Bartolo Colon is a 42-year-old man who weighs 300 pounds and has a season ERA above 4, which means that he’s an excellent candidate to stymie the Braves’ offense. Shelby Miller was pitching, which means that he was also an excellent candidate to stymie the Braves’ offense.
Apparently there was an actual 9-inning game played after the interminable rain delay; I didn’t actually watch it, and I apologize if you did. The Braves got eight hits, three of them by Andrelton Simmons and one by Jace Peterson. It’s remarkable how similar their season lines are right now: .239/.313/.337 for Peterson, .262/.325/.336 for Simmons. They’re also nearly the same age; Simmons is only eight months older than the 25-year-old rookie 2B.
In previous years, the Marlins have been the spoiler team we dreaded to face, because they always seemed to play tough in September. The 2015 Braves are not that.
@ryan c, previous thread
What chaps my ass most is the “just so they can have a job” bit, as if wanting to be paid to so work is some sort of scumbag motive on anyone’s part. Particularly coming from a pair who get to talk about baseball for money not because they’re particularly gifted at it, but because it’s an easy job to get if you’ve a.) played professional baseball; or b.) are the son and grandson of other broadcasters.
Nepotism is the Braves way, but MLB seems to lean towards family owned and directed enterprise. It’s not just the Braves who hire and promote according to familial connection.
From previous thread…
Spike,
Been a minute since I’ve visited the Clermont. Is Blondie still in the house?
Joe Simpson’s anti-intellectual philistinism is difficult to take. The fact that someone takes interest in something you don’t understand (either through lack of effort, interest, or ability) does not imply it’s “made up” or otherwise without value. And nobody is impressed with his blustery denouncements except people who are similarly minded. Everyone else views it as insecurity bleeding through his facade of ego defenses.
The fun thing is that the 2015 Braves have a FANTASTIC example of how wins are not a great measure of pitcher performance – good ol’ Shelby Miller. Colby Lewis has 14 wins this year with a 4.68 ERA, and two other guys have 14 Ws with a 4+ ERA (Nathan Eovaldi and last night’s winner Bartolo Colon). Even Certified Win Expert (TM) Tom Glavine would have to agree that Shelby Miller has been far superior to all three of those pitchers this year.
I watched the entire broadcast last night, I feel like the Braves owe me money. Anyway…the game was so bad that Chip and Joe spent most of it bashing advanced stats — “wins aren’t important, right Tommy?”. Lol. They were constantly talking in circles. On the one hand eveyone admits that you can’t measure Shelby’s season by wins. On the other hand they refused to concede that pitcher wins aren’t a good measure.
I’ll give Glavine some credit, he didn’t take the bait as much as he could have. He said innings pitched might be the best measure of a starter. That’s a legit take, in my opinion.
Nobody is going to admit that to get a lot of wins you have to pitch for a good team. That would mean that they have to say that the Braves aren’t a good team. We’re obviously a good team, and we’re trying hard, and we’re totally not tanking. NOT TANKING!
Don Sutton is the only non-player in the entire organization whose current contributions I can honestly say I enjoy and would like to see continue.
Edit: Actually, per krussell’s comments, Glavine is okay. I appreciate his lack of self-seriousness.
Once they got over the “this team just plays the right way” post facto garbage from the season’s first two months, Jim Powell became mildly enjoyable again.
I’m at it with Chip again! I know I should take the high road but this is just too much fun.
On the post-game show Fredi was asked for the 100th time about how to motivate the team for the last month, and at the very end of his standard answer he said “…and we owe it to the Washington Nationals to put our best team out there every night”.
I thought that was all kinds of awesome.
@ryan c, I haven’t read what he has to say yet, but the headline seemed very appropriate: http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2015/9/10/9301909/2015-mvp-cy-young-rookie-of-the-year
To draft Glavine into that argument is a little insulting to Glavine. The guy wasn’t a HOF’er just on wins. The guy posted a 12 year peak with a 134 ERA+. He wasn’t some counting stat compiler.
