This Fourth of July found me and the family up at my parents in the wilds of North Carolina, in The Middle Of Nowhere, as my youngest once told her grandparents, to their faces,in a real Dennis the Menace moment.
The Braves jumped on Josh Collmenter early, B.J. Upton wasting no time extending his hit streak to 10 games with a single.
After a steal of second, an Andrelton Simmons sacrifice and a Freddie Freeman single, the Braves had manufactured the game’s first run. A Justin Upton double helped lead to the second, a Jason Heyward groundout scoring Freeman.
The D-backs got one back in the top of the second when Martin Prado scored on a wild pitch that somehow went through a hole in spacetime in the glove of Ervin Santana, through Santana’s hair, and singed his neck as Prado scored.
The Braves manufactured two more runs in the bottom of the second, singles by Tommy LaStella (who looks to have seized the seventh spot in the order by the scruff of the neck-which I firmly approve of, by the way) and Gerald Laird. Santana’s bunt try forced LaStella at third, and things looked grim when Bossman, Jr.’s little flare to right field didn’t score a stumbling Laird. However, The Defense singled to score Another Fredi G., and Justin Upton was gifted with a bases loaded walk by Collmenter, after it appeared that both Ball 3 (a check swing) and Ball 4 (on the black) should have been Strike 3 instead.
At this point, it was getting dark, so we went outside to shoot off fireworks, which was infinitely more exciting than the next 5 innings or so. I did record the game, so I’m thrilled to know that John Smoltz loves cotton candy, and it’s always a pleasure to hear Timothy Miller, in a rare Friday night performance, belt out God Bless America, and the MLB first basemen (and Derek Jeter) read Lou Gehrig’s farewell speech, but the game itself was…well..sorta dull. The Braves finally snapped out of Hibernation Mode, no doubt inspired by Miller, with The Defense doubling to lead off, and being driven in by The Offense for the final Braves run. Santana cruised into the 8th, and would have gotten out of it without Arizona’s second run scoring, but Simba and Freeman couldn’t pull off the 3-6-3 double play, which allowed Didi Gregorius to score.
Craig Kimbrel came in to do The Kraken thing in the 9th, in a 1-2-3 manner. So, I suppose that if you’re going to use him with a three run lead, it’s best to not have him throw any sort of meaningful pitch. So we got that going for us at least.
Anyway, the Nats lost, America is still Land of the Free, and the Braves have won eight straight. Win, win, win. A fan can get used to this.
There is something very wrong with this recap… please fix it before my head explodes. Thank you.
Gah, sorry about the formatting. I’ve emailed Alex who I hope will be along to straighten out the mess I made – kinda like Shae Simmons coming in to clean up Mike Minor’s messes.
I just couldn’t wait for Alex… it was hurting my brain. Hopefully Alex and Seat Painter don’t mind me trying to fix things up and if I missed anything then maybe Alex can make it better.
Hap,
I have no problems with you cleaning up. Did you see what I did wrong?
I thought maybe it was your “strong” tags but I think the problem was you pasted raw HTML in the wysiwyg window of the editor (I can’t remember what that tab was labeled) instead of pasting it in the “text” window of the editor. I’m not sure if that description makes sense but it’s all I’ve got at the moment. 😉
Great recap, it looks fine to me. I especially love the headline!
Great recap, Seat Painter. Thank you. Go Braves. Get well, Bear.
It seems that playing Philadelphia, New York, and Arizona works better than posting Phil Collins videos, or telling old jokes. But, we were trying.
There’s a bit of talk going ’round on the blogosphere about the success of the new lineup. Here’s the breakdown:
BJ- .717 OPS
Andrelton- .689 OPS (no power, but a .364 OBP)
Freeman- .918 OPS
Jupton- .828 OPS
Heyward- .545 OPS
CJ- .659 OPS
La Stella- .705 OPS
Team Total: .677 OPS
Team Total before: .680 OPS
Nope…it’s still just about the pitching.
We’ve benefited from some shoddy defense lately among the bottom-dwellers, and have possibly been a little better at bunching our hits. There’s no predictive value to these trends, but we’re cashing the victories while we can.
