[You can take the John Wayne version. You can pull it out of Disney’s “Davy Crockett.” You can take the Billy Bob Thornton version. It doesn’t matter. When you get to the end, the Alamo defenders lose. They all die (although in real life it is likely that around 6 including Crockett surrendered and were executed). I take the John Wayne version more directly. For one thing, the romanticization of the heroic defenders is more heightened, kind of like the Barves’ FO’s discussion of how much better 2016 old be. Also, you don’t get the whole, “but we only won at San Jacinto because they fell” thing.]
Juan Seguin {Braves Journal followers }(much younger in the real version) tries to warn William Barrett Travis {Chip Caray because of the insipid homerish commentary} that Santa Ana’s cavalry (Red’s hitters) are close. Travis tries to scoff at this report using the “some vaquero” retort. That was an 1800’s version of the “some dude” defense.
In the first inning the cavalry arrives and runs the contingent out of San Antonio and into the old broken down mission. As in, the Reds score 3 runs in the first inning. Aaron Blair plays the part of the dumb guy who tries to swap punches with Crockett at the bar in San Antonio before the fight really starts. As in, totally inadequate for the fight, but game to try.
But in the bottom of the first, the Tennessee riflemen pick off a few of Santa Ana’s men when they set the siege line a little too close. So, Mallex Smith and Ender Inciarte get on and Freddie Freeman {let’s let Freddie play Crockett} singles in Ender. Then, with no outs, Nick Markakis Barves into a double play, but Ender scores. 3 – 2 Reds.
Then, in the bottom of the second, Erick Aybar {Jim Bowie as the grip of death from Diptheria or excessive alcohol use or whatever is taking over} PULLS a ball into the right field corner for a double, but misunderstands it is not a triple and is thrown out at third. TIE GAME.
But in the top of the third, Santa Ana’s artillery has arrived and been set up. So, there is a 3 run barrage.
But the noble heroes destined for doom do not let up. They pack mud in a series of cannon which Santa Ana’s men don’t check and several of those blow up. In other words, Neck gets in Freddie by benefit of an error and then Adonis doubles in the beneficiary. Reds 6, Barves 5.
Freddie Freeman then homers in the bottom of the 5th and the Barves are ahead 7 – 6). Comparing Freeman and Crockett here, remember that Crockett had just been defeated politically (primarily for opposing Andrew Jackson in thinking that at least some Native Americans were o.k.). And he had been on a little bit of a bender (the drinking and hunting trip being like “the slump”), but now he is focused on the fight at hand (out of “the damn slump”).
But Ryan Weber plays the part of the husband of the old blind woman. He stays in the mission as one more of the doomed. He gives back the lead with 2 in the top of the sixth. Barves 7, Reds 8.
As the final assault is destined to come, Adonis Garcia pushes down the assault ladders over and over by hitting a home run and tying the game in the bottom of the 8th.
But Arodys Vizcaino plays the part of Captain Dickinson in the top of 9. He wears the uniform well and looks like he can accomplish something, but how can anyone defend the Alamo.
Yes this account makes one of the worst teams in MLB sound like Santa Ana’s army of 10,000 against 186 Texicans and volunteers. But doesn’t it seem like there is that much difference between the Barves and the rest of MLB?
I know there are no moral victories, but I kind of enjoyed this loss. Watching the Braves this year, there are horrible losses, expected losses, fun losses, and the occasional win. This would have to go in the fun loss category. To me that is any time we score more than 4 runs and are within 2 runs of winning.
I watched Money Ball on the plane a few weeks ago (not recommended, but at least barely watchable to me) and was thinking about the 20 game win streak. If the Braves won 20 games in a row they would still be 7 games under .500 and probably about 15 games out of first. Fun losses are about all we can hope for.
Eat at Arby’s!
Bad news for the Dodgers, Cubs, and Giants could be good news for the Braves.
I think this is one of the lowest points of the rebuild. We’re 9-17 under Snitker, so it’s not like you can really follow the narrative that we were terrible because of Fredi any longer. 9-17 is an improvement over 9-28, sure, but not that much.
Things were looking pretty good when we promoted Albies, Swanson, and Sims, we had Teheran, Wisler, Folty, Blair, and Perez in the rotation, but since then Folty and Perez are injured, Blair has looked completely lost, and consider these lines from players we’d hoped 45 days would be much farther along than they are:
Incifarte: .236/.302/.313
Albies: .239/.285/.365 at AAA
Swanson: .239/.326/.374 at AA
Ruiz: .251/.349/.358 at AAA
Sims: 6.80 ERA in 9 GS at AAA
Newcomb: 4.11 ERA, still way too many walks
And Simmons, Folty, and Perez are on the shelf.
