broadcast Chip Carey praised Laird for never having complained about losing playing time to Gattis. Chip obviously hasn’t read the papers in the last couple of weeks.) Now we’re up by two! We’re totally gonna win this!
We totally weren’t.
Top 4, Wright hits his second homer of the night off Mikey, who’s suddenly not looking so top-5. Bottom 4, Niese pulls up lame in the middle of pitching to the Rev; it looks to the world like he’s touching his right oblique, but the Mets insist later it’s tendonitis in his shoulder. You might be forgiven for being ambivalent at this point in the game about what such a development means for the Braves, because while we’re getting hits, at some point it becomes clear that they’re all singles. The best home-run hitting team in the National League is suddenly hitting like…well, like the Mets. (IWOTB?)
David Aardsma finishes the inning. Pinch-hitter Andrew Brown hits a leadoff homer in the top of the 5th. Atlanta mostly stops hitting at all. By the time Omar Quintanilla leads off the 7th with a double and comes around to score, you can tell it doesn’t matter. The real story: The Braves out-hit New York 13-9, but only one of those hits is for extra bases (Laird’s second inning leadoff double); the (un)vaunted Metropolitans bullpen picks up their fallen comrade with galling ease. Even more galling, Chris “I’m kinda digging the chin beard thing too†Johnson commits three errors – two on one play, one on the botched catch and one on the botched throw. He is the first Brave to do so, we are informed, since Juan “Gone†Francisco. Which makes one feel super-confident about our third base situation. (Seriously, Captain America, CALL ME.) And for the second time in a week, Fredi Gonzalez pulls a move that shall heretofore be referred to as “The Fredi†(hat tip to krussell) and leaves his starting pitcher in to hit leading off an inning (the 6th in this instance), only to pull him after two batters and no outs in the next half. I’m not normally a Fredi-basher – I think he’s show a real ability to learn from his mistakes – and obviously the guy can’t see into the future, but damn.
Oh, and did I mention that it’s B.J. Upton bobblehead night? Which our $75M center fielder (bumped up to the five spot in the batting order for the occasion) celebrates by going 0-for-5 with two strikeouts?
Whatever. This interminable, excruciating ordeal of a series is over. Now all that remains is for us, the living, to pick up the pieces of our shattered lives and move on.
Love means Melvin Junior never having to say he’s sorry.
Excellent writeup, and thanks for the shout out.
Fredi seems to have gotten it into his head since Venters and O’Flaherty went down that the bullpen is fragile and that the starters need to be pushed. It really IS somewhat fragile- Walden’s elbow is likely to go sproing at any moment, and Rasmus and Gearrin are mopup men- but it’s still very good, and he’s overdone it by hauling the starter out there for one more inning that he doesn’t have in him.
Erich Segal would be proud. I think.
Anyway, the Braves might well have lost this game anyway, but it was totally baffling (at the time, not in hindsight) when Fredi let Minor hit for himself in the bottom of the 6th. Minor looked lucky to have escaped with only three runs surrendered to that point, and it was tempting fate to bring him back out for the 7th. Fate won, obviously.
Very nice, hotspur. When you lose your starting pitcher early (or at least earlyish) in a tie game, you have an automatic advantage because you’re playing with a rotating DH rule and the other team is playing by NL rules. Sure enough, the 9th hole hitters won the game for the Mets. So this is the rare NL game when a loss can be blamed on the NL absence of a DH.
(This of course leads to an interesting sabermetric thought exercise… what if you ran an NL team by never letting any pitcher hit? You save a ton of money by not having to pay starters, only relievers, and you score AL levels of runs. The problem is that you run out of nonpitchers almost every game, because you still probably need as many pitchers But for teams that are really good at finding middle relievers off the scrap heap, it’s an interesting thought.) One more issue… you might be tempted to go ahead and let the pitchers hit if you get a big lead, but then you need a whole staff of pitchers who can go six innings, but usually go 2… not sure that kind of player exists anymore.)
Outstanding recap. Best wishes for getting Wright.
Nice recap, Hotspur! Although I think you meant “hereafter” rather than “heretofore”.
So getting back to the whole “are we the team that’s played .500 ball for over two months, or are we the team that went 12-1 to start the season?” discussion…one way to look at it is that we could play .500 for most of the rest of the season, except for one more similar hot stretch where we somehow go 12-1 – and that puts you over 90 wins, which might be enough to win the NL Least.
Right now we totally suck, so I’m trying to keep perspective.
