Teheran/De Grom in a rematch tonight after Sunday’s JT one hitter. Julio makes his 16th start, de Grom has not won in his last nine. Reyes in the background, signed today, you’re welcome to him. Soon both teams could be evenly matched, one DV offender each. Robles most fortunately indisposed after his personal shut out last night, we do not get along with him either but for more generous reasons. But Addison Reed is just who we need. But where is Jenkins?
(Coppy on Twitter, frank but not bitter, used a term for JT quite new to me -‘ almost into right arm status for us now’. Have to assume he means THE right arm pitcher, what else? Strange way to word it, surely he’s not saying he’s the best RH Pitcher in baseball is he? We already knew he’s our best so what?)
Under way, 97 degrees. Both teams in Negro League unis.
First. Nick saves the day, fine catch at the wall, one on. Adonis less than Olympian attempting pop up catch earlier.Inciarte walks, steals, stranded.
Second. Alderson says, guess what, he met PERSONALLY with Reyes-you would hope so! The horrible Loney l/off single.Brother D’Arnaud repeats his off field slap. First and Third but the pitcher’s up.Pitching in the bottom of the second Rosenthal won’t stop talking about his loss of velocity and earlier release point. Video from ASG seems to prove his point.
Third. JT hits Granderson. Cespedes singles with one on,(Aybar again shows limited range to his left) C thrown out lollygagging into second by Garcia- hey ho! Man on third, 2 out. Walker flies out. JT singles, Jace hits into DP. Still scoreless.
Fourth. Fine catch by Bonifacio gets Loney. Rosenthal tells the great story of Julio being signed age 16 for 850K. The 10 member family living in house with one bathroom. 100 times the average annual wage in Cartagena. Gets them 1,2,3. We have 1st and 3rd, 1 out but our third DP nixes that. Nice interview with Mrs D’Arnaud, lovely lady, musical family.
Fifth. 1,2,3. Julio 7 in a row. We also 1,2,3. Turns out our 3 DP’s were in consecutive innings -miscreants Jace/Aybar/Garcia.
Sixth. JT at 70 pitches, 3 K’s..gets them in order incl 2nd strike out of Cespedes who R calls the best low ball hitter in the game. We load the bases with 2 out on a Markakis single but they hold Julio at third-he had got on with his second single. Questionable call to say the least with 2 out. Adonis hit a hard grounder strisght to the third baseman. Should be said that whereas we have 3 bats with multiple hits against DGrom Freddy has not caught up with him all night, so far!
Seventh Jt unaffected by exposure on bases gets them in order. Rosenthal comes across as giving very detailed analyses of hitter’s hot zones where you must not go. Interesting. Boy, this getting tight as DeGrom too gets us in order. Who knew we were playing the Marlins at Fort Bragg over the holiday weekend? Not me but had Fredi still been in situ he could have been at obvious risk near the range or up on the rookie’s first parachute drop.
Eighth WOW! Julio hits the 100 pitch mark and finds 2 out trouble after giving up his first hit since the 3rd plus a stolen base, Cabrera threatens with 2 out and Granderson on second. Full count strike out settles that. Great finale for Julio’s special night. DeGrom meanwhile is his match tonight. Still not at the 100 pitch mark he’s gotten stronger as he went along. Amazingly it turns out he’s never gone beyond the 8th inning. He will tonight.
Ninth. Here comes Vizzy. Revenge! We get a great double play. How sweet it was and that left Only the Loney who duly obliged us. No ninth for DeGrom-stupid i call that, Blevins to Freddy who could not handle DG all night. Freddy lead off single, erased on Nick ground out. Blevins gives way to the aforementioned Mr Reed. He closes out the innings with a magnificent catch by Granderson off Flowers. Free baseball, Chip will be pleased.
Tenth. JJ pitching. Lead off single by Flores. WOOHOO!! De Aza pops up a bunt and while he beats himself up JJ lets it drop and we get two, yeah! But we can’t hit Reed who’s on his longest outing of the year.
Eleventh. Oh, Kelly. He takes Alvarez out. Well. The first XBH of the game. The hand that feeds you etc… bounced on top of the wall and over. Bullpen scoreless streak of 23 plus innings snapped. Withrow walks Cespedes with 2 out, our first walk of the night. 3 out and we have the top of the order up against Familia.
How apropos. DP number 4 closes the game out after a Jace l/off single, Inciarte bunt and of course they walked Freddy. Nick couldn’t get it through. Fine game, terrific starting pitching. In this year of painful experimentation I’ll take that if I have to. And – Norris/Bartolo tomorrow? Fun.
Could someone please explain the aforementioned Coppy tweet re JT…’he’s almost into right arm status for us now’?
This past offseason he said he would rather trade his right arm than Freddie Freeman. He is starting to feel that way about Teheran as well.
..so who noticed that clever dropped ball by JJ occurred in the tenth AND the ninth…that second glass of wine…i shall haste to the edit booth
@1 – as in “I’d rather give up my right arm.”
@2/4…
ah…THAT right arm…thanks.
Right arm, eh? Well, prosthetic limbs cost an arm and a leg.