AND our top three picks in the draft went to guys that probably don’t play into our plans until about 2020.
With that said, there are still positives. Mallex is playing well at the major league level, Chris Ellis is pitching really well in AA, and Albies, Ruiz, Sims, and Swanson are young for their levels.
I think I’d love to see most of these guys take a step forward, and if 2-3 of our 6-7 under-performing position players could up their OPS by 60 points or so, essentially making a couple of them tradeable (especially Markakis), I think I’d be pretty happy. But man, there’s just not much to be excited about right now.
@3
A lot of hitters coming from Cuba.
With the concussion issue in the NFL, the fungibility of pitchers, and the knowledge of a lack of offense in baseball now in the mainstream, I wonder if we will see more players becoming position players, especially strong athletes who can hit for power. Could the Braves be onto something that hitting will become more available in the next 3-5 years? If you were a high schooler 2-3 years ago, and you’re hearing about concussions in football, pitchers blowing out their elbows, and offense down in MLB, do you see a shift that would then result in more offensive-minded players? This stuff is all cyclical, and we could be due for a correction.
Red Hot Meneses Completes Cycle
JC’d 🙂
Also, Stu and Tad are making unrelated (?) remarks about periods at the end of the last thread.
@5…Yes, like this guy…he has been drafted for his bat…brilliant, devious move by the FO.
Joey Wentz
whither? whence?
Kansas splitter
Clean up Hitter?
Mine was intended as both a continuation of the Meneses observation and a commentary on Tad’s…commentary.
@4 – I think somewhere I posted ‘The odds are against all of our prospects failing.’ Dang.
I’m not saying they’re failing, but that they’ve decided to all have their downs at the same time.
Never tell me the odds, kid!
Whalen, Soroka, Minter, Janas, Phillips, Gant (in AAA). Those guys are also pitching very well. Actually, Toussaint has been pitching decently since his April implosion. Ronald Acuna was playing well aside from injury. Dustin Peterson is hitting well and improving (ops .998 in June), and he’s young for his level. I see plenty to be optimistic about, and plenty of those guys who are struggling right now will improve with more exposure.
It’s incredible to me that Dustin Peterson is three years younger than his brother D.J., who was always a higher-profile prospect — Dustin’s a second-rounder who’s never been on the BA Top 100, while D.J. was drafted in the first round and was B.A.’s 85th-ranked prospect entering 2015 — but they’re now both in the same league, and our he’s outhitting his brother: Dustin has an OPS of .779, while D.J.’s at .758.
Who knows if the results will hold, but it would be awfully nice if our Peterson turned out to be the better brother.
Maybe at some point we could make a trade and have both DJ and Dustin. Uh, on second thought, BJ and Justin didn’t work out too well, maybe we should pass. I wonder if DJ will change his name to Kelvin at some point.
His name has always been Kelvin. DJ stands for his childhood nickname of Drossman Jr. Kids can be mean.
Meneses was repeating the level and he’s 24, so let’s not get too excited. Nevertheless, he needs to go to AA.
Agreed. Anybody know what time of the month a Meneses promotion might normally occur?
Rob Whalen intrigues me, but unless Minter because of his age gets promotions quickly, Minter and Soroka are far away. Janas seems like a non-prospect from what I’ve read.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying the rebuild is not working. I think we have a ton of pitching, but the high minors prospects have just been disappointing over the last 30-45 days. It could very well change, and I think this is just a valley. When you stake the success of your franchise to the up-and-down performances of 35 or so guys aged 17 to 24, then you’re going to have this.
Probably best to leave Joey alone–just don’t bug him or anything.
I get I’m one of the more ahem negative posters, but until our top 2 overall prospects (Swanson and Albies) show power potential, I really doubt they will be very impactful as MLBers.
How impactful is a guy that’s gonna hit 8 HRs gonna be?
@20 – Jason Kipnis had 9 HRs and a 5 WAR last year.
http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/stats/_/id/31007/jason-kipnis
@16, are you telling us to temper our Meneses hysteria?
Well Tony Gwynn never hit a lot of homers either. Mid teens at the most? I’d say he was pretty impactful. Ichiro is another guy who wasn’t a homers machine. So, just because you don’t hit a lot of dingers doesn’t mean you’ll automatically suck.
Way back around 1988 through 1990 the only good news about the Braves organization was what I read in Baseball America (pre-internet), looking at some good looking statistics from some minor leaguers, and brief write-ups about how good some of the players were supposed to be.
I get really worried now when instead of seeing actual good stats from minor leaguers, I just get told how good someone is supposed to be someday. It’s time for showing, not telling. Otherwise this will become the never-ending rebuild.