“Keeping perspective,” krussell, teams that are playing .500 ball don’t suck. Houston sucks. The Marlins suck. As Bill James noted in 1982, after the Braves went 13-0 to start the season and 76-73 for the rest of the season to barely win the NL West, most teams, even really good ones, have really long stretches during the season when they play .500 ball. What good teams don’t have is long stretches where they play .250 ball.
hotspur…
be thou praised, a thousand times…
to cheer you up, there’s some really good news for a change…one slumping slugger will be born again, overnight!
the seeing eye’s the reason why
old sluggers never get to die
what stops them in their tracks
the fastball that attacks
peripheries – we wondered why.
swing and miss if repetitious
cannot then be termed capricious
eyes that fail to see
suggests to you and me
Daniel at his least auspicious.
how positive this diagnosis!
quite suborning fan psychosis
a star reborn next week?
a twelve game hitting streak?
he sees! we cheer, such rare osmosis.
We’ve lost 9 of our last 15. That’s pretty sucky.
In any given 15 game stretch, a team playing at a .500 level will lose 9 or more games 30 percent of the time. Even a 60 percent team has a 10 percent probability of going 6-9 or worse in a 15 game stretch. It’s not unusual at all.
@9
Sure, but before that they won 15 of 19.
Yeah but we just lost a series to the METS.
Daniel unravelling at nights, it’s a pain
he can’t see the curve that bites, time and again
Oh but we can see Daniel, starting to cry
God it looks like Daniel, there’s no more clouds in his eye.
Srsly….4 of 5 to the Mets. Case closed. Suck.
The struggles of myopia
Create a loss of hope-ia
After lasers cut his cornea
The basepaths will be worn-ier.
Yes, David Wright, call us.
He’s the only Met I can think of that I’ve ever wanted to cheer for (in a Braves uni). Too bad the timing didn’t work out.
Even though my poor daughter’s tee ball team is the Mets, at least she randomly ended up with number 5 on her shirt.
@14- the Braves lost 3 of 5, not 4 of 5
Well, it SHOULD have been 4 of 5. It WAS 3 of 5, saved only by being lucky enough that we got our only hitter to the plate one last time in the first game.
“are we the team that’s played .500 ball for over two months, or are we the team that went 12-1 to start the season?”
I like to think we’re the team that went 21-13 over it’s last 34. 74 games of season is a small sample size – parsing that out into even smaller sample sizes doesn’t seem particularly telling to me
Things I would like to add:
(1) another solid setup man.
(2) a 3B
The former can be done, and I suspect it will be done. But the latter will be much more difficult. I’m just not sure I can watch Chris Johnson anymore.
You can do anything with arbitrary end points, kids. It’s a fool’s game. Almost as foolish as categorizing wins into “should have lost” and losses into “should have won.” Wins are wins. Freddie really did hit that 2-run shot to take game one of that series. Losses are losses. The record is the record, and winning the division – even the “NLEast” – keeps you out of the 1-game play-in.
At that point, short series, three top tier starters, and give it a go.
It depends on what proposition you’re trying to support, Sam. If I’m proposing “the Braves lose too much,” then you’re right, that’s silly evidence. If I’m proposing “the Braves offense has been bad, and that’s likely to be a problem going forward,” then pointing out one of our recent wins was about as unlikely as they come is a valid supporting article.
I’m not sure what evidence you have that the offense has been “bad.” The Braves have an OPS+ of 98. That’s good for 5th in the NL, in a virtual tie with COL at 4th. Only three teams have been notably better than them – SFG, STL and SDP.
The Braves have scored 312 runs, which is 4th in the league (in a virtual tie with SFG with 311.) They have allowed 256 runs. Their actual record, 43-31, is actually one shy of their Pythag projection, 44-30.
I think you’re mistaking the frustration of some of the details of the offense for it’s actual potency.
Hell I’ll even take the one-game play-in. I’m worried that this team is playing like an 85-win team and that it’s going to be hard to get there if we don’t pick up the level of play a good bit.
As I was watching last night I was thinking that a lineup featuring Pastornicky and Laird and Chris Johnson doesn’t really excite me – but two of those three had good games at the plate so you can’t complain much (but feel free to complain about CJ). It’s still all about our outfield with me. It’s hard to watch these guys – I know they are trying, and probably pressing – but it’s painful right now.
We’ve been bottom of the league in all the “clutch” hitting stats. Chalk it up to lucky/unlucky, but I think that’s why it’s so frustrating sometimes. If you take out Freeman I think the team is hitting way below .200 with 2-outs RISP.