Well why not ..Kelly Johnson never gave us anything .. kinda figured he would come back to bite us !!!! huh …
Also … bad news on our 16 round pick .. the Junior College kid named Anthony .. making the mistake of offering too much money .. why couldnt that have happened with a pitcher … we need POWER in the worst way in our minor leagues .. this kid hit 25 homers and 81 rbi’s lasy year .. plays 3B .. which is a need .. just our luck .. maybe we can draft him next year too after he plays his 1 year at Auburn
the raised mound
has resulted in change some felt oddly profound
now suddenly they’re taller
but vertiginous fear has affected the smaller.
Daddy’s on Twitter
expect as you should that things could get bitter
but cooler heads rule
no burning the bridges the cardinal rule.
Well done, blazon. Thank you. Who’s the current favorite in the Teheran sweepstakes?
Boston has several (overrated?) prospects. I don’t know if any of them fill a need for us except for Moncada. He would have to be part of any deal.
Moncadaand Benintendi are pretty good, but they are indeed being overhyped. They’re both 21, and Moncada just got to AA. I think they both could end up in Atlanta by the end of the year, and they both fill positions of need, but I still think it’d be better to trade prospects for someone with a bigger contract, thus keeping Teheran and dealing from a position of strength.
Bleh.
http://www.ajc.com/news/sports/baseball/after-braves-offer-snafu-josh-anthony-headed-to-au/nrnMj/
This Anthony situation is unfortunate, sure, but who cares? I do wish they had made this mistake on a pitcher, but before the age of social media, we wouldn’t of found out about this. Organizations make mistakes all the time, and I bet a mistake like this was made 20 years ago during our dominance. But nowadays, it’s all over Twitter and everybody gets egg on their face. Who cares.
After all, Anthony could have just, ya know, taken the original offer. But he had to be over slot.
The fact that the Braves front office didn’t know how much money they had is a really bad sign. That story attempts to pin the blame on a single guy getting a bit too far ahead of himself. But either one of the following things is true:
1) Braves front office members have been working on these deals without talking to each other, so no one knows what the others are doing.
2) Braves front office members HAVE been coordinating, so they ALL screwed up on the amount of money they have left.
@16
Yes, but what if it’s as simple as they were off by $100k? Peanuts based on the budget. Bridges was working Anthony, and someone else was working someone they liked better. There was a miscommunication, they wanted the other guy more, so they told Anthony to fly a kite after they threw out an offer too high. That’s really not that crazy, and it’s really not a big deal. The entire rebuild is not called into question because a line item on the draft budget was messed up. There are probably 100 figures being thrown around with dozens of draft picks, and one person screwed up. Big whoop. 20 years ago, it doesn’t make it into the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and we don’t give a rip. The bigger sin is why the organization screwed up the draft for several years, and waited too long to fire their GM.
Brian Bridges is the scouting director. I highly doubt the scouting director was working on the 16th round pick and had no input on the 1st rounder.
If I had to make a wild guess, I’d say that Ian Anderson wasn’t as wrapped up ad he was supposed to be. On draft night, our top 3 prep righties were going to sign for $3.5m, $3m, and $2.5m. The two that signed immediately were right on the nose, $3m and $2.5m. The guy who couldn’t sign until weeks later ends up at $4m.
I mean, it’s not just Josh Anthony. There’s literally not a dime over slot to offer the Shumpert kid either. In fact, as it presently stands, we have to sign our 9th rounder for $10k or less, or let him walk, in order to save $160k to avoid losing a pick.
I think the Braves thought they had Anderson at $3.5 – $3.7 and would have between $250k and $300k to throw at Anthony and Shumpert and try to pull one. I think some hardball was played, and a decision was made to look bad on Anthony and abandon Shumpert altogether, rather than start on the wrong foot with a hopeful franchise player.
They actually can’t let Neslony walk. They have to sign him, and it has to be for $10K or less, or they’re in the penalty, because they need that $161K in savings against the slot to be able to afford all the over-slot deals. He’s a good-not-great college senior, so that won’t be an issue.
Regarding wild guesses, I really, really doubt it was an Anderson thing. The timing of the Anthony thing — offer $100K, he declines; one day later, offer more, he accepts; one day later, have to renege — does not point to extended hardball negotiations with Anderson. (And Heyman had that $4 million figure right a week ago, before the Anthony back-and-forth.) I think it points to Bridges or some collection of Bridges and others just screwing up the numbers somewhere. Like, he/they had Becherer’s or Davidson’s or Walker’s bonus recorded incorrectly in their spreadsheet, and thought they had an extra $25-75K at their disposal.
There’s no explanation that wouldn’t still be completely weird and stupid, but I am virtually certain that the Anthony-Anderson negotiations were not directly tied together.
Regarding Shumpert, I see that he hasn’t signed, but have you read that that’s because he’s demanding more than $100K? I just haven’t read anything on him anywhere.
Bud Norris has turned out pretty good. We could actually get a little something back for him.
Budgetgate.
If Bud Norris gets another scoreless inning, trade that dude before he takes his cleats off.
C’mon Neck.
Well, Neck came on.
AGar!
This guy is not bad
No one said anything about it, but Garcia made a sick catch in foul ground in the 2nd to rob Walker, who had just robbed him in the inning previous.
Adonis!
I’d like to give special thanks to our offense, which is.
Just win, baby.
The Snit era is a vast improvement. They act like they want to play and they actually play fairly decently sometimes.
Perhaps as importantly, Bartolo Colon extended his new major league record for most career plate appearances without ever drawing a walk. He passed Tracy Stallard (258) a couple of weeks ago, and is now up to 264.
New thread.