While the Braves prepare for their homestand against the Marlins, Phils and Senators (oops, Nationals) the winning streak has propelled Fredi Gonzalez up the franchise managerial rankings (primarily Boston guys).
These numbers are not totally comparable since seasons were shorter (games and wins), but provide an interesting perspective on a venerable franchise.
Games: As of Aug. 8, Gonzalez has managed 439 games as a Brave. Assuming he manages the remainder of the season, he will finish with 486, tied with Joe Torre for 3rd most games as an Atlanta manager an 14th with the Franchise. On Tuesday, Gonzalez passed Al Buckenberger, who managed three complete seasons, but only 437 games. Buckenberger managed 1902-04, with the Braves finishing 3rd, 6th and 7th as the team regressed from its winning form of the 1890’s. Five more games will tie Gonzalez with the immortal Hall-of-Fame executive Harry Wright at 444 games. Wright managed the Braves, snagging two pennants, during the first six years of the National League, 1876-1881, when seasons averaged only 70-80 games. (Wright also managed the Red Stockings in the predecessor National Association, but those games aren’t included.) Wright would manage Providence, two seasons, and Philadelphia through 1893, but never match the success he had with Boston. Between Wright and Torre sits Fred Mitchell who managed Boston for three seasons 1920-22.
Wins: As of Aug. 8, Gonzalez has recorded 253 victories with the Braves. He passed Hall-of-Famer Dave Bancroft (249 victories) last week. Bancroft managed Boston for four seasons (1924-27) never posting a winning record. (He was a player-manager for those four years, but he’s in the Hall for his great work at shortstop, not his indifferent record as a field manager.) Gonzalez is one victory shy of Harry Wright (254) and four victories shy of Joe Torre. Assuming the Braves win more than four games the rest of the season, Gonzalez will finish the season holding the 12th most victories as a Brave and 3rd for Atlanta.
Losses: As of Aug. 8, Gonzalez gets credit for 186 losses as Braves manager. He is one game behind Harry Wright, who lost 187, but over six much shorter seasons. Then the list gets more interesting, and the names more familiar to long-time Atlanta fans. Dave Bristol lost 192 games over the 1976-77 campaigns (and might have lost more had Ted Turner not considered himself managerial material). Bristol managed 322 games for Atlanta, winning 40% of them. Depending on how the Braves finish the season, Chuck Tanner is next on the losing list, notching 208 losses in a bit more than two seasons (1986-87 and 39 games into 1988). If Gonzalez passes Tanner and catches Russ Nixon, we’ll be watching another epic collapse which I’d rather not even contemplate.
Short term goals checklist:
• Two more wins to tie the 2000 streak.
• One more after that to beat them.
• Four more after that to tie the 2002 A’s.
• One more after that to beat them.
Long term goals:
• NL East Magic Number down to zero.
• Best record in the NL.
The cherry on top would be best record in the majors, but I’m not gonna be greedy.
If Fredi can check any off this list, I’ll give him an unironic, unadulterated tip of the hat.
@33, from previous post: How much are those playoff tickets?
@ 1, using my estimates from the previous thread:
Two more wins: .8088^2 = 65.4%
One more win after that: .654 x .8088 = 52.9%
Four more wins after that: 52.9% x .7534^3 x .6245 = 14.1%
One more win after that: 14.1% x .6245 = 8.8%
So your aggregate short term goal is about 12 to 1 against.
Interestingly, the Bradley-Terry method has us favored (at the moment) in every remaining game other than the three games in St. Louis.
It has us at 385,338,018 to 1 to go undefeated for the rest of the regular season, by the way. This is roughly twice as unlikely as winning Powerball on a single ticket.
John R, For season ticket holders, the post season tickets have to be bought in “strips” which include all of the possible post season games. At this point I do not know if the “strips” include the single game wild card, or how many of the DS and NLCS tickets are included (I assume we get a single game wild card (even though we won’t need it) and home field for the DS and NLCS (so maximums of both of those) plus the non-home field WS (thanks Bud and your stupid All-Star game)). Whatever tickets are not used are refunded back. Having said all of that, I do not yet have a break down for what each individual game will cost. What I do know is two seats in club (Lexus) level and a parking pass for all of post season will cost $2862 and that includes the “handling fee”. I should know what the individual games cost in a few days so I can let you know more then.
Happy Jason Heyward’s birthday, everyone!
Well, I now remember why I don’t follow preseason anything, especially football. I was at the Falcons preseason game last night (relax, the ticket was free), so out of curiosity I did a cursory glance at some of the various Falcons websites I go to during the regular season (you know, when it’s actually football season?). Apparently last night’s meaningless preseason-opening loss was “a disaster,” “a huge cause for concern,” “proof for fears that this team is due for a big regression,” etc. That kind of mind-numbing twaddle is what I get for being stupid enough to look, I suppose.