Surely that’s just as unsustainable as Chris Johnsons’ BaBIP? Won’t that “regress” upward?
We have quite a few individual hitters that are in line for a good amount of “positive” regression – so yeah I would think all our hitting stats are beneath their true norms at the moment. Waiting patiently for the mean regression to happen is the hard part.
I think the inverse is true for our pitching…we’ll see.
Yes, “clutch” production should regress to mean, just like Justin Upton did and just like Chris Johnson is/will. We tend to think the Braves offense is bad because 1) they’ve lost a few recently, and recency bias is a bitch; 2) they have had major components of their offense “below the Mendoza line” all season, and that’s just ugly to watch; 3) they K an asston, which is also ugly to watch, and 4) we don’t watch the rest of the league nearly as obsessively as we watch the Braves, so we don’t properly adjust our expectations for league performance in general.
I don’t care about the Ks, but the general “not getting on base” thing sucks. They are in a power outage right now, so you feel like you’re watching Freddie carry a bunch of .150 hitters who struggle to even get duck farts to fall. It’ll turn around at some point.
I don’t understand how some of you people can be so constantly negative about this team. We’ve got the largest division lead in baseball, with both the 5th best record and run differential in MLB. And yet all I ever see is bitching and moaning. You’d think we were in last place by the tone around here.
Team OBP for the last 7, 14, and 28 days is right around the season average.
@5 Indeed I did mean “hereafter.” Actually, I think I meant “henceforth.” I also meant “shown.” I blame the North Coast Pranqster I was using to dull the pain.
I can’t fix those errors directly, but, Alex, please feel free to do so.
Atlanta is tied for 6th in the NL with an on-base pct of .320, 17 points behind league leading STL (.337), 7 points ahead of the league average of .313. Now, they just lost two moderately decent OBPs; 330 (Pena) & 319 (Uggla) and will be replacing them with Tyler Pastornicky and Paul Janish. So that bodes poorly for on base for the next 15 days or so, but again, the team’s OBP is not bad. It’s better than average, but not a league leader.
I agree with the point @29 about the power outage. A team built around power and HRs has had a really bad week to 10 days, slugging wise.
krussell @27: I am not a sabermetrician, if that’s the word, so can you please show me which of our individual hitters is due a positive regression and why. I assume Jason is one, as well as the Uptons, but I don’t understand to what level they should regress.
I’m especially concerned about Heyward, since I FEEL he’s experienced more sustained poor hitting than good. I agree he had a good first year and that perhaps his second year was held down by injury; but what has he done outside of those two years that should merit expectations of excellence.
Seriously, please explain what I’m missing. I want to expect great things from him.
@35, I’m mostly talking about the outfielders. All should, and probably will, do better from this point forward.
BJ has been in a steady multi-year OBP decline, so I think he’s got a low ceiling, but given his horrendous start he can still have a pretty terrible full-year stat line but still be very useful to us from this point forward.
Justin maybe isn’t so far from his norms. I think .250 with streaky power is about what to expect – the strikeout rate is shocking to me though, and I hope that will improve.
Hewyard is a mystery wrapped in a riddle trapped in an enigma…dunno what to say other than he’s had two really good seasons and one bad one where he was hurt (don’t forget he put up legit great numbers last season). So far we’re looking at bad season number two, but there’s still tons of ABs left to get that rectified. I love his athleticism, but hate his swing. I’m worried same as you, but I think he’s too talented to not figure it out.
Thank you. I too think Heyward is a superior athlete. I sure hope he can figure the hitting thing out. Fredi doesn’t have a lot of options, but putting Jason, Justin and BJ in the middle of the lineup doesn’t seem to be working lately.
Heyward, Freddie and BJ lead the Braves in WAR in June. The all have nearly identical RC+ and wOBA.
The assumption on Heyward’s mean is that he’s the player who produced in 2010 and 2012, not the player who was hampered by an injured thumb in 2011. Those are the averages most of us assume are his “return to mean” standards.
@35 – I’m far from well-versed, and I’m not sure exactly how much you already know, but the dummy version is this (Dummy because it’s the way I understand it, not implying thats what you need) Excuse me for rambling.
A.) Over the long term, you expect players to do basically what they’ve always done, with small allowances for age. Players under 26, you expect to do a little bit better than they’ve always done, and players over 30, you expect them do a little worse than they’ve always done.
