WAITING FOR FREDOT
Camerogon: (Is sitting on second base, struggling with his cleats)
Markakimir (enters). “Ah, there you are!â€
Camerogon. Yes. As I have been since I don’t know…
Markakimir: New York?
Camerogon: Yes, I suppose.
Markakimir: May one inquire where Your Mightiness spent the night?
Camerogon: On second. I’m waiting on Fredot to drive me in.
Markakimir: Did they beat you?
Camerogon: Who?
Markakimir: The usual lot. IWOTM, the Natspos, you know…them.
Camerogon: Yes. What did you expect? Shut out. Repeatedly. I have been waiting on Fredot.
Markakimir: Ah yes, Fredot. You could drive yourself in? Steal a run?
Camerogon: Myself? Please, Mr. Petersonivich tried that – see that tree?
Markakimir: A lovely tree.
Camerogon: Thrown out by three branches and a root!
Markakimir: Three branches and a root! Truly, then it is not a good idea to steal then.
Camerogon: Yes, they hung two thieves on either side of the Savior, you know.
Markakimir: Henderson and Brock?
Camerogon: I know not their names. Perhaps it was Cobb.
Markakimir: No, I heard Cobb was safe. Let’s go.
Camerogon: We can’t.
Markakimir: Why not?
Camerogon: We’re waiting for Fredot – he will drive us in safely.
Markakimir: Here?
Camerogon: Here – or perhaps Gwinett first, then here. I have a hard time remembering.
Markakimir: Ah.
(Enter Pierzo and Lucky Fredi. Pierzo has a rope around Lucky Fredi’s neck. Lucky Fredi is carrying a fungo bat, a baseball cap, and three BP baseballs. Lucky Fredi collapses into a heap as Pierzo squats in a catcher’s crouch.)
Pierzo: Onwards!
Markakimir: A bat! Perhaps it is Fredot! (Markakimir stands and approaches.)
Pierzo: Stop! He’s wicked! He’ll sacrifice bunt at any second. Do you want to be a sacrifice?
Camerogon: Would it drive me home?
Pierzo: I…I have no idea. It would put pressure on the defense I expect. Surely that would count for something?
Markakimir: Are you Fredot?
Pierzo: No. I am a backstop – Pierzo by name. I have seized this scruffy villain to pull me around. I was supposed to be relaxed, a man of leisure, yet this ruffian drives me instead of the other way around. Truly, I demand he bench or trade me!
Camerogon: (hopefully) He said Fredot!
Pierzo: No, unfortunately. I stood in nicely when Fredot was here last, but now….
Markakimir: Ah, too bad.
Camerogon (noticing Lucky Fredi.) Does he collapse like that often?
Pierzo: Just in June. Oh, and every other September.
Camerogon: (looking at Lucky Fredi) What manner of man is this servant of yours?
Pierzo: (puzzled) I have no idea. I have heard that perhaps he might be a smarter manager if his head were covered. You! Put your hat on and manage!
Lucky Fredi: (slowly stands and puts on the hat.) Sac bunt! Pressure on the defense! Steal and run! (becomes more animated) Gomeski, into left and face that righty! Yes! That’s veteran leadership!No pinch hitting for the pitcher! Pinch hit for the pitcher! Avilannay, handle the 8th. (Pierzo, Camerogon, and Markakimir become agitated).
Camerogon: Quick, tip his cap!
(They struggle. Markakimir finally grabs the bill of Lucky Fredi’s hat and tips it back. Lucky Fredi falls silent and collapses again.)
Markakimir: Phew.
Camerogon: Phew.
Pierzo: Well, I must away. Up beast!
(Lucky Fredi staggers up, they exit.)
Camerogon: Night is falling. The bottom of the 9th, and we are still waiting for Fredot.
Markakimir: Yes, waiting for Fredot.
In other news, the Cardinals 4, Braves 2. Here’s a link to the ESPN recap. ESPN Recap
I’ve been a huge supporter of Hart and the rebuild but I can’t begin to say how much I hate this deal. We give up two of the main reasons the Braves have been watchable this year for two crappy and redundant pitchers. I thought Hart said we would try to compete this year. I thought that would mean for the entire season. We now get the pleasure of watching CJ and Joey T do their Bad news bears routine.