Wentz signed
Agreed, I should have said…sounds like he will officially sign Wednesday in Atlanta
@17, He tends to sync up with the other hitters around him.
More signing news. Looks like top pitching draftees have agreed minus Anderson
I looked it up – Greenville Braves had pretty strong records in 1988 and 1989, with some strong individual player stats. 1989 Richmond had good OPS stats from Justice, Gant, Lemke, and Francisco Cabrera. And pretty good WHIPs from Stanton, Mercker,each of whom would make contributions in the future.
Braves seem to be losing at most levels right now.
That’s great. Getting the top three guys signed was clearly the key priority for the whole draft class.
Did Anderson sign? I assume they had an agreement with him.
@31 – Not yet. I think he has to graduate from high school first.
@32, correct. Absolutely has to finish the year. I am not sure he actually has to graduate, but he has to cease to be a high school senior.
o.k. aar at 2,
I never got this. I figured later it would hit me as obvious, but no, it hasn’t. Were you delusional or was I?
Anderson will sign after he graduates on June 23rd.
The Braves are currently more than $2 million over their allotted pool, based on reported signing bonuses. This doesn’t yet factor in the savings they’ll get on deals with Anderson and the very cheap seniors taken in rounds 7 through 10. It also doesn’t factor in potential over-slot deals with Cumberland, Wilson, or other guys taken after the 10th round.
In spreadsheet form.
34—I believe Alex is making reference to the sometimes-hilarious Nihilist Arby’s Twitter account.
Stu, you are an American hero.
EDIT: That was with reference to @35. But thanks for clarifying my comment @36, too.
By the way, Stu, just to make sure I understand, on the draft tab, you’ve bolded them if they’ve signed, and you’ve indicated their bonus in column D if it was different from the slot for that round?
Bolded = signed, yes. All bonuses, even those equal to slot, are in Column D. The two that are italicized are figures I’ve seen but don’t yet consider air-tight reliable. If the name is bolded, but there’s no signing bonus in Column D, that’s because I’ve seen a report that the guy has signed, but haven’t seen for what amount.
Gotcha. Thanks!
Nice recap, Tex.
Thanks coop. Once I got an inspiration, it started flowing.
Anybody know if our draftee Schlosser is the younger brother of “Pickles”?
I saw that too, and I doubt it. Pickles is from Sarasota FL, and I believe the new Schlosser went to high school in Minnesota.
On this date in 1952, the Braves purchased the contract of Hank Aaron from the Indianapolis Clowns. That worked out well.
Inauspicious beginning, Julio. You need to build up your trade value, kiddo.
@ 17
ha ha..did it slip by?
@42, for a second I thought you were making another Meneses joke.
Otherwise, I want to be the first to admit I was dead wrong. Just a couple of weeks ago I was insisting we were better than Cincy. They may give up 1000 runs, but we should get outscored by more.
@44, Actual team name or the epithet devised by the Braves F.O. after 1956,7,8?
When news of Meneses finally gets around, will the local rags pick it up?
There is no J.P. Richardson on this team.
@49, depends on if it’s a heavy news cycle
I just realized that when he’s promoted, it will be to Pearl.
You guys. Julio’s pitching a good game, but the horse’s been stolen, I fear.
52, do you think Pearl can absorb Meneses? They might have to make a few moves or the clubhouse will be cramped.
Question… if Braves sign big free agent do they forfeit their #1 draft pick next year ?? If so .. do you think we will sign big free agent ??
Our guys got no guys .. they plunk Freeman 2 times .. glad they did maybe he wakes up .. but our pitchers .. no retaliation at all .. gutless …
Dario Alvarez was called up and NOBODY told me? Five thousand menstrual jokes and no Dario news? This place…
@57, sorry we just get so emotional this time of the month and we can’t remember to keep you updated about every little thing OK????
What do you call a street musician on her period?
A menstrual minstrel
Re: Meneses, I hope Midol is not on the list of banned substances…
Well let’s see what Mallix does.. he will probably swing at a 3-0 .. well should have been 3-0
Well that typifies the season there .. bases,loaded no outs .. notta..
Bases loaded bottom 9, down by 2. The only question was which order the K and DP would come in.
Still ticks me off that they hit 3 of our batters .. Freeman twice and nothing .. we had chances to hit Bruce and they were gutless .. pisses me off .. no wonder Freeman won’t play hard for those gutless asses.. it amazes me the pussies on this team ..
Tad, relax buddy.
We suck. We just do. This is a zombie team, and unless there’s an infusion of life, we’ll lose in the 110s…
Recapped.
@57
SICK SAD WORLD