http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/jul/31/england-ashes-fate-cricket-least-fashionable-shot
Good sports writing should know no boundaries..on this Saturday morning here’s Britain’s best — Barney Ronay — with a lovely piece on ‘leaving’, the ability or inability of the hitter to stay away from the ball breaking/swerving away from him. In cricket although the pitched ball is deliberately bowled short so the batsman must play it on the bounce it still ends up tantalising in the same manner as the slider here as it moves away. The ‘slips’ are a small group of guys crouched 15 yards behind him and off to that same side only too ready to gobble up the catch produced by a nick off the edge of the straight-faced bat when the hitter cannot resist the chase. Leave it!
Thanks for that good read. Is cricket also facing popular calls speed up the game and ‘make it more exciting’?
If nobody comments on a Markakis HR, did it actually happen?
Markakis could probably break Bonds’ single season record in the next 50 games and no one would even notice.
Sorry I was watching cat videos on YouTube. Did Neck go yard?
Markakis went yard. Wasn’t a cheap one either.
@1 The games are getting much shorter, not sure if the speed is changing. They have shorter matches these days.
They have a new version about the length of a baseball game, as opposed to a week at the office.
Now our everyday starting right fielder is only one homer behind Madison Bumgarner on the year.
Not that we care anymore, but the ineptitude of this team is breathtaking to behold. It’s five innings (more like four and a half, really) from being 4 for its last 20. This isn’t 1988 bad, but it’s on its way.
Oh, look, the Braves are losing. This is a strange sight.
You guys really think Wisler is going to put up better numbers next year than Alex Wood?
I just don’t see it. He looks he like he could have been a legit #2 back in the day when pitchers with great control could regularly get strikes off both sides of the plate. But now guys are going to make him throw it over the plate and his stuff is just plain hittable.
If this season forces the Braves to finally learn never to pitch to Ryan Howard again, this might be all worth it.
Wisler sucks. Teheran sucks. Foltynewicz sucks.
The bases are loaded, and I wish I was too.
Wow, set course to tank city. Full speed ahead.
Skip would’ve had fun with this team. Whole lotta “and we go to the bottom of another fifth”…
Right now three of the top 10 prospects for the 2016 draft are college outfielders. But I suppose an impact bat at a position of desperate need is really too much to hope for.
So, the team is quitting on Fredi Gonzalez for the second summer in a row. Can we fire him now, please?
@10, Alex Wood will be busy winning 16 games for LA while Olivera misses 70 games for us.
@15, but what if we could draft a high school pitcher who is the 165th rated prospect? What then?
I think I’m just going to add the bases loaded quote to my hot keys so I have easy access to it.
This team looks like they’d rather be anywhere else besides on a ball field. They’ve quit down the stretch before, but this is early even for a Fredi-team.
When you can double your season-long ERA in one inning when you’ve already made 20 appearances, that’s a hell of a feat.
And @16, if this is all about 2017, and Fredi has proven he’s not the guy to take the team to the new stadium, then there’s no point to keeping him around. I wish the Johns and Fredi’s chief advocate could see this. It wouldn’t make it any better, but this team is about to be 4-15 since his extension was announced internally.
@16 – It’s hard for me to discern quitting from generic terribleness.
How would we ever know if this team was quitting? Could the current team win a division in AAA? I think it’d be tough.
Fredi is here to recruit the Cuban national team. I think that should be pretty clear after this past week’s moves.
Time for Jonny Gomes to show some #veteran #leadership and pitch a few scoreless innings.
I don’t blame Fredi for this although I know some do. But this team was terrible before we even started, and every piece with any promise has been traded as soon as they showed some value. Fredi is lashed to the mast of this sinking ship along with the fans.
Did you guys see that we are paying most of the $8M owed to Arroyo? Makes the weirdest deal ever seem even more stupefying.
Simmons never quits.
The last two trades just seem like moves I would make when my fantasy team is out of contention. However, this ain’t fantasy. This team sucks, and 2017 is really right around the corner.
I’d say that getting blown out by the Phillies multiple games in a row goes beyond normal terribleness.