One other thing to add insult to injury. This deal not only is the official white flag for our season, it makes the Mets better and could be the reason they make the playoffs.
I’m not that upset over this trade. Uribe was becoming one of the fun Braves to watch play, but neither he nor KJ were going to be part of the next real contending Braves team. And although the Braves have been better than expected this year, it would be delusional to think they were going to go something like 41-25 to get to 86 wins and a legit shot at a Wild card slot with this mess of an offense.
So, maybe these two guys will be nothing more than organizational filler. But if one of them turns into a JJ Hoover or a Mike Dunn type reliever for the next 6 years, then this trade is a win.
Tremendous!
There is some nuance here. I don’t think anybody has been predicting we’d make a miracle run at this point; it would be just that–a miracle, next to impossible. Expecting to make the playoffs and trying to play competitive level baseball are different things, and the white flag is more a surrendering of watchable baseball. I think we should be trading off vets, and I think we should trade even more of them, but there’s no getting around the fact that it sucks for the players on the roster and at least temporarily for the fans. So there is at least some cost to this trade, even if that cost isn’t a shot at a wild card. It is a legitimate question whether that cost is outweighed by the benefit of fringy pitching prospects. I could go either way on that question. I just wish we’d gotten a fringy corner bat instead of fringy pitchers.
P.S.: Thanks for the Godot
I like Uribe a lot, but I never understood the acquisition. We were never going to be good, and I get the idea that we wanted to be better than terrible. But we happen to be tied to Chris Johnson for a sizable sum of money.
It made sense to me to sign Callaspo, as we didn’t know what we’d get out of Johnson and we also had no idea what we had in Jace Peterson. And when we decided to give 2B to Peterson, it made sense to me to trade Callaspo (especially since he wasn’t hitting.)
I didn’t get acquiring Uribe and blocking Johnson. If you want to get rid of the guy, you almost HAVE to play him. You have to hope he plays his way in to some kind of value, and if he doesn’t, at least you can be certain what you’re doing when you release him.
So you have Uribe who is pretty good and an impending free agent (read: valuable and unlikely to clear trade waivers after July 31) and you move him now while you force potential acquiring teams to compete. And you have Johnson, who is not very good, and is owed a good deal of money (read: not valuable, very likely to clear waivers) and now you can give him all those AB’s, hope to get him Seitzer’ed, and feel pretty confident that even if he gets hot he’ll still clear waivers because of his contract, and if he does, you can still have potential acquiring teams compete over him.
And if he continues to be more 2014 and can’t get any of his 2013 magic, at least you have your answer.
This argument is not to say I support the way the team dealt with Uggla. This is one of the few luxuries a bad team has over a good team. Doing this on a team that was good was pretty clearly suboptimal. To not act this way now, while we are bad, would also suboptimal. When you’re bad, the nature of the market affords you a few distinct luxuries. I think you have to exploit them.
We are 6 games under .500. At best we might finish around the 80 win mark which is way above expectations. I find it hard to believe that KJ and Uribe are drawing fans to the ballpark anyways. Our season ended when Freeman hit the DL. Now let’s find someone to AJ, CJ, and JJ off our hands. So what if it’s a miserable 2 months ending out this season. We are spoiled
It’d be a rough 2 months of baseball.. but wouldn’t it kind of be nice to finish last and get to pick first in the draft? It’d be kind of awesome to get a Byron Buxton or Kris Bryant in to the organization.
With Teheran, Shelby Miller, Alex Wood, Wisler, Banuelos, Folty, Max Fried, Jenkins, Sims, Toussaint, Sanchez, Allard and Soroka… we’ve got real top tier starting pitchers from ages 25 to 18. Depending on their development trajectories, we could legitimately have 2 ace-type (defined as a Top-30-in-MLB-type) pitchers every single year for the next decade.
I say screw it. Tank it, and let’s draft us a Chipper Jones to go with them.
You are far more sanguine about the Braves ability to identify the next chipper Jones than I.
