Matt Wisler turned in an Aaron Blair-like version of a quality start: 6.2 innings, 7 hits, 3 runs, 4 walks, and just 1 strikeout. But the bullpen — Dario Alvarez, whose ESPN player card still shows him in a Mets cap, and who I have already started calling Daario Naharis in my head; Jim Johnson; and Arodys Vizcaino, who almost certainly will not be in Atlanta in August —€” held fast, and then the offense did two things that I did not think that the offense could do.
This is how ESPN described the Braves runs in the fourth and sixth:
•€ A.J. Pierzynski singled to center, Nick Markakis scored.
•€ Pierzynski doubled to deep right center, Markakis scored.
No, I know — I didn’t believe it either!
And then Casey stepped to the bat, and a new folk hero was born:
•€ Adonis Garcia homered to left (391 feet), Freeman scored.
If there’s something better than hitting a late-inning Mets-killing homer, I don’t know what it is. Happy Friday, everybody.
I’m not that guy, but I literally stood and cheered when Snitker got tossed. My dog was very confused. And I’m also not a big “show your butt” kinda guy, but it absolutely has value when a manager sticks up for his team. I like Snitker a lot right now. We’ll see.
I agree with the notion that it’s not so much how good Snitker is as how bad Fredi was. Fredi may not be a bad manager — I have repeatedly argued on this site that I believe that he’s average to above-average — but he was the definition of a change-of-scenery guy. He lost the clubhouse and he needed to be out of there. Some of what we’re seeing is a dead-cat bounce.
A number of our players are playing a lot better under him than they did under Fredi, especially Freeman, Garcia, Peterson, and Norris. I don’t think that’s a repeatable skill of Snitker’s. But I think it’s patently obvious that Fredi had lost the ability to get the best out of his players, and they’d have had better results if they’d replaced him with a cardboard cutout of the owner from Major League. Over the next few months, we’ll see if Snit can actually manage.
I want to say again that I’m stoked about Josh Anthony. I think after a year at an SEC school, he’d be a 2nd rounder. He looks like he can swing it. To pry him away from a strong commit in the 16th round, just because he’s local and a fan, may turn out to be a real coup.
@2
I think Fredi lost the team three years ago and never got the respect back. I wonder if Wren had fired him then where we would be.
I also think Fredi fell apart as a manager after the first massive late season collapse and never was good again.
@3, agreed. That is a tough sign. I would’ve advised him against it, but glad to have him in the fold.
My barber says Coppy came in for a head shave and read his phone while he was in the bathroom.
Atl get: Willson Contreras,Tyler O’Neill and international signing $$ from Sea
Chi get: Vizcaino and Frenchy
Sea get: Dan Vogelbach, Ruiz and Simms
Hey, I hadn’t seen that about Anthony — that’s cool. Here’s a story about it: http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/sports/college/auburnauthority/2016/06/23/junior-college-all-american-josh-anthony-turns-down-atlanta-braves-attend-auburn/86319580/
It’s definitely nice to add a strong JuCo hitter into the system. Lord knows we could use more.
@4, I think it’s possible that there’s something to that. There are plenty of cases of a player getting badly beaned and then getting shy at the plate. (Joe “Ducky Wucky” Medwick is a famous example.) I think Fredi may have gotten gunshy as a result of his collapses. He certainly didn’t learn from his mistakes.
There are two interesting things about the present incarnation of Adonis Garcia – interesting in the sense they are unexpected and atypical. They both have something to do with Gwinnett apparently.
First, his power. He surprised us last year when most of it went to the off field. Now it does not, he hits home runs where most people hit them.
Second, defending the hot corner. Please name me another Braves defender who in the space of, say, 20 starts goes from goofball to Brooks Robinson lite – to the biased eye!
To repeat.
Bring us the thread of Adonis Garcia we says. (Get it?)
Bring us the head of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Alex…
you may have lost me with your @4…
Are you drawing a comparison between a player beaned at the plate and a manager responsible for late season collapses where both then become gunshy within their respective fields?
Stretch? The first is physical fear, right, thus gunshy. The other not.
Now i’m not sure TBH!
Is it fair to say that Snitker has coached and spent more time with a lot of these players than Fredi? It sure seems like he’s commanding more respect and maybe they genuinely want to win for him.
Wanting to win for a guy, and doing it, are of course different things…but I know this is a team of misfit toys and all I ask is that they play hard and play smart. Snit is looking good to me right now.
Braves 2017: Snit Happens?
3—Yeah, I think it’s a big deal. Very unexpected. Very pleasant surprise.
@10
There could be a lot to that.
There’s an #AskCoppy being conducted through the Braves’ Twitter account right now; lots of interesting answers.