What we learned from the Falcons pre-season game last night was that they haven’t figured out how to replace their starting right tackle (Mike Johnson) since he destroyed his left leg in practice last Tuesday.
In other news, if Dominique Davis and Sean Renfree get more snaps than Matt Ryan in 2013, the Falcons are probably going to be in trouble…
Pre-season NFL is one of America’s great sports annoyances.
Only went to one pre-season game in my life, but I went because it was the first event at the Georgia Dome. Spent most of the game just walking around.
Big night for Beachy I think – if he can’t come up with a good to very good performance, I’ll be disappointed.
@9
I literally did everything the opposite of how I normally do it going to a game. The game started at 8, and my brother and I were eating dinner about a mile away from the stadium, looked up and saw that it was 7:40, and continued leisurely eating our dinner, not bothering to rush to get to the game on time. We sat around the entire game talking about various things, many of them not football-related, and weren’t paying very much attention to the game at all. If someone had asked me what had been going on over the previous five minutes, I wouldn’t have had a clue. We left with about three minutes remaining in the third quarter. I felt like a Dodgers fan or something. It was kind of liberating, in a way, especially as people around us were actually cheering and complaining about the game and whatnot.
#10
Looking for further improvement, no doubt.
Just glad we have a whopping divisional lead, so that each Beachy start isn’t treated as such a crisis. Wanna see a good start, sure, but he still has time to get sorted.
As a UGA fan, the Bengals having a black backup quarterback wearing the number 8 had me doing a double-take for a second.
@1: Why stop at 21, though? Sweep the Marlins, Phillies, and Nats and they set a new major-league record. Not likely, no, but so long as we’re dreaming…
In case anyone else is interested in things like this:
Mike Minor is 20th in MLB (10th in the NL) in pitching fWAR. Teheran is 50th (25th).
Freeman is 15th in MLB (9th in the NL) in wOBA; Johnson is 24th (14th); Upton is 25th (15th).
@14, What is the winning streak record? I’m all for achieving it!
Another Minor oddity is one a friend enlightened me to after Huddy’s injury. May have been mentioned before, but with Tim on the shelf, Minor is this staff’s “veteran”, with more starts in a Braves uni than anyone else on the team.
#16
The 1916 New York Giants with 26 (although there was a tie in there). So we’re halfway there.
BTW, it was all in September and it only enabled them to finish 4th that year.
So here’s something kinda neat.
Now that we’ve got a 13-game winning streak to go with the 10-gamer from the first week of the season, the 8-gamer we had in May is almost totally overlooked. (We also had a 5-gamer.)
But If we’d never had the 10-gamer or the 13-gamer, that 8-game streak would STILL have been better than most seasons since 1991.
In the 22 years before this one, going back to when The Streak began, in only 9 seasons did we have even an 8 game streak (12 total streaks.) We’ve done it THREE TIMES THIS YEAR. We did something similar in 1992, with a 13 gamer, and two different 9 gamers. Twelve streaks in the 22 years before this one, and 3 in this season alone. This team might be pretty good.
2010 – 9 games
2003 – 8 games
2000 – 15 games
1999 – 10 games (also an 8-gamer)
1998 – 9 games
1995 – 9 games
1993 – 9 games
1992 – 13 games (also TWO 9-gamers)
1991 – 8 games
And Kimbrel in his 3rd full season is by far the longest tenured bullpen member. No other member that has been a regular part of this bp has even one full season w the Braves.
Is the edit function fudged for everyone, or just me?
EDIT: Nevermind, it works. For some reason I have 5 minutes to edit this post, but my last post is only 3 minutes old and there’s no “edit” button or count-down on it.
Just because I’m a little OCD, this takes it back to the team moving to Atlanta:
1985 – 9 games
1982 – 13 games
1970 – 11 games
1969 – 10 games
1966 – 8 games
So in the 47 seasons before this one, the Braves had 14 seasons with an 8 game streak, and 17 total 8+ game winning streaks. Three this season.
I never post, and after this I’ll go back to the shadows and enjoy your content, but here’s a contribution of my own regarding a certain someone who isn’t too impressed with our Braves right now.
I’m not a photo-shop expert, but I think the context comes through enough for a laugh.
http://oi44.tinypic.com/2ew3azn.jpg
Heyward rf
JUpton lf
Freeman 1b
McCann c
CJohnson 3b
Uggla 2b
BUpton cf
Simmons ss
Beachy p
@21, if you register and log in, you’ll be able to edit any of your comments at any time.
I didn’t know that registering and logging in was even a thing we could do. I’ve always just dumped my handle and email addy in the form.
What strange world is this?
News to me too.