There’s no way we can catch Philadelphia in this race to the bottom, but we’re only 4.5 games ahead of the 2nd worst team (Miami). We drafted Mike Kelly the last time we had the 2nd pick. That 1991 draft had to be the worst top 10 in history. Feel free to correct me:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Major_League_Baseball_Draft
@10 – Not really. That’s why I want them to fall all the way to the 1st pick. If we pick 5th, we can still miss. Hopefully by draft time next year there’s a consensus number 1 that we don’t have to think about.
@11 – 1994 and Top 5 pick Josh Booty might like to have a word with you.
Seat Painter, what a wonderful recap! Thank you. May I please have more?
@13, good point. I remember the buzz about Varitek and Nomar and Jay Payton that year, with at least the first two being considered worthy of a top-5 pick. They would’ve been a much better 1-2-3 than what actually got drafted there.
It’s ok if the team gets worse if and only if the recaps stay this good.
Adam, you trying to put pressure on the recappers?
Here are the #1 picks from 2001-2010:
’01: Joe Mauer
’02: Bryan Bullington
’03: Delmon Young
’04: Matt Bush
’05: Justin Upton
’06: Luke Hochevar
’07: David Price
’08: Timothy Beckham
’09: Stephen Strasburg
’10: Bryce Harper
Seems like 5 stars, 1 mediocre player (Young), and 4 total busts. Here are the #5 picks:
’01: Mark Teixeira
’02: Clint Everts
’03: Chris Lubanski
’04: Mark Rogers
’05: Ryan Braun
’06: Brandon Morrow
’07: Matt Wieters
’08: Buster Posey
’09: Matt Hobgood
’10: Drew Pomeranz
Looks like 4 stars (including arguably wieters), 2 mediocre (pomeranz and morrow), and 4 busts.
This is obviously a limited and stupid analysis, but it doesn’t appear to be a huge advantage to draft 1st over 5th. Sometimes it seems like there is a generational prep player available like Bryce Harper or Joe Mauer (or Arod), but it doesn’t seem like that’s the case most years.
I feel better about the KJ/Uribe trade. They had to be sold as a unit, so that makes sense. They obviously would have preferred to trade CJ, but that obviously didn’t happen. It puts CJ back in an almost completely full-time role, essentially telling him to put up or shut up (which is what CJ was criticizing management for not letting him do). CJ will then have a couple months to put back together his career, at the end of which will leave just two years left on his contract (which could make CJ either more attractive to ATL or more attractive to someone else, assuming he can get back to at least 2014 production). Like I mentioned previously, he seems to be an ideal fit for Seitzer, and maybe ATL legitimately didn’t give him an opportunity to get going once KJ established himself and they acquired Uribe.
I’m worried about this point, however, about the extremely stock-piling of pitching. I know TNSTAAPP, and I know these can be good trade pieces, but man, we have to get some bats in here at some point. Between the 13 SPs that jjschiller listed, the future availability of cash, and some players already signed to team-friendly deals (Freeman, Simmons), we’ll probably be ready to compete by 2016. I would just like to know that we’ll have enough power to compete in 2016.
I would have to imagine that one of Simmons/Peraza/Albies/Peterson will get dealt this offseason for LF offense. Who hangs up first if you package Peraza, Banuelos, Sims and a low-level minor leaguer for Joey Bautista?
I wish my high school eng lit teacher was still with us…..i believe i understand godot better now.
Great point Rob Cope.
I love stockpiling arms – – and the Uribe / KJ trade won’t make me lose a wink of sleep.
But we do need a plan to gain some firepower.
I imagine John Hart knows that more than the rest of us though. Didn’t he assemble the ’95 Tribe team which scored 840 runs (until that darling of a Braves team got ’em in the WS).
Blind Faith isn’t just a one album LP that Eric Clapton was awesome in. Let’s all drink some Kool Aid and give Hart a chance.
That Blind Faith album cover is pretty disturbing.
@21
Hart’s history is what makes me feel better. Now, he could have just gotten lucky with Manny, Thome, Alomar, et al, or he could be particularly adept at building a strong offense. If he’s planning to stockpile a bunch of pitching to then re-face the offense through FA and trade, I trust that strategy. After all, one would have to conclude that even some average, non-black hole performers (Markakis, Maybin, Peterson) will have to get moved in order to really build the offense. You can’t have a defense-only SS mixed in with a bunch of average hitters and Freddie Freeman. We may have to move a Markakis to upgrade the power at both corner spots to have enough offense. You can’t have a Markakis’ production in right when you have a similar type of player potentially at second, short, center, catcher, and even 3B.