He even admits that the Olivera trade was a bad one for the Braves, and he wishes he could have that one back. Shockingly honest.
Not exactly coming across as the Smartest Guy In The Room douche canoe that a select few here continue to accuse him of being.
@9, I don’t think that they’re remotely the same thing, but I could believe that the physical fear of being injured that can lead to a player being less aggressive and gunshy can work similarly to the way that mental fears of other negative outcomes can lead to a pressing, tightening up, and ultimately choking. I don’t know if that’s what happened to Fredi, but it sure looked that way from the outside.
Agreed with Stu @13 — it’s very interesting. Check out https://twitter.com/Braves. Coppolella has said multiple times explicitly that he doesn’t see them trading Teheran. Now… that may just be an attempt to build up his trade value by making him look untouchable. (It probably is.) But his adamance means that it would also be a much harder PR spin job for him, if he DID trade Julio.
Not naming names! (doesn’t need to)
Thanks guys–enjoyed reading ask Coppy
Uhhhh…
It’s like he’s a Braves Journal commenter!
Braves are succeeding quite well at the getting rid of overvalued defensive players. Seem to have forgotten about the part about acquiring more runs.
Nothing evokes the smell of the ’80’s more than watching Olivera, Aybar, and Garcia (and others) cleat themselves in the field.
So the Red Sox want Teheran and Vizcaino. That will be expensive
@13, the format definitely suits him a lot better than AJC writeups, where he does tend to come off as annoyed that we can’t appreciate the three-dimensional chess he’s playing. He showed a lot of humanity just shooting the shit with people and speaking candidly about Wisler, Myers, and (maybe, as @14 notes) Teheran, et al.
I wouldn’t call the Olivera comment shocking though, because no one stands by their Ray Rice in the era where domestic violence has a higher awareness. I would say it shows some ability of the organization to not be completely tone-deaf, which does represent progress. (The monthly unlimited pass was another nice gesture in that direction too. Credit where it’s due.)
All those fans in the chat sucking up to get a free hat or jersey or tickets should be embarrassed for themselves, though.
Agreed, but kudos to him for handling it well.
Clearly he’s a smart guy, and clearly he realizes that what the organization needs is hitting. Now he better pull it off.
It would be nice if there were some numerical support for the idea that defense is overvalued. So far, it seems like someone’s gut feeling that has gained factual status.
It’s what this FO believes though, factual or no.
I think they are right. We’ve debated defensive WAR ad nauseum. The bottom line to me is that you get more plate appearances than defensive plays, so offense should be weighted more than defense.
The gut/intuition comes from maybe having two of the best defensive players ever at their positions on the same team, and the continual lament was that we weren’t scoring enough.
I don’t care if my SS hits, but I want my RF to hit. I’m old school as far as the middle vs corners job duties go.
I do like Coppy. Hell we agree on a lot of stuff. I don’t like a 10 year rebuild. But I’m sure they don’t either.
“The gut/intuition comes from maybe having two of the best defensive players ever at their positions on the same team, and the continual lament was that we weren’t scoring enough.”
Yes, and that team was one of the winningest teams in baseball during the time they were together. What people “lamented” means squat, unless you think it was holding down ticket sales, which is a different matter than winning the most games.
@22, if there is numerical support for that notion, you can believe that it’s proprietary.
@24, don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming the world’s problems on Heyward and Simmons. I think there’s two orthogonal discussions and they get munged together in confusing ways quite often.
1. Are they good/valuable players. Yes. Simmons is on the cusp of being non-good though.
2. Are they worth devoting a huge percentage of our budget towards. No.
While we had them both cheaply, we did win quite a bit, and the years things went poorly there were tons of other reasons other than their hitting (e.g. everyone else’s hitting too!!!).
I didn’t realize how bad Simmons has been this year.
.213/.238/.270. 0.1 WAR
This was just posted on Twitter in reference to Josh Anthony
@BravesReddit @mlbJAye the Braves withdrew the offer this morning stating miscalculation of Budget, WOW
@BravesReddit @blackcrackersba @mlbJAye how can we trust you BlackCrackers?
@SamTheMan180 @BravesReddit @mlbJAye he is my SON
Oh good grief. Do I need to send them my spreadsheet?
Between this and the early-season Bonifacio fiasco, I’m officially concerned about their lack of attention to detail. Still on-board with the big-picture stuff and think they’re onto some really good things, but these easy things they’re screwing up…gah.
No doubt the overrated defensive players he was referring to were Simmons and Heyward.
Could that be as simple as “we offered, you declined, we offered more to someone else, then you accepted, we tried to increase our budget, couldn’t, so bye”?
Coppy also said that Wisler has regressed since the beginning of the season. I think we all know that, but interesting that he says that publicly.
@29, have we seen any kind of confirmation of that other than one guy tweeting at BravesReddit?
