Cameron Maybin led off the bottom of the tenth with a walk-off home run, giving the Braves a 2-1 win in both the game and the series. Hooray!
Shelby Miller’s winless streak continues and is now at 16. What did you expect? He did not pitch a no hitter; he did not pitch a shutout. He gave up two hits and a run and got what he deserved: a no decision. Miller obviously does not know how to win. Two hits. One run. Jeez Louise. When is competitive fire and the desire to win doused by stoic acceptance? Shelby Miller may never win another game as long as he pitches for the Braves.
The Braves’ bullpen was awesome. Ross Detwiler allowed a baserunner he inherited from Miller to score on a ground out, but that was that.
The Braves almost won it in the bottom of the ninth. Andrelton Simmon’s second single was followed by blind hog Jonny Gomes being given a walk by the man in blue; and Michael Bourn split the gap between centerfielder Ender Inciarte and rightfielder Yasmany Tomas, but Ender’s game saving catch sent the game to extra innings.
David Aardsma, with the help of blue, fanned the Snakes in the tenth. Aardsma knows how to win, and so does Cameron Maybin.
Good win. Poor Shelby. On to San Diego.
Ask J or my lil’ homie Shelby
Uh, I cut em’ up like Marcus Welby
G’Day…tears and all.
Uh-oh. Tyrell Jenkins left the Gwinnet game after two innings and 37 pitches today. Anyone have any insight on that?
Jenkins said on his Twitter that he’s fine.
Bruce Benedict
one might never predict
would be bound for the Hall
he could not hit at all.
the bunt that is swinging
means never a dinging
but what was originally intended
still puts him on base, attended.
walk off, walk off, with love in your heart
so long has it been that we two were apart
it comes as a shock
so, fearful we are that it’s simply post hoc.
@4
to tweet
is a feat
but compression
may hide a confession.
It’s been really fun to root for Cameron Maybin this year,
His play leaves us grinning from ear to ear.
Local boy lets Seitzer work on retooling his swing,
and now we’re treated to some Asheville Maybin bling.
Mallex Smith is 10-21 over his last 5 games. He is looking ever more respectable after a horrid first month at AAA.
Aardsma cleared waivers. Whose excited for the bullpen getting worse?!!
+1 for Ender’s Game worked into the recap. Nicely done
@10
He is the prospect I am most excited about. I also like Braxton Davidson.
If Smith can sustain this latest surge at Gwinnette he has to be in the mix for CF or LF next year. I was worried about him at first. I guess I forgot that small sample size works both ways.
I’m also most excited about Mallex. I feel like could be the Michael Bourn we were wanting when he was due All The Money (except for Very Little Money). He’s got that Michael Bourn/Denard Span/Christian Yelich feel to him.
Tyrell Jenkins also gives me a lot of excitement.
Back to the outfielders, what the heck do we now do with Markakis/Bourn/Maybin/Swisher if Freeman is healthy and Mallex is ready to go for 2016? I’d love to see a Maybin/Mallex/Markakis outfield, but that is just not enough power. If Olivera is a .450 SLG guy, Maybin is .420, Markakis is .400, Peterson/Simmons/Catcher are all sub-.400 SLG, and Freeman is the lone guy slugging over .500, that’s just simply not enough power. I don’t want to get too statistical with their evaluation, but someone’s got to be a middle-of-the-order bat other than Freeman. Too many 1-2, 6-8 hole hitters.
Best name in the Braves system?
I vote for Dakota Dill:
http://www.milb.com/player/index.jsp?sid=t429&player_id=643284#/career/R/pitching/2015/ALL
I think you have to trade Maybin. He’s already showing signs of falling back to earth, and you don’t want to get stuck in a Chris Johnson scenario where a guy becomes untradeable because you held on to him past his peak value.
For left, I’d take a look at Ben Zobrist. He could not only provide some power in left, he also gives you a backup plan in the event that Olivera gets hurt or Peterson’s bat regresses to the point where you can’t justify playing him. He’s also old enough that you probably won’t have to break the bank to sign him, which could be important if you want to get a pitcher or catcher as well. Bourn and Swisher can be bench players, with Swisher filling Gomes’s role.
There’s room for both Maybin and Mallex in the 2016 OF. We have no other in-house prospects. One of them can play LF. It will be the worst slugging OF in history, but for 2016 I guess it doesn’t matter.
What’s the word on our Hector? Should the Achaeans be trembling yet or will it be another couple of weeks?
He’s hitless and has made 2 error in 3 games in the low low minors. Can you feel the excitement building?
Oh and Tyrell Jenkins was pulled after 2 innings yesterday and diagnosed with “arm fatigue”. May be nothing to worry about, but I’ma go ahead and worry a little. This is one of the guys that looks like he might actually help us.
I wonder if the Braves are going to shut down Jenkins for the rest of the year? Maybe bring him up and give him a September start or a relief appearance or two, but nothing heavier than that.
So what do all you SEC fans make of today’s ruling from the NLRB denying North Western’s attempt to unionize?
is it an irrelevance to the faithful, one way or the other, or is there a moral issue here?
@18, why do you have to say things like that? Now I’m wondering what is the worst slugging OF in MLB history.
Off the top of my head, I’m going to nominate the 1992 California Angels. There was a run of Angels teams that had very good pitching but horrible offense, and the 1992 team was the biggest stinker of them all. Jim Abbott had a season that would make even Shelby wince, going 7-15 with a 2.77 ERA.
