Wild Pitch, you made my heart sing.
You made everything groovy, Wild Pitch.
Aroldis Chapman, now we love you.
Phil Gosselin raced home for sure.
One Oh Three and not in the zone,
Means you lose.
Shelby Miller is a good thing.
His pitching makes everything groovy, good pitch.
Jim Johnson, he knows how to save you.
And low scoring games are fine,
As long as you win them still.
We love this.
Early rain, didn’t make our hearts ache.
Everything ended up groovy, Wild Pitch.
Wild Pitch, you made our hearts sing.
Cliff, Excellent!
I can’t believe that I actually stayed up to watch the whole game after the rain delay. Phil Gosselin may have earned himself another month in the show with last nights performance and Shelby Miller was terrific.
One Oh Three and not in the zone,
Means you lose.
lulz
Woke up at 2 am cet, just wanted to quickly watch the score… Ended up getting no sleep watching the game. Thanks for making it worthwhile, Shelby.
Carolina Mudcats’ bus flipped last night injuring 8 including 7 players. No serious injuries reported.
Tuesdays are getting special, cliff.
PAN PIPE SOLO
@4 That sounds scary. Glad no one was seriously injured.
Miller really settled down after the first two innings. He’s been good.
Last night’s win marked Fredi’s 373rd as Braves manager, moving him into a tie with Casey Stengel for 7th most victories by a Braves manager (We’ll ignore that 3 of the years Stengel managed Boston the team went by the ‘Bees’ moniker.)
Stengel managed 1938-1942 and then the first 107 games of the ’43 season before being relieved. While the ’38 team finished 2 games above .500 at 77-75, the remainder of the teams were terrible with winning pcts. of .417, .428, .403, .399 and .439 in the year of his termination. Equally amazing, as bad as these teams were, they never finished in last place, thanks to the Philadelphia Phillies! (in ’43 the NY Giants would finish last with the Phillies in 7th.)
Stengel would reappear as a manager in 1949 with the Yankees and capture 10 AL pennants and 7 World Series through 1960. He makes a fascinating case study in the importance of a manager versus the importance of talent in determining the winning performance of a team.
One year I managed two youth league teams, and I was amazed at how smart I was on Tuesday and Friday but how dumb I was on Monday and Thursday.
What this recap needs is MORE COWBELL!
Kyle Farnsworth’s Weird Journey from Major League Baseball to Semi-Pro Football | Bleacher Report
@9:
“He makes a fascinating case study in the importance of a manager versus the importance of talent in determining the winning performance of a team.”
Think of it this way: what if the difference between the best manager and the average manager is about 4 wins?
That’s about the difference between the best third baseman and the average third baseman.
Yet, you would never look at an average third baseman on a championship team and say “he makes a fascinating case study in the importance of a third baseman versus the importance of the other 24 players in determining the winning performance of a team.”
You wouldn’t say this because it’s meaningless. There’s no way a world class manager can make a bad team a champion any more than a world class third baseman can. You realize that the fact that a world class third baseman played on a team with a losing record would do nothing to prove that third baseman have no influence on their team’s record.
The difference of course is that we can measure a third baseman’s impact rather easily. A manager’s value, at this point, is speculative. But the fact we don’t have a good measure of it doesn’t mean they have no value.
The difference between a manager and a third baseman is one of kind, not merely of degree. A manager leads the entire team; it is “his” team, and while it can be subjectively difficult to dissociate his contributions from the overall success or failure of the team, he’s the guy who writes the lineup, and if the team sucks, he’s the guy whose head will be called for.
Casey Stengel was widely perceived as a bum in Boston. Then he arrived in New York and became a genius. Then he went to the Mets, and he was a bum again. Joe Torre actually had a fairly similar career, with a lot of crappy Mets and Cardinals teams before the Yankees made him look like a genius.
It may be that Casey’s talents were uniquely suited to the players that he had in the Bronx, and that he literally was a better manager there than he was elsewhere. It’s more likely, as you say, that he was overblamed for the crappiness of his Boston teams and overpraised for the greatness of his Yankees. But few managers in history have had a swing of public admiration as wide as that of Stengel.
Fun fact about Casey Stengal: His nickname is “Casey” because he came from Kansas City.
Happy birthday to Yogi Berra, who turns 90 today.
In 14 WS as a player, his team won 10 titles. (As a manager, he won 2 pennants, but lost both WS.) He was a 3-time AL MVP and finished in the Top 4 of the MVP voting 7 times.
Also, as a Navy gunner’s mate, was a participant in the D-Day invasion.
Quite a life.
As a self avowed Yankee hater, I find it impossible to dislike Yogi. As you guys know, Yogi has some awesome quotes. Two of them that don’t get the credit they deserve are:
1) I’d give my right arm to be ambidextrous
2) No one goes to that restaurant anymore. It’s too crowded.
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
Now guys, a lot of the “Yogiisms” were invented by his school yard friend, Joe Garagiola, Sr.
@16, When he eventually passes, Braves Journal should plan a trip to his funeral…otherwise, he won’t come to any of ours.
Confession: although I have always hated the Yankees, I always loved Yogi Berra. Happy 90th birthday, Yogi. Keep having them, please.