B.) Regardless of what a player has done in an arbitrary period of time (what they mean by “small sample size”.. whether “Opening day until today” should be considered arbitrary is debatable.) you expect a player, starting today, will do what he has always done.
C.) Certain “peripheral numbers” can imply a player is more or less likely to “regress to the mean” sooner than later, and those factors “Stabilize” at a different sample size. MEANING, you can tell if he’s good at picking balls or strikes to swing at after a relatively small number of at bats. You need more at bats to determine how good he is at making contact when he swings. You need more at bats than that to determine HOW he hits the ball (line drive percentage, infield fly percentage, groundball percentage.) You need way more at bats to determine how good he is at getting hits.
So if you have 50 games worth of at bats, you look to see if a guy is swinging at good pitches to hit. You look to see if he’s making contact when he swings. Then you look to see what kind of contact he’s making. Then, and this is important, you only believe his batting average if you like it 🙂
When things lower on the spectrum, meaning the things that stabilize first, look bad, you can be more concerned. Meaning, if a guy swings at bad pitches, misses them when he swings, and hits infield flys when he hits at all, you call him Andrelton Simmons and consider him actually lucky to hitting as high as .260.
Anyway. This is without looking at fangraphs, but from what I’ve seen here’s my guesses:
Jason has age on his side, he has a recent history of success, he mostly swings at good pitches. Not great contact rates, but a good number of line drives. Expect him to improve.
Justin is basically the exact same story.
Both of those guys are approaching properly, and are maybe “unlucky,” or more likely, have a fixable mechanical flaw or two.
BJ, less young, less recent success, less plate discipline, but similar story. Not as bankable to return to his norms, but, still likely. He’s not as good as those guys anyway, so what do you want?
Dan Uggla has probably reached the point where this is the new normal. He’s on the wrong side of the age spectrum, and he has gone backwards in most every way. He’s been unreasonably bad, so you want to say “he can’t be this bad this fast,” but he’s been this bad for about 166 games now. So, yeah…
@40 – Concur.
I like BJ to improve back to his “middle ground” between his super great rookie season and his recent declines. I expect Jason and Justin to be All-Star level performers over the next 3-5 years.
The only hope for Uggla is a Matt Diaz “what do you mean you can’t see?” moment. It’s not likely.
Interesting.
Uggla’s OPS in day games .860, night games .654. Maybe the contacts will help.
Pena on the DL, Janish has been recalled
@DSimpson88: Cristhian Martinez made a rehab appearance with the GCL Braves today. Threw 2 innings, 1 hit allowed, 0 walks, 4 Ks.
@ajcbraves: #Braves lineup: 1. Simmons SS 2. Heyward RF 3. Freeman 1B 4. J Upton LF 5. McCann C 6. B Upton CF 7. Uggla 2B 8. C Johnson 3B 9. Teheran P
I think the only thing I would add to #40 (which I too agree with in the main) is that using backward-looking data to derive predictive value is a tenuous proposition – players get worse and better and have seasons that don’t correlate to their statistical arc quite often. As the saying goes, that’s why they play the games. Further, trying to distill all this information into something as granular as a game’s worth of tactical decisions is subject to even greater variations from the mean. People really do draw to an inside straight sometimes. There is no book, old-school managerial, sabrmetrical, or otherwise that can hope to determine what to do next with any degree of accuracy. I am certainly not implying chaos, but the winningest poker players, and the winningest managers do things counter to defined strategies or “best practices” if you will all the time. It’s not a guarantor of continued success by any means, but neither is managing strictly by any system – games and seasons/hands and tournaments are just too short of an event. Now the question of degree of deviation is where the rubber meets the road.
No Gattis?! No Pena?! Where’s our bench? We need Brooks Conrad, stat!
Again, @46, concur and double concur again. Managing to the sabr-book and playing rote probability will lead to 81-81 records as often as not.
Actually, some of Dan’s best games this year were on West Coast trips, where the sun was still up. Huh.
I thank you all for sharing your wisdom. I do not disagree, but I want to see expectations fulfilled before I enshrine anyone into the Braves HOF, let alone Cooperstown.
That said, I an eager, eager I say, for Jason and Justin to produce at a much higher level.
Thanks again. Now let’s clobber some Brewers.
We are in the middle of 48 games in 50 days including some on west coast. Next there are 8 games in 11 days. I am still tired from the last west coast trip. Players are likely tired too.
People occasionally do draw to an inside straight, but there ain’t much percentage in expecting them to.
