U-G-L-Y.
Not San Diego. Atlanta.
Melvin Upton, Jr. tormented the Braves. Nothing new: he tormented me his entire stay in Atlanta. He still sucks, by the way; but he homered TWICE, got another hit and drove in five runs. Is BJ fixed now, or is the Braves bullpen just irreparably broken?
James Shields shut out the little game Braves through six. The Braves helped. Trailing by one run, we loaded the bases with none out and failed to score. Joey Terdoslavich struck out. Andrelton Simmons hit into a double play. It was all Fredi’s fault. If he’d reversed the two in the batting order, the game would have been tied.
As it played out, Matt Wisler went six, gave up two runs and gave the Braves a chance to lose respectfully. The bullpen revived MUJ and put the game out of reach.
Padres had other villains. Cory Spangenberg showed why San Diego could trade Jace Peterson to the Braves, collecting a triple and a bunt single and catching everything hit his way; but BJ really boiled my cabbage.
In other news, a Cleveland Indians third baseman is on the disabled list. He was bitten by a spider. What if Dorn develops spidey-sense?
Freddie Freeman returns to the lineup Wednesday. Wednesday is an afternoon game. Both are good. Persevere.
On the bright side… it should be easy and cheap to get tickets to Braves home games from here until the ignominious end of Turner Field in October 2016.
Yup. Game, Blauser and Edward night at the Ted is probably coming up pretty soon.
I didn’t see the second one, but the homer Aardsma gave up to Mudge was just about the fattest pitch I’ve ever seen. Let’s see here…aha: http://m.mlb.com/video/v384841683/atlsd-upton-jr-rips-a-tworun-homer-to-leftcenter/?game_pk=415424
According to Jon Heyman, Frank Wren is “a leading candidate for red sox gm.”
That he supplanted Hank as the first alphabetical entry in the MLB encyclopedia is one of the great injustices of our time.
I don’t understand why the Braves didn’t deal Aardsma at the trade deadline. Dude was sitting at a 1.80 ERA and would’ve brought back a low-level prospect. Oh well…
On a side note, Edwin Jackson’s looking pretty stellar out of the bullpen.
@1 – Average home attendance is now down 12% from last year, 18% from 2013. That’s a 2% decrease from just the end of July. They might have to start packaging bobble heads in boxes made from $20 bills to get anyone to a game in September.
“See? Have to move out of the city if we want people to come to the games!”
@5 – That’s also compared with 2014 totals, which includes September after the team fell out of contention/kids were back in school. I’d expect the decline to increase just based on that, let alone any additional lack of desire to see a team composed of unknown AAA rejects.
Those still pursuing the Clerihew route might want to look at the end of the previous thread where there are four new ones put up this morning which in turn are somewhat improved on the four that preceded them a few days earlier.
This is all very trial and error but i for one am now convinced it is worth it – the format required give you all sort of scope to experiment and have fun doing so. They also seem conducive to baseball as a source – all 4 today relate specifically or in general to the game the previous evening and the recap that followed.
Keep them coming.
When you trot out an AAA lineup at best every night, people aren’t going to make plans to come to the games. Outside of Shelby Miller, Teheran on occasion, and Simmons playing defense what else would you come for?
I’m not paying full price and driving 2 hours to go watch Folty, Wisler, or Perez start ballgames.
With 3.97 WAR per 600 PA’s, it’s a shame that a lack of playing time is getting in the way of Melvin Upton’s ROY candidacy.
#1
In reality (& speaking from experience), it’s never been too much of an issue getting tickets for any games at Turner Field, post-season included.
@11
Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Every game was sold out the first season (or almost every game, anyway), but not so far in advance that you couldn’t pick a game you wanted to go to a month from that point and get tickets. I was unable to attend that weekend so I didn’t even look, but I’m assuming World Series tickets the one time we hosted that at Turner Field were at least a little bit tough. Other than that, even if a game is “sold out”, it’s never hard to find tickets on the approved secondary market for almost the same as face value. And it’s never hard to get standing room only tickets for those games, either, if you want to go that route. And I cannot remember the last time that we had a game where it was so packed that they stopped selling standing room only tickets. It’s possible that’s never happened.
According to Jon Heyman, Frank Wren is a “leading candidate” for the Red Sox GM position.
@12, When the Cubs were in town for with Kerry Wood starting a rotation turn or two after his 20-strikeout day, I think they stopped selling the standing-room seats. They were definitely at standing room only.
With school starting back up I’ve had to act like a grown up and not stay up for west coast games. I wish I had also had the foresight to avoid reading the game thread and recap of this game, so I never would have had to learn what humiliation the Braves suffered at the hands of the Elder Upton. When I looked at the final score this morning I was fine with it; when I learned who was largely responsible for those SD runs, I was no longer so accepting of the Braves ineptness. What a game.
With Melvin’s two HRs yesterday, that puts his OPS+ to 104. Markakis is at 105 and Maybin at 107. Let’s let that sink in for a while…
While I agree generally with the comments that it’s never been that tough of a ticket, and that post school games are always less attended, Sunday was as poorly attended a game as I have been to in recent memory. A really nice day with alumni in the house, and decent rather cool weather too. The fans here put up with mediocre pretty well, but I really think there’s going to be a price to be paid for being awful.
@15- But at least we managed to get rid of Kimbrel!
Seriously, though, I doubt BJ manages to put that line up in Atlanta. For whatever reason, he just couldn’t get it done here.