They started Luis Polonia, Junior Felix, and Von Hayes from left to right with slugging percentages of .329, .361, and .326. A young Chad Curtis subbed in most the time, but he could only muster a .372. Nobody on the entire team slugged .400. Of course, the next season, Tim Salmon would fish them out of that offensive abyss and win ROY.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/CAL/1992.shtml
Whoa, that’s bad. I thought the Gomes, Maybin, Markakis combo would stack up with some of the best, but we can’t compete with the 92 Angels.
Maybin is perilously close to reaching .400 SLG. And he’s the guy everyone wants to get rid of. He’s better than every single OF in our entire system. A lot better.
Maybin (1.1 2015 fWAR) is not a lot better than Nick Markakis (1.2) and isn’t very likely to be next year, either.
His bat is better than Markakis’ by a decent margin. I have nothing else to say about the defensive component of WAR. That poor horse is beyond beat.
A bat capable of bettering 2015 Maybin has yet to be drafted into our system.
The ’72 Rangers (managed, ironically, by Ted Williams) are usually a good place to look for historic offensive futility. Their top 5 OFs (Ted Ford, Joe Lovitto, Larry Biittner, Elliott Maddox, and Tom Grieve) slugged .382, .267, .335, .289, and .296 respectively.
More recently, 2011 Seattle Mariners were an offensive sink hole, but they had so many different guys start in the OF.
At any rate, they managed to give 344 PA’s to CF Franklin Gutierrez who slugged .273, generally platooning him with Michael Saunders who slugged .217. They gave 712 PA’s to Ichiro who slugged .335. LF was a mishmash that included the occasionally competent Mike Carp (.466) with Trayvon Robinson (.336), Carlos Peguero (.371), and Milton Bradley (.356)
http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/SEA/2011.shtml
krussell at 27,
Austin Riley.
Braxton Davidson.
They are a long way off.
But, I agree that Mallex, Albies, etc. (the rest of the good position players) are unlikely to exceed in their careers, current day Maybin.
cliff, it’s way too early to judge Braxton Davidson, but he’s not the prospect that Maybin was, and he’s not shown much power yet. He’s a long way off and not relevant in the 2016 OF conversation. Austin Riley is a 3B, right? Also a long way off, but is killing the ball. He may end up in LF before it’s over.
To me Maybin is valuable because he has pop and can play CF. We have nobody else that can meet those two criteria. For 2016 we’d have to go on the FA market to find better…right?
Madison Bumgarner has a wRC+ of 116. I think he might be a better pure power hitter than anyone on our team. It sure must be nice to have a guy that improves the offense every time he pitches.
I’ve always hoped to see more of this in the NL. Pitchers should be able to hit.
I wish hitting were something a man could just will himself into doing simply because he should be able to.
I wish pitchers were actual athletes.
Maybin’s line right now:
.277/.336/.397
Base runs-wise, that’s 4% above league average and 5% worse than Neck (amazingly). Maybin’s very mediocre, even ignoring the defense.
Slightly above mediocre is better than anything else we’ve got. Plus he’s playing one of the premier defensive positions. That matters. The fact that our corner OF positions aren’t massively out-hitting him is an indictment on them, not on Maybin.
We’ve finally got a guy out there that isn’t a black hole of suck. Let’s focus on other areas. I think Maybin is very root-able.
@27 — Maybin was salary dump fodder not four months ago. He could very easily become it again. You’re only buying into his season and not into a young player because you see him on TV every day, while minor league guys are anonymous.
The odds on any individual player in the Braves’ system outperforming Maybin’s 2015 are long — but as a group, the odds of at least one of them doing it are good.
@37
I agree that someone currently in the system will better Maybin’s performance this year. But NOT next year, which is where Cameron’s true value to the Braves lie.
@37
There’s zero chance of the “spaghetti against the wall” strategy working to replace Maybin next year. There is no one in the system that could replace Mudge, and the outfield portion of our farm system has hardly improved that much. There’s a bunch of Todd Cunningham’s and Joey Terd’s and other quad-A players in the system. Don’t kid yourself.
2 words. Leudys. Baez. 2018.
Oh wait, next year? Yeah Maybin is the best LF/CF we got
Heyward had his first start in CF for the Cards and only lasted two innings before leaving with a sore hammy. Durability may not be his calling card. Nevertheless, given that his 3.9 WAR is almost a full win better than anyone on his old team and thrice Neck’s, he can miss the rest of the season and still be more valuable than anyone we can trot out.
Unless this is the part of the picture where Aragorn shows up with the army of the dead, Maybin is your centerfield starter for next year.
@35 – Maybin’s .277/.336/.397 is loads better that BJ Melvin’s .227/.292/.361. Maybin has my vote as MVP simply because he’s not Mudge! Of course BJMU will probably go 4 for 4 with a homerun and 4 rbis in one game this series.
I’m probably in the minority here, but as something of a night owl, I like the late night West Coast games, especially since there’s not that many of them anyway.
That having been said, they’d better make these two games entertaining for the majority of the proceedings, as I’m completely incapable of going to sleep before midnight (barring extenuating circumstances) and it’s way too late to try and figure out something else to do on a weeknight.
Fun fact: Cameron Maybin is only the fourth guy in our entire system to reach double-digit home runs this year. Nobody in the entire system has 15. Freddie Freeman has 14, Carolina’s Jacob Schrader has 12, Gwinnett’s Cedric Hunter has 11, and now Maybin has 10. So yeah…power is a definite issue.
Recap is up.