It hasn’t been all or nothing during the stretch. We’ve been scoring a few runs a game, which has been giving us a chance to win every game. When you’re pitching as well as we are, that’s literally the difference between winning almost every game and winning just half of them.
@10, as Lemke (?!?!?) pointed out on the radio, there really is no such thing as small ball, just good baseball in games you don’t hit a home run. I agree, there is no predictive value per se, and it’s not like they are actively not trying to hit home runs to pursue a smallball strategy. They are however playing good defense, not striking out as much with runners on base, getting offensive value from 2b/CF, great middle relief and timely hitting. That’s a very good set of signs, and if/when the homers do come, things can only get better.
This is what we should have printed after the infield fly game.
http://www.sbnation.com/soccer/2014/7/5/5872737/colombians-are-really-mad-about-the-ref-in-the-brazil-game
they shorted the translation a bit – “son of a big whore b*tch” is a little more accurate.
Listening to Fangraphs podcast, where they’re discussing how Chris Johnson has nearly twice as many GIDPs (15) as unintentional walks drawn (8).
The Eighty Inch Braves…
…this may be old hat to you but it ain’t to me (and if it was why didn’t you tell the rest of us about it?)
As will become evident from the parrot like acronyms that follow you don’t actually have to understand something so long as you can remember what it’s called…three ingredients are necessary…
mlbtv subscription
large tv, sized to taste,1080p…repeat 1080p…repeat p, not i…P!
HDMI cable
what no one had told me was the step up to p – about 5 years ago,??, Jeez, with the conjunction of the HDMI cable and a smart tv gave you HD quality transference from your computer to the tv screen…for the last 11 years we have hosted a 73 inch Mitsubishi behemoth weighing in at 500 lbs which we finally found 4 local high school football stars to haul away for one dollar via craiglist…I had been told, correctly as it turned out, don’t even bother to hook up your computer to that, the quality’s awful. Needless to say it was an i, an early one at that. So we didn’t bother.
Now, as I speak, our new Sharp, in a darkened room, is being attended to by my friend, the ultimate geek, the calibrator. He is currently in his fifth hour of ‘tuning’ – we don’t stint here in Appalachia. But before he even started this main thrust of his visit he pulled out a long HDMI and the image on my PC appeared in giant size, WITH NO LOSS OF RESOLUTION. amazin’, at least to me.
So tonight Jason Heyward will stand tall at the plate not dwarfed. It’s already clear that this new utopia screams for two contents in particular, baseball and porn. It will be a nightly struggle to choose but my money’s on El Oso .
So don’t now tell me you knew all about this 5 years ago. You never said a thing.
p not i
Just arrived back in Europe with my wife. So my apologies upfront if this leads to end of the win streak.
blazon, I am blown away every time you write. I’ve never heard the words of the english language put together in such a way. Wonderful. Question: Are you a an English-first speaker? It almost seems as though you have learned the English language 2nd hand because no one where I’m from could teach it to the quality of which you write.
ryan…
very much first…what’s ironic is i can’t really see the difference you can…other than self deprecating humor – an art form of the British educated classes, God help us – and the vocabulary itself…and that’s likely DNA from a father who read Catullus in the original to relax and a Scots aunt with a wicked sense of humor and a line in bawdy jokes with a laugh to match…watch John Oliver on his new HBO show, you get a taste of it.
You teach, right? How to get kids to read, to value words…to use them, see their magic, their utility…how do you do that?
Yeah my feeling about the “streak” is along the lines of Sansho’s. I don’t feel any differently about the quality of this team than I did 2 weeks ago. They aren’t playing better baseball, they are playing against worse opponents, and the “streak,” wouldn’t be a streak at all, if the opponents could catch the baseball even a little bit. We might have lost 2 of 3 in the Met’s series if David Wright had been standing at thirdbase.
That said, we may get our act together soon, and being “hot” might help speed that along, as far as the guys playing more confidently. The major plus here is, if they do get their act together, they’re 4 wins closer to the objective than if they’d had the .500 record that their play on the field probably deserved.