This blows.
We are the worst team in baseball, and the worst Braves team since the late 80’s. One nice thing about being abjectly terrible is that I longer fume about Fredi’s lousy in-game strategy. Has the team quit on him? Hard to say, since it’s never clear who exactly is on the team, and it’s hard to tell when bad players are giving it all they have–the results are similar either way.
Well, I’m glad I missed this one.
By the way, it’s tough to distinguish the team quitting on Fredi from the team just quitting because the front office traded away five players off the 25-man roster and it’s clear this season is more or less over. I’m not saying I’m super-excited about keeping Fredi, but there it is.
I still say the Olivera deal signals that the front office is going to try and compete next year, though. I expect further deals and signings over this offseason to kind of push us in that direction, as well. Nothing in the realm of going all-in, obviously, but a greater effort to compete for one of the wild cards than we saw this year.
If that’s the case, that sets Fredi up for a “show me” season next year with just a one-year guaranteed deal. Get to the playoffs with this team that should win 85 games (hypothetically again), you’re in. Fail to and you’re out. Because if they were actually going to extend him, I would think they would’ve done it for more than just a year. They’re giving Fredi a chance to either dig his way out or bury himself, as he didn’t have much of a chance this year.
I think the team struggling has more to do with Jason Grilli’s injury and the gut-fest. We’ve actually lost 6 off the 25-man in the last two weeks with Grilli. It would be hard for any manager to prevent his team from being affected by that.
I do also agree that we’ll be competitive next year, with us being active in the FA market this offseason. I think if the Braves end up like Houston next year (competing a year earlier than the rebuild timeline suggested), I can see the Braves being buyers at the deadline as well.
I don’t think there’s even one alternate universe in which next year’s team is *supposed* to win 85 games.
Fredi isn’t going anywhere. The team is not going anywhere. Unless Olivera, Allard, and Fried turn into super stars, I don’t know how I can be positive about this rebuild. Even that, we still need more power bats.
The Braves now have 4 players remaining from their 2014 opening day roster. Four.
Greetings from Vegas…
This is the kind of season I was afraid we’d see. I know this club isn’t any good, but they’ve really bottomed out. Getting pulverized by the Phillies doesn’t do a lot for the soul.
I feel mildly justified for my relative inattention, still… every time I did check into a game recently via MLB app something wicked-bad happened. (Yeah, Ryan Howard remains an all-time Braves killer. When he plays us, it’s always 2007.) I wanna stay away, but I kinda can’t do it completely.
Hey, root root for draft picks and all, but it makes for a couple more months of tough-to-watch baseball.
This team is as unwatchable as they come, but if Simmons is out for any amount of time with this thumb injury watching this team will somehow get even harder. I think his glovework is more fun to watch than even what Freddie does with a bat.
Well watching Peraza fill in for a bit would be kinda fun. Oh wait…nvm.
Jenkins pitched well again tonight. His September call up is about all we got left.
@4
Funniest things I’ve read all week.
Hope you were just kidding.
In the NL East, the Braves are four games ahead of the Marlins, 5.5 in front of the Phillies. We’re going to have to play some seriously bad baseball, like we did tonight, to get below Miami and Philly.
Can we do it? Yes, we can!
Maybe.
Maybe I missed it (honestly, it’s been tough to care), but does the team have a closer now that Johnson is gone?
Vizcaino, most probably.
@42: Thanks. I guess the front office did realize that having Kimbrel wasn’t going to matter since the team wouldn’t have many save opportunities after the All-Star break.
Recapped.
Testing twitter posts…
[tweet https://twitter.com/theofficenbc/status/988427321181966337/photo/1%5D
Posted ok?
Twitter test 2:
https://twitter.com/theofficenbc/status/988427321181966337/photo/1
Working yet?
Third twitter test:
https://twitter.com/theofficenbc/status/988427321181966337/photo/1
Working?
arrg
tweet test
[tweet id="988427321181966337"]
yes?
Tweet?
https://twitter.com/theofficenbc/status/988427321181966337/photo/1
Fixed?