All three of them were in “we don’t need no more fancy stats” mode. ERA is perfectly fine. We don’t need anything better than that. I think if they had left it there it would’ve been ok. Joe went into a diatribe about geeks creating made up jobs for themselves. He’s just the fucking worst.
We should go to WAR with Joe Simpson.
Get it?
Joe Simpson has been dead to me since the Infield Fly Rule game.
The problem with Tom Glavine is pretty much the same as the problem with Greg Maddux: both have become the go-to analogy for a left-handed or right-handed guy without a blazing fastball. They are the Godwin’s Law of baseball analogies. Bringing them up almost guarantees that you’ll get a poor discussion.
I think Glavine is a pretty good example of the flaws with FIP. But that’s only a good conversation if you care what FIP is, rather than just knowing that it wasn’t on the back of your Tom Seaver baseball card.
Going to the game tonight–anyone know if they still let you bring food into the park? I did last year, but sometimes rules change.
Lose tonight and we are 30 games below .500. Finally something that we can achieve.
On first looking into a BJ Homer
Much had we traveled in the realms of old
so many vaunted vets and has-beens seen
round many minor ball parks have we been
where Hart a certain someone had been sold.
Oft of some large expense had we been told
adducing homers like we’d never seen
yet never did we breathe its pure serene
till we saw Hector striking out so bold.
Then felt we like some watcher of the skies
when a new slugger soars into his ken
unlike stout Melvyn when with eagle eyes
he stared at the sPecific ‘out the pen
‘ay looking ever with such shocked surprise
silent, a fit of pique, most cursed of men.
http://www.bartleby.com/126/24.html
http://www.baseballamerica.com/minors/ask-ba-braves-top-five-farm-system/
Q: Are the Braves a top 5 system now
A: LOL, no.
Great. We sacrificed a competitive team so we can go from low farm system to mediocre. Awesome.
@21 – Lol, wut?
He says they went from “an awful farm system that was near the bottom of the rankings” to “a potential Top 10 system” and that reads as “from low to mediocre” to you.
He also inlcudes that caveat that that ranking doesn’t include Foltynewicz, Wisler or Peterson, as they won’t qualify for ROY next season.
He then stipulates that with the way they’ve positioned themselves for the draft and the international signing period “it should be much better in a year than it is now.”
And when exactly were we competitive again? When Heyward and Upton were in their final season and we had 2 starting pitchers?
If, when ranking minor league systems, we give the Braves credit for Folty, Wisler and Peterson, then we have to give the Cubs credit for Kris Bryant etc. Either way, the Braves come out as a middle of the pack farm system, which has been my opinion all along. We currently do not have a single A prospect, and arguable only one A-. How much is depth worth? How many B+ prospects equal an A? If you think the answer is something like 3 to 1, then we have a good shot at having a top 5 system in a year. But if the ratio is more like 10 to 1 we are still pretty much middle of the pack.
@22, I think he’s pushing back against this particular organizational self-pat-on-the-back:
http://www.myajc.com/news/sports/baseball/qa-with-coppolella-how-did-braves-get-this-bad/nnYz5/
“And we’ve gone, as you’ve read about and heard, from a bottom-five (minor league) system to a top-five system. We were ranked 29th by Baseball America this past offseason; we were ranked No. 2 by ESPN six weeks ago. I’ve never seen that happen with any organization so fast, and it doesn’t just happen by snapping your fingers. It happens through making real gutsy trades.”
BA’s point is, to extend an analogy I read somewhere else about this, that the portfolio as constructed is a bunch of volatile tech stocks, with no blue chips. After all this, Kolby Allard, who was there at #14 regardless of what was done this offseason, is arguably the second-best guy in the system. Still just one guy, Albies, a Wren international signee, in the top 50. That’s kind of disappointing, no? Certainly not worth patting yourself on the back in public and saying you’re now the #2 system in the game, I wouldn’t think.
“Mediocre” might overstate it, or not, since “potential top 10” might mean anywhere from the 8th to 12th best system, so depending on where you draw the mediocre line @21 may or may not be right. Either way, I’ll start trusting these guys more when they stop obviously bullshitting the fan base.
He didn’t answer the question about Fredi and Roger’s job being safe for next year.
Game thread is up.