Good for him. I never got around to disliking him. He lacked the trademark apathy that made me hate Uggla. While it frequently was directed at umpires, he was clearly upset and he never seemed to take it out on the team.
He continues to grade out above-average in center where speed is far more important than hand-eye coordination. He’s a big-league player who just happens to be grossly over-compensated, and, to me, that’s really Frank Wren’s doing.
@15 – That is a great reason to distrust OPS+. Markakis and Maybin are not great, but there is no way that MUJ is close to these guys. MUJ’s track record over the past 3 years puts him at an elite level at the bottom of the MLB. One good game, predictably against the Braves, does not change anything. This is definitely a case of small sample size syndrome.
Blazon, thanks for your poetrisms. They made BJ Upton’s fully predictable (yes, td) career night a bit easier to bear.
19 — Not to mention his 60 million dollar contract.
Melvin’s last 18 starts .297/.342/.527.
Good for him but I’m happy he’s gone. He sucked in Atlanta and it was apparent that the Braves couldn’t fix him. At leas we aren’t paying him anymore.
I think the attendance issues are all based on the on-field performance. For the rest of this year, virtually no one will be there. If we start out next year like we did this year, attendance will be respectable like it was for awhile this year. If we go back in the toilet, no one will come again.
There might be a little bit of upset with the team leaving the City of Atlanta proper involved with this, but I don’t think it really is affecting the numbers that much, nor will it next year. Most of the people I know, some of whom were very upset about the move to Cobb County initially, have more or less let it settle and would be just as excited about this team as ever if they were making a playoff push right now. Whether those people will feel the need to trek up to Cobb County for games (or more to the point, as many games) when the team is there, since they’ve spent so many years avoiding it like the plague, is another question, but I don’t think it’s affecting attendance at Turner Field right now to any significant degree.
Funny line from a Grant Brisbee piece today about Ben Cherington getting fired:
“December 11, 2014 – Signed Justin Masterson as a free agent
New rule: If the Cardinals aren’t interested in keeping someone, be very skeptical of that someone. This rule doesn’t apply to the Braves, for whatever reason.”
Welcome back, Freddie Freeman.
@14 That sounds like a bad pairing to me. Wren’s strength was in trades and identifying relievers poised to have breakout years, and his glaring weakness was free agent signings. Mixing that with a team that has money doesn’t sound like the best plan.
Attendance is down because the team is unwatchable and there’s nothing to look forward to. The casual fan has nothing to get excited about, and the hardcore fan knows that our farm system is void of position players. Cobb County isn’t going to change this much. There will be a novelty bump the first season, and once that wears off it’ll be more of the same. Win and they will come.
Seems Julio doesn’t realize that this isn’t a home game.
Julio Teheran has been pretty competent since July started, and even good since August started. Now prove me wrong with a 4-run 6th Jules!
@29 It will be an interesting off-season, 2017 is fast approaching and it’s hard for teams to get good all at once.
We committed $30M to Swisher and Bourn. Our offseason isn’t going to be all that interesting. Unless we trade Simmons and/or Freeman. Which we might…?
Trading Simmons would’ve made a lot more sense before we traded Peraza. Albies’ ETA is probably no earlier than 2018.
It does my heart good to know that Peter Moylan is back in the majors. Bless him.
@35 – Not sure why he didn’t start the inning.
Apparently the Queen of Marksberry rules are to let your opponent hit you at will.
Moylan instantly becomes our second best reliever
Utley, Chase
Sweet swing, handsome face
This trade would be fine
If it were 2009
http://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/report-dodgers-to-send-chase-utley-to-phillies/
#13
In my life, there’s never been an instance where I couldn’t buy/get tickets for a Braves game in Atlanta, and that includes World Series/playoff games. If I didn’t buy online or at the game, I found something relatively reasonable outside.
The only time I had a little trouble was in 1991 & 1992. (Things got weird after the lockout/strike in ’94. The vibe was very different. Demand seemed to fall.) I did go to a game in August of ’92 vs. St. Louis (a Saturday night, IIRC) where I couldn’t find many tickets at all outside the gates. My buddy & I were standing near the Will Call window for guests, surprised & kinda wondering which bar we were about to visit. But we see this guy picking up his tickets. He turns around, looks at us & says, “Hey, you guys looking for seats?”
Turns out, it was David Justice’s high-school coach & we sat with him behind home plate. We just bought the guy some beers & heard some great stories.
In 1995, I walked up to the stadium for Game 2 of the WS without tickets & bought a pair of uppers for $100 each.
In 1999, I went WS Games 1 & 2 at Turner Field & it was easy as pie to get tickets online — could’ve sat wherever I wanted. Had an extra & it wasn’t that easy to sell in ATL, but I managed to make about $20 on it.
I had a ticket for Game 4 in The Bronx & I probably could’ve sold it for a bundle, but I decided to go down with the ship instead. Of course, I didn’t stick around long — pretty sure that I was on River Avenue before Lockhart’s last-out pop fly came down in LF.
No Schadenfreude here, since I do like KJ and Fat Juan 2, but those guys have been horrible for the Mets since we traded them.
KJ:
53 AB, .189/.232/.377
Uribe:
65 AB, .169/.229/.385
@41 – And the three pitchers we shipped West haven’t helped the Dodgers at all. JJ has been beyond brutal.
Jared Fogle
DOT COM
So much for the whole “they’re not going to strike out as much, they’ll be good now” thing from early April.
Recapped.