@42/49, the day/night issue is one that intrigues me. I noted a couple of years ago that Brian McCann’s OPS in day games was two hundred points better (at that time) than his OPS during night games — and that Bobby Cox tended often to sit him in, e.g., Sunday day games following Saturday night games (a practice Fredi has mostly continued). I wondered then, on the DOB blog at AJC, whether the sample size was big enough to try switching the pattern — sit BMac at night, play him the following day — and see what happened. DOB mocked me in his patented irascible way. I shut up.
But I know my own eye issues suggest that as difficult and precise a task as picking up a baseball coming out of a pitcher’s hand at speeds up to 100 MPH and trying to make solid contact could well be affected, it seems to me, significantly enough by changes in lighting to make a difference. Particularly if the player in question has other problems with his eyes.
It’s a subject worth gathering data on. Me being a lazy, right-brain type, I’ll leave that to others and just content myself with my unsupported assumptions. 😉
I heard an interview with Huddy where he made reference to pitching day games being harder because the hitters see the ball so much better.
All of this lending credence to Dan seeing the ball better at night. But at the same time, so does everyone else, whether they need glasses or not.
Welp.
Why do guys even take leads on Teheran?
I think I’m developing a serious man crush on Teheran. He has obviously put a ton of work into his game: his defense, his pickoff abilities, his hitting. Those are things that many veteran pitchers don’t seem to care about, but this kid could run a clinic. And now that he looks like he’s putting his pitching together at a major league level? Love it.
PS: Also his smooth, no-nonsense delivery.
I am overjoyed that we kept Julio instead of Delgado despite having taken the opposite position at the time of the trade.
Anybody else using MLB.tv? And is the sound way out of sync?
Martin Maldonado and Scooter Gennett? That has to be made up.
MLB.tv audio is way out of sync. Switched to the Brewers broadcast and that seems fine.
Came out of commerical for the top of the 3rd, and it’s working properly now.
Meaning you can tune back in Chip. If that’s something you would choose to do.
Just tried the radio-over lay, and it’s still way off. But watching tv and hearing tv should sync now.
@59 Yes and yes. I’ve turned it off for the moment as a result.
Uggla: 1.000 OPS post-new-contacts
Yet another example of why you don’t give away outs when you already have a man in scoring position.
Fair amount of praise for a stupid defensive play.
Send Simmons to Richmond. The guy walks two guys and you swing and POP UP the first pitch LIKE YOU ALWAYS DO.
And yes, I’m aware we don’t have a club in Richmond.
@67, Well, except that one game where he showed a ton of discipline and walked twice and got two hits working deep into counts.
@68 – Proving that he isn’t incapable, just stupid.
Well that was pathetic.
And then Heyward works a 3-1 count and grounds softly to an infielder, like he always does.
@69, My point exactly! Here’s hoping he can start connecting successful discipline to positive results (or has a coach that can make this point).
@71 – They have plenty of coaches in AAA!
Seems like lucky vs. good today.
Who’s good? I haven’t seen them yet.
Teheran.
We’ve also had a line drive and a warning track out. Don’t think the Brewers have really made good contact yet. I’m kind of half watching though.
Julio’s making good contact. With Brewers hitters.
Is L Schafer Success’s cousin Loser?
Nice single play.
Should have been interference.
With Chris Johnson at third and Dan Uggla at second, we need Andrelton at short every possible day. If our outfield and second baseman were hitting, I bet we wouldn’t even notice Andrelton’s foibles at bat. We certainly wouldn’t feel them as acutely as we do.
Yeah, 8 base runners through the 4th inning, and he’s only allowed 1 run. Meanwhile we’ve been held hitless by a guy with a 6.08 ERA coming in.
I’ve got a different interpretation of who’s been lucky and who’s been good.
We’re improving. It only four-plus innings to get our first hit.
So lucky.
Greetings from Vegas…
You’re allowed to wake up any time, fellas.
More interference. Nice.
This was not well thought out.
Effing squeeze again.
That wasn’t unlucky, it was stupid, for the record.
I guess the Brewers are lucky that Fredi is managing, in a way.
This is a special team led by a special manager.
Good grief. Fredi is such a liability.
That was performance art disguised as baseball.
Bad decision making, bad execution, and bad luck make a potent combination.
Unreal.
Why does anyone think that is Fredi’s fault? Teheran was trying to move the runner to 2nd, B.J. thought he could make it, and he was wrong.
I don’t know what that was. It wasn’t a squeeze. Maybe a safety squeeze. But it might also have just been a sac bunt and BJ decided to go on his own, thinking he could make it.