But for real, Peraza/Banuelos/Sims/Lottery Ticket for Joey Bautista. Do both teams do that trade?
@19, I bet Toronto would love to trade Joey Bautista, going into his age 35 season and final year of his contract, for 3 or 4 top shelf prospects.
If we’re going to trade a bunch of prospects for an outfielder, I hope it’s for someone who is relatively young and controllable for more than one season.
Forgot about his age. He did get going late.
Name a better player.
Cole Hamels no hitter.
I still think Hart is headed in the right direction, but I just can’t believe the crappy pitching prospects were the best we could do. If we do this move why not get just 1 position prospect with some power upside? I despise giving away what’s left of a season that mildly exceeds expectations for one pitcher with a 1 in 100 chance of being useful and another that is 1 in 10.
Boy, I’d have to guess that we didn’t go after a position prospect with some power, because John Hart doesn’t realize we need some hitters.
Or maybe its because the trade market isn’t amazon.com?
Well Shelby, it’s your time to shine.
@28, or maybe he realizes that. It’s totally plausible that hart never pursued a hitter–he has targeted pitchers primarily and told us that is, in fact, his strategy. It seems the strategy of the braintrust is to load up on pitching and try to sign hitters on the international market. Hope it works.
@25, I don’t know who is available in trade this offseason, but I definitely wouldn’t trade off our top talent for one year of any player. The Justin upton trade should be the model, but I realize those are not available every year.
So we traded KJ and Uribe, and the intention was to replace them with Adonis Garcia (30) and Daniel Castro (22). But then we decided to also activate Freddie Freeman today. So we went right ahead and recalled those two, and sent Terdoslavich down to make room for Freddie. Not sure why we need a look at 30 year old Adonis Garcia, unless its a reward for some kind of good behavior.
@30 – I think it’s much more likely that the goal is to trade pitching for hitting, either prospects or major league ready. Hart has been quoted as saying “Pitching is currency in this business.” If you don’t have actual, you know, currency, pitching to spare is the next best thing. It wears out, and it’s not specialized like, a “corner player” or a “speed player.”
For example, if you wanted to pry someone away from the Braves, it wouldn’t do to offer a SS or a 1B. From the Cardinals, they would have no use for your C prospect, or your corner OF bats. But you can cash some of those guys in for pitching prospects, and suddenly your currency spends anywhere. Everyone needs pitching.
What’s the story on Seth Webster? First full year in the minors at 26.
K-rate isn’t special but 11:1 is a great k:bb ratio to support a 3.26 ERA.
@33, that is the exact goal. No disagreement here. But I think they also see a difference in projectability of international and domestic position prospects, choosing to draft and trade for pitching and choosing to sign position talent abroad.
None of this is relevant to whether hart sought position talent from the Mets, but whatever. It’s water under the bridge.
Kelly Johnson just hit one to the moon in New Shea.
Andrelton Simmons may be light hitter, but he really makes up for it by being a slow runner.
4 pitches this inning have gone against Shelby.
agreed on both 37 and 38, jj
at least the cards fans were classy with that applause/ standing ovation when shelby came out of the game
So Avilan has no idea where the ball is going.
Poor Shelby.
No one would blame Shelby Miller for asking to be traded.
Eury may have a better arm. It certainly gets underestimated.
Shelby with the loss. He’s talented, but at this stage of his career he hasn’t figured out how to win.
Certainly didn’t help himself at the dish.
This team doesn’t deserve Shelby Miller.
6 k’s and 4 GIDP’s on the night. That’s not giving yourself much of a chance.
Well at least one person played the game the right way tonight.
We are spoiled.
Two Godot parodies in as many years…salut Painter and Hotspur.
KJ/Uribe…
I have seen cattle traded in a more respectful manner. At some point it belittles the game.
KO, must you really go?
Yes says Skipper, don’t you know
how many craved his head?
well, now that he is dead
name his successor, even so.
@19 – go look at our minor league team rosters. It completely reinforces your point – some of those teams barely have enough position players to put a complete team in the field.
Reblahed.