Double post, somehow.
CJ Nitkowski is commentating today. Cool, I enjoy listening to him.
So I think they can scrap this strategy of “throw two outside, and then come back right down the middle” already.
What did I say about the “throw two outside, and come back right down the middle” thing?
Get Simmons off the field.
Ugh… messy defense.
We evidently need a relief shortstop.
This is like a minor league game.
Get Hale ready.
What a craptastic display of baseball talent this half inning has been.
Harang is going to walk the pitcher with the bases loaded, just to make sure I hate every single player on the field.
Like I was saying above, I don’t think this team is an any way fundamentally different from the team that sucked 2 weeks ago.
32- Could’ve done without the demonstration, but I see your point.
And here’s BJ extending the world’s most useless hitting streak.
BJ…just keep up what you’re doing.
That helps.
So does that balk. We may not out-suck these guys today.
I wonder if maybe both teams are hung over? Or still drunk?
No HRs for Heyward in a long time…
Yes, Heyward’s performance has really caught up to the criticism.
Damn, thought he mighta had that one.
Why is Harang swinging here?
WTF?
Now there’s a little of the Jason we need.
Edit: And there’s some of the Jason we don’t need.
Way to bounce back, Andrelton!
Mr. Simmons, you have redeemed yourself!
Keep it going Bravos!!! Nice triple, Freddie!
Andrelton, just when I thought you couldn’t possibly be any dumber, you go and do something like this… and totally redeem yourself.
And Freddie didn’t do anything wrong exactly, but chooses to redeem himself anyway.
Nats up 7-0 over the Cubs, which is just un-American but not unexpected.
#Grit
Our offense this game has been really fun to watch. We haven’t rolled over in any inning.
Diamondbacks are getting Haranged.
TLS… I love you!
Nine game streak. Ain’t winning fun?
And that’s nine straight in the books. Ten tomorrow.
i guess we are less mediocre than the competition.
39- Any change in where Heyward’s performance stands relative to “the criticism” since 4:45 pm today? Please advise if so; otherwise, I will assume his performance has caught up to “the criticism” and hold faith that his performance does not exceed it.
Greetings from Vegas…
Eventually, we’ll play a winning ballclub again, but it’s not until well after the All-Star break when the Braves visit the Dodgers (July 29-31).
Until then, it’s D-Backs (1), @ Mets (4), @ Cubs (3), Phils (3), Marlins (4) & Padres (4).
Get it while it’s good.
Red Sox and Yankees are both under or hovering around .500. I would love a postseason devoid of those two teams.
@56 – You kinda talked your way around me on that one. I’m not really sure what you’re getting at, so I’ll just explain my meaning.
A few weeks back it was a popular refrain that Heyward was struggling, even though he had played well for 6 weeks. In the two weeks since then, Heyward has hit the way everyone acted like he was hitting all along, which is to say, poorly.
Heyward is hitting poorly lately, and frustration with him is, in my mind, justified at present. Heyward was hitting well before that, and in my mind, the frustration with him at that point was less justified.
In the past one week Jason Heyward has been hitting poorly–but very, very poorly, enough to make his two-week line look terrible.
At least his defense is still intact.
Heyward is streaky and is probably getting pitched around some. We have won nine in a row, I’m not worried.
My barber says the following is being discussed:
ATL gets: Chris Parmelee, Eduardo Nunez and Brian Duensing
MIN gets: Tyler Pastornicky, Todd Cunningham, Victor Caratini and Ryan Butcher
jjschiller- got it, and agreed, at least with respect to his offense. You’re right- at one point a week or two ago, he’d reached safely in 44 out 48 of his most recent games and seemed nobody noticed. Hopefully he turns his numbers against lefties around and starts hitting again. Given his defensive contributions, which never flag, I still think he’s a valuable player, but would love to see him get his hitting back on track.
The Nats released our old buddy Mike Gonzalez.
http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2014/07/nationals-release-reliever-mike-gonzalez.html
Recap is up.