Because, yeah, if that’s real, then that sort of calls into question the entire premise of the rebuild, which is that the people driving the train are not asleep at the switch, unlike Big Bad Frank Wren.
But I’d like to see someone, somewhere, confirm that.
Can someone interpret @28 for me? Can’t grok any of that.
@16, if the player he’s not naming is now a Cub, I agree.
If the player he’s not naming is now an Angel, I disagree.
34 – Sure. Josh Anthony’s dad says that the Braves withdrew their offer this morning. Someone asks how can he be trusted with this information and he states that Josh is his son.
Josh himself has tweeted that he’s going to Auburn again.
Offense does indeed count for more than defense. You can see this reflected in the variance of each component (SS defense possibly excepted). But if a player is average offensively and brilliant defensively, what do you expect a relative measure to say?
Well fart. Double fart.
Yeap.. pretty disappointing. How do you screw that up?
Well they are seriously close to going over their allotment. How funny would it be if we lost this draft pick we are tanking for, due to clerical errors and inability to use a spreadsheet?
Joey Cycle promoted to Mississippi along with catcher Joseph Odom. Odom was a southern league all-star, but he’s 24 like Meneses
Incidentally, the Braves Reddit is full of dumbassery and policed by a bunch of teenage boys. You know, sort of like AJC or YouTube comments.
Now that was a nice top of the first, Mr. Blair.
I spoke too soon, Mr. Blair. Better luck next time.
I think I’m ready for a Jenkins/Blair swap. And if Jenkins plays well, he stays when Folty/Perez gets back.
Blair sucks.
Yep. I think Blair has some growing to do.
Snitker’s not even gonna pull him. Take one for the team, hoss.
Finally.
Aaron Blair
Kept running back out there
His pitches, slow and fat
Kept running into bat after bat
Ya know, I don’t think I actually like Blair. His persona is an ACHE-ian “I don’t give a crap” kinda feel.
He reminds me of the California house flipper.
The thing that drives me craziest on this blog is when we pretend we can tell a guy isn’t trying.
You think a 24 year old with 10 starts under his belt doesn’t give a crap if he sticks in the big leagues? Give me a break. As if he isn’t living his dream, doing a thing he’s devoted his entire life to, and he isn’t beating the crap out of himself that he’s failing.
Gonna miss the lack of lights in the outfield when we leave Turner Field. Said no visiting player. Ever.
@54, in his defense, rob cope did use the words “persona” and “feel”, which doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with reality. Some guys are hard to like as players, especially when they’re awful. (Disclaimer, I have no strong feelings on Blair)
Yeah, Joey Meneses is 4-6 at Mississippi. Dude rakes
Also 2 hr in 2 days for Austin Riley
Is this gonna happen?
Aaron Blair and Stephen Matz shouldn’t feel so bad. Edinson Volquez gave up 12 runs in 1 inning of work.
Also, Brandon Snyder needs more PAs.
Just had to get that malingering Blair out of there and let the guys who care take over.
When I turned the game on just now it was 8-0. Just sayin…
Amazing inning. They are definitely fun to watch now. Proving my incredible grasp of talent, I predicted Blair would get ROY votes at the end of the year. In reality, I thought he would at least throw strikes like he did in the minors. He has been all over the place and should be sent down after the game.
What a nice man Bad Henry is. That was great.
That’s why you don’t bunt.
Gotta love bunting.
Nothing kills a rally like an attempted bunt.
I know what let’s do! Let’s make outs intentionally
Down 2, first 2 get on and we bunt?!?
My Braves are exciting though not always good. Give ’em heck tomorrow, boys.
You lost me forever there Snit.
Did snitker not just look back into the dugout to see whether he should challenge a close play on the final out of the game? For what–want to save the challenge in case you need it later? The stupidity of men who get paid handsomely to sit in a major league dugout makes me sick.
Man…my Snit love affair was just a torrid 2 day whirlwind. Maybe we can still be friends.
I hate James Loney.
Blair
Good PM
Bad pitcher
Sad
To be ahead 8-0 in the fifth and not get credit for the win has to be the stuff of nightmares for a starting pitcher. Is it possible to find a more egregious example? Ever? I guess in baseball you can never say ever.
Steven Matz
would rather you not mention those Braves bats
but we will in a trice
in a season this tends to happen for us once, maybe twice.
Aaron Blair
do we wish he was back there?
the Thundering Herd
perhaps graduation should not have occurred.
In the car this morning, I was listening to Remember When on the MLB channel. Lo and behold, Spaceman Bill Lee was being interviewed. He’s the Liberal Union party’s candidate for governor of Vermont. He’s still a trip, and his campagn slogan is, “Go figure.”
Dude.
Recapped.