IMO, what’s really strange is having this division practically locked up on Aug. 9 despite losing Hudson, EOF, Venters & co.
@28
I think there were valid risks for all of those guys, and Wren planned accordingly and had people waiting. As his been mentioned, if we lost Simmons or Uggla, we might have been up a creek. Knock on wood.
Plus no Bmac for a month, Jhey, Gattis, Schaefer, Bupton, Mahlom DL. For a season where things have gone wrong more stuff has gone right.
Hey Spike, how’d the show come off?
Yeah, Spike, as a non-ATL resident I obviously couldn’t come, but you piqued my interest as a musician. Does your band have a website?
EDIT: Good God, Simba. The Reason, indeed.
Simmons getting the highlight reel play out of the way early.
And Jupton getting the homering started early.
Edit: Oh my, Regression.
Regression has to be my favorite Braves nickname ever. I’m such a nerd.
Clermont is the funnest gig I have – a group of 10 people are going to walk in at midnight – hipsters, convetioneers, tourists or whatever – determined to have a wild night. Every time. I do two acts these days, both with Facebook pages –
Ghost Rider car Club, traditional Bakerfield country, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZssMgwEISdE
and Julea Thomerson and Her Dear Johns, more of a rockabilly/hilbilly thing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPVi8Eb_XS8
What is this registration stuff that’s being discussed?
To the right under the Meta section I guess –
First post after registration. Let’s see how this works.
@35 – I love that Dear Johns stuff. You posted a couple videos from that band previously and I forgot what it was called.
The singer and drummer from my current group were in a very similarly named group, Gina Hendershot and the True Born Sons.
http://ghtbs.bandcamp.com/
It’s hammer time tonight.
It is almost as though Brian McCann is The Best Catcher in Baseball, or something.
I registered and logged in… The only difference I see is the Edit timer is gone, and every post I make after signing in keeps the “click to edit” and “Request deletion” links.
The ball is jumping tonight. I like having a good feeling about #14 when we’re only in the third inning.
I’m supposed to do dinner with the girlfriend’s mother tonight, and I said “Let me get 3 innings in. We should be up by 6 by then and I can rest easy.”
Pretty close!
Beachy looks fantastic tonight.
That was interesting. I just learned that I had registered long, long ago with a different username. It’s a username I actually like, biffrules. I think I’m going to give up JonathanF. Any objections?
I doubt anyone would object, and if they did it would still be up to you, Biff.
It was a rhetorical question, actually.
Somehow, I think “biffrules” makes your statistical insights a tad less credible-sounding, but you know what, go with it.
That was ball four, twice, Dan.
49: At least he doesn’t swing at those often.
Yeah, that’s some smoking hot guitar, spike.
Beachy back or IWOTF?
18: I don’t count ties. The true record is 21 games, set by the 1935 Chicago Cubs. And if the Braves sweep this homestand, they will have a record-setting 22 games.
52 — A bit of both I’d say, he’s left some meatballs over the plate, but after the first couple of innings he’s had pretty good control. And that’s with basically throwing just fastball and changeup. He hasn’t thrown the curve much and mostly for show I think.
Brandon Beachy is starting to look like he’s back, and the team is four outs away from a 14-game win streak in August. I know that Mac would say that I shouldn’t start getting hopeful, but I am having a really hard time following that advice.
Of course, I think Fredi Gonzalez needs to be fired.
Good game, Beachy.
Good game, ball club.
That was awesome.
DET and PIT both losing – closing in on longest active streak and best record.
And Pittsburgh is getting hammered.
Didn’t watch, but monitored while running errands on a Friday night. That part wasn’t fun, but Beachy doing so well and extending out streak to 14 makes up for it plenty. Can’t wait for tomorrow. Lets hope Wood is good.
Just heard Pressure on the Defense got sent down to make room for Success. It’ll be good to see him again. Hope he picks up where he left off.
59: Already got longest active streak; the Tigers can’t catch the Braves, only surpass them once the Braves’ snaps. (But it’s looking like Detroit will snap first.)
Schafer went something like 1 for 100 rehabbing at Gwinnett, but I’m hopeful he’ll pick it up again.
We’ve probably seen the best of Jordan Schafer this season. I remain skeptical that he has suddenly morphed into a real hitter. His career .572 OPS in AAA is hard to ignore.
Then again, he’s an improvement over Constanza.
Cards just fell behind Cubs 3-0 in the 7th, too!
Cards are losing, Pirates are losing, Dodgers are losing. Red Sox and Tigers are losing, too. This could be a productive day in our quest for best record.
recapped…
I’ve gotta’ say that Fredi is growing on me. He’s not the greatest in game manager but is at least comparable and probably better than Cox in that area. The players seem to like him and McDowell has turned into an out-of-this-world pitching coach.