Some managers may have the benefit of the doubt on an odd bunting decision. I don’t think ours is among them. At least not beyond question.
All I need to see.
This rough patch for the Braves has been death by a thousand cuts. Not a lot of fun to watch.
Segura is so good.
@92, I was trying to formulate a comment that said exactly what you said, but said “screw it” and gave up. So thanks for being more persistent than I!
@95 I’m sitting behind the dugout, not more than 35 feet from the third-base line. If BJ went on his own, he is the stupidest player alive.
I miss this team having power.
At a time we could be up 10-12 games by playing half way decent, looks like the lead will be cut to 5. A healthy lead still, but the wiggle room is all but gone
Gameday said “injury delay” a couple innings ago. What was that?
You’d almost never know that Heyward and Freeman have roughly the same OPS in June.
@104: Brewer catcher injured (slightly) blocking plate against BJ
Freddie’s having a really inept night at the plate so far. This offense can’t afford that.
People occasionally do draw to an inside straight, but there ain’t much percentage in expecting them to.
When there is an arbitrary endpoint (number of outs), opportunity cost will dictate that you have to try low-percentage play sometimes. Probabalistic models break down under less than infinite attempts, and the fewer chances, the greater the potential divergence.
Betting that you will flip a coin 100% of the time heads up makes no sense over 1000 throws, but a ton on two.
You guys let me know when it’s ok to worry.
The 2013 Braves excel at lowering the ERAs of their opponents’ 4th and 5th starters.
A better analogy, spike: you optimally hit 16 against a dealer 10 showing in blackjack even though your expectation for that play is negative — it’s just that not hitting is even more negative.
Yeah, I really wasn’t impressed with Peralta. We did him some favors and he had a couple close calls with the fence.
But if Chip and Joe want to crown his ass, Denny Green etc.
Brewers sure are a slappy bunch.
Well poker is a very poor analogy t o baseball for a number of reasons. The point is, even in a game like poker which has far fewer variables than baseball, by-the-book play can, and usually does, get you beat just as fast as reckless play. As much as I hear the term “luck” used to describe player performance that varies from the norm, it seems like although unquantifiable, it’s a fairly significant aspect to the outcome.
Not much I hate in this game more than the swing at the first pitch after a walk idea.
Joe Simpson hates fatties
There just hasn’t been much to say tonight, has there?
3 outs by Krod. Each out was made on a pitch that wasn’t a strike.
Their shortstop is better than our shortstop?
#119 – so far this year he is
Straight fastballs to Brian and he was under all of them.
You know what would be neat? Seeing BJ rip one over the left centerfield wall.
What is the advantage of that steal?
I don’t care how good a jump Justin had; it’s stupid to risk ending the game on a stolen base when you’re not the tying run.
Edit- And pointless anyway due to BJ’s walk.
Hopefully Uggla can make CONTACT.
Get it?
Okay, forget about BJ. It’s DAN TIME! Come on, Dan. Put those contacts on the ball and hit the hell out of it!
Apparently Dan doesn’t get it.
What a wonderful birthday present.
I just tuned in during McCann’s AB there in the 9th. Doesn’t appear like I missed anything. I vote we get back to our winning ways. This poor stretch we’re in has lasted long enough!
Two hits against the Brewers. I think we all need our brains checked.
We just need more hitting coaches
I frankly don’t know if Walker and Fletcher survive this.
We were on a 1:6 ratio of hitting coaches to ML players. Let’s get a few more coaches in here and tighten the ratio.
This dang team. Drives you crazy…
Braves now lead the league in shutouts?
Ive never seen a team with more eye issues than Braves .. McCann, Freeman , Uggla, Wood .. .whos next maybe they will find out B Upton and J upton and Simmons and Heyward all have eye issues …. you see what speed does tonight .. the 1 and 2 hitters in Brewers lineup beat us .. wish we were back to hitting opposite field and hit and runs etc ..thats baseball to me .. these 10 and 11 SO gamesa re getting old … dang somebody put the ball in play.
The guy had the worst ERA for starters in NL … and he throws a 2 hitter … man we can be bad .. one question please ..how in the heck are we leading the division … but look out here comes the Nats … they will be only about 2 games out at all star break I predict and go to 1st place 2 weeks after .
This team is definitely testing the limits of even the most devoted fans of the “strikeouts don’t matter” ideology.
Our pitching is too good for us to be having these losing streaks. You cant win ballgames when you arent putting the ball in play.
Recapped by blazon.