I always liked: “90 percent of the game is half mental. The other half is physical.” And I don’t care whether or not he said any of them.
“I never said half the things I said.”
You’re better than that, Folty. Throw strikes.
Eric Young Jr is terrible. Just terrible.
Mike Minor is having shoulder surgery. My guess is that he has thrown his last pitch as a Brave and will be non-tendered a la Medlen and Beachy.
He should be nontendered and they can make an effort to bring him back at a more reasonable number
KJ!
Man that sucks about Minor. Good Lord, when does it stop?
Is Simmons going to Rf more this season?
I will never forget Minor’s start against the Dodgers in the NLDS. Pure balls. He was a very good pitcher when he had it Workin.
20 pitches an inning is not the way to go deep, kid.
Eric Young Jr is terrible. Just terrible.
@29, yes he is, and this is a direct influence of Kevin Seitzer. Something about not having a hitting coach that teaches every player to try to yank the ball out of the park.
I agree with Chip that Folty does have a lot of parallels with Smoltz.
Ok, did someone besides Freeman get an EXTRA base hit?
I’m not the best at reading spray charts, but in the early going, it does seem like Andrelton has hit much more to the right side. In fact, he’s hit very few fly balls that didn’t leave the yard to left field.
Regardless of what happens the rest of the game, I like me some Foltynewicz.
I just came back here to post that Folty reminds me of young Smoltz. Great minds (mine and Chip Caray’s) think alike.
First decent thing EYJ has done all day
Folty has the yacker going tonight.
You go, kid.
Newsflash: I am pregnant with Folty’s baby
Ugh, this could be the game right here. Single loses it.
Rookie mistake. To quote a great man ‘ Take the out dammit!’
Merry Christmas.
Our bench has been fantastic this year. I wonder what the stats say.
Andrelton is so good at pulling that grounder to the SS
I think it would’ve been better to let KJ hit for himself and have Gomes replace Callaspo here.
i can’t help but feel Fredi is going to Grilli here bc Cinn went to Chapman already. I really do think he is that suggestible.
FREDI FANBOY: LAWL U FREDI H8R. LAWL.
Well, darn. Andrelton could have nailed him if Gomes hadn’t juggled the ball and Andrelton not dropped it. So many come from behind victories by opponents this year…
There’s this weird rule that any former Brave must RAPE the current Braves. I don’t like it, but it is the rule. The latest is Brayan Pena.
The grill ison fire.
Good Lord. ex Braves are killing us. Brayan Pena.. I swear..
Biggest loss of the night is Mike Minor. Who would have thought we’d seen the last of him last year? It didn’t seem that bad.
all Braves pitchers must end their careers with horrible injury. It is the natural order of things. This is why we must trade for 1000 pitchers. Statistically, at least one or two of them must avoid the scalpel. Fingers crossed, Folty!!!!
Poor Mike Minor, we are losing more young pitchers then one can comprehend. We have lost a staff full of studs/ legit starters to injury, think
Beachy
Minor
Medlen
Hanson
as your top 4, all toast.
And Venters as a closer.
Ouch
and oh yeah, we still have lots of good starters.
Jair Jurrjens too.
Chuck James was a solid back of the rotation guy until his shoulder blew up.
Medlen is currently sitting unowned in my 20-team keeper league. I just cannot convince myself to drop Rio Ruiz or Robert Stephenson, despite how terrible they’ve been, for him. Sad.
Look at what just happened to TJx2 club member Jarrod Parker.
“Our bench has been fantastic this year. I wonder what the stats say.”
Depends on how you define “bench”. It’s trickier this year thanks to all the platooning. But in the offseason I was using the top-8 position players in plate appearances as the ‘starters’ and everyone else as the bench. So that’s what I’ll do here.
Starters: Markakis, Freeman, Simmons, Peterson, Callaspo, Kelly, Maybin and Pierzynski.
No BJ Uptons, Dan Ugglas, or Chris Johnsons in this group so far, although Callaspo has some potential to nosedive from barely below replacement level to full-on disaster. Freeman and Simmons have been excellent, Jace and Kelly have been good. Pierzynski and Markakis are both hitting–as we know–but according to b-ref they’ve both been truly bad in the field. Pretty easy to see with Pierzynski; every time I turn on the TV he’s doing something stupid receiving a pitch. Maybin’s alright, I guess.
Bench: EY, Gomes, Bethancourt, Dorn, Gosselin, (Ciriaco)
Beth can catch, but he can’t hit (yet I hope). Gomes is hitting .200 and playing the sort of defense you’d expect when you just look at him, but he’s had some pop. Dorn wasn’t much of anything before he went down, except a bad fielding third baseman, but we knew that. Eric Young, Jr is terrible. He’s very, very bad. Phil Gosselin has been a nice bench piece overall this season when he’s played. And too early to tell on Ciriaco.
Outside of EY, that isn’t a bad bench. EY is terrible, but we’re not going to invest playing time in him.
So it’s an improvement on 2014 so far! I won’t go so far as to say the bench is good, but it certainly hasn’t been bad.
Recap up.