What is enough? Must we always want more?
Our streaking Ender Inciarte and Erick Aybar are easy outs to start the game, but Fanning Freddie Freeman walks. I’m pulling for you, Matt Kemp, so show me something.
Matt does. His double moves Freddie to third, and Nick Markakis squeaks a well-placed bouncer up the middle to plate both runners. Adonis Garcia works the count on Adam Wainwright, then lines a single up the middle. Cakes moves to third.
Jace Peterson singles on an 0-2 count, and Nick scores run number three to give Mike Foltynewicz a little room for error.
Mike needs it. Folty walks the leadoff batter. Hey Mikey: we want you to be Our Ace. Step up, kid. Stephen Piscotty singles. Jeez, Folty. Stop the bleeding.
Holy crap! Brandon Moss drills one. Ender catches it against the wall for out one. A pop to Anthony Recker makes two, and Matt Adams strikes out for the third. Nice damage control, Mike. Ease up on the drama, okay?
Marvin Harrison said, “They pay me to practice and improve. I play the game for free.”
Adonis Garcia plays the game for free. The Braves paid him to get work hard and get better. He did, and now he gets to play the game at its highest level. No matter how good another player may be, he doesn’t love baseball any more than Adonis.
What the heck? Folty singles. Ender singles him to third. Aybar triples them both in. The hitting streaks are intact, and Braves lead 5-0. This is Adam Wainwright you’re slapping around, Braves. He ain’t just some rented mule.
Freddie walks. Again! Kemp flails and looks completely lost, but his weak ground ball drives in Erick. That’s all we get, but six should be enough for Folty to bring this one home.
Let Ender catch all the balls and just back up the plays in case one slips past, Matty. The Cards load the bases for Stephen Piscotty with two out, but Folty escapes unscathed as Adonis turns a nice 5-4 force. For free. How the Cards have failed to score I do not know.
Waino dispels chaos, restores order in the third. On the St. Louis broadcast, David Eckstein serves up a reminder that life trumps baseball. Check out this class act’s story.
Folty needs a quick, clean inning. Thirty pitches per makes it tough to go deep. It looks to be a bullpen kind of day despite the score. Despite Brandon Moss’ leadoff double, this is Folty’s best inning.
Atlanta faces Wainwright for the third time, and it’s only the fourth. Braves fail, haven’t scored in seven outs. Folty holds serve: one, two, three. Nick’s nice catch in right ends it.
How do these guys with full beards play day games in St. Louis and Atlanta? Markakis looks like he’s wearing a fur balaclava. Ten outs without runs for Atlanta.
Third time through the Cards order for Folty in the fifth: Kolten Wong doubles, and Piscotty moves him to third with a liner to right. Folty keeps Nick’s errant throw out of the Cards dugout to save the run, but Wong scores anyway of Moss’ sac fly. Matt Holliday bounces to Play For Free to end it. It’s 6-1 and an official game.
Show of hands: who thought Wainwright would go six today? Look and learn, kid pitchers.
St. Louis announcers say Folty has give Card hitters uncomfortable at bats. I believe that. There are times when he looks like he has no idea where the ball’s going, and the ball is going FAST. Play For Free starts a Pendletonesque double play. Whoever worked with Adonis deserves a raise.
What the Braves need at catcher is a young Yadier Molina who hits like a later career Yadier Molina. That will be enough and answers the opening question. Folty goes six, but what a struggle. Now it’s pen versus pen.
Jerome Williams is a big, big man. He stifles us although Kemp singles after Freddie, ahem, fans. Cards broadcaster says that the Braves are a bad club as Nick is robbed of a hit for out three. Gyork. Tell us something we don’t know. At least today we’re pounding your red asses.
Ian Krol rules the seventh, and Recker gets his second hit as Braves come up empty. Young Madison Younginer debuts against the Cards in the eighth and looked pretty good, even though he gave up the Cards second run. Matt Kemp is not a good leftfielder. A wickedly weird bounce past Play For Free scores the third, as a baseball game erupts at Busch. Hold ’em, boys.
Snit calls on Eric O’Flaherty to quell the uprising. Clown baseball ensues, bringing the tying run to the plate; but EOF prevails. 6-3 Braves with an inning left to play.
After the Braves fail to pad their lead, Jim Johnson climbs the hill for the save. He gets it. Ho-hum. Braves win 6-3 in a laugher. In your face, Redbirds.
I know Coors Field gets a lot of grief around these parts, and I get why… But for my money ($6, specifically) it’s one of the best ballpark experiences around. Nice park and surrounding areas, gorgeous background, and if you have no emotional investment, a quintessential Coors game like today’s is damn fun to watch. Hate it that PURE EVIL prevailed, but seeing Ichiro’s 3000th in person made up for that and then some. I love baseball.
beege…evocative – from one who’s never been there, thanks.
coop…dynamic new style reportage, Olympian, Costas redux.
JJ
a good deal more than just ok
the Los Angeles Dodgers have called
this can’t be the same guy who left us mildly appalled.
right hand power
were it to be made available by the hour
no need to check so many credentials
occasional blasts, the barest essentials.
@1, Nice, I happened to be there too. Did you think Stanton’s home run was going out when it came off the bat? The ball just flies there.
Love the detail.
Win, win, win.
@bledsoe, Yeah but I wish we had anyone worth platooning with Markakis. The only thing worse than an outfielder who doesn’t hit lefties is an outfielder who doesn’t hit lefties who barely plays outfield anymore.
Hey, I just work here — talk to Joe Maddon. He’s the guy who’s playing a catcher in left to avoid playing Heyward in right. Actually, Heyward has almost no platoon differential this year. He’s just being sat.
And while Markakis OPS+ of 97 isn’t outstanding, it ain’t turrible.
Did you see Neck’s tumbling catch-dive yesterday? Yeah baby!
Kind of interesting for you WARheads:
Heyward 1.6
Harper 1.5
Markakis 1.2
For RF with 350 PA, they are 10th, 11th and 13th. Mookie Betts is first with 5.8…
I really don’t know how much we can blame Fredi for the horrible start, but we’re playing a lot better under Snitker even though we have 1) Traded away our best players when they were “tradeable”, 2) Only have 2 offensive upgrades (Kemp and Recker), with all other starters hitting better. (Markakis was our only effective hitter for the first month or so. 3) Have lost our entire starting pitching staff to injuries, ineffectiveness, or trades (our rotation was Teheran, Wisler, Chacin, Norris and Perez to start the year). Of those 5, Wisler is the only one not injured or traded away when he became “useful” to another team.
I don’t know if Snitker is a great manager and I don’t really see a huge change strategy-wise. However, a big part of a manager’s job is to get the team ready at the beginning of the year. Fredi didn’t do that in any way. If he would have, I think we could have had a 75 win season. As it stands, I think 64 wins is realistic with the craziest rotation I have ever seen at this point. That would be a big accomplishment IMO. This would mean we would go 23-28 for the rest of the year. Funny thing is we are 23-31 on the road. This is only slightly worse than the Orioles, who are leading their division but have a 24-30 road record.
There is no reason to prefer a 75-win season to a 59-win season this year.
With “no” implying a quantitative approach, there are significantly more reasons why you would want a 75-win season over a 59-win season. You gotta loooooooove slot money to outweigh all of the positive things that come out of a 75-win season vs. a 59-win season.
With that said, there is some silver lining to coming out of the shoot terribly, firing your lameduck manager, having a second half rebound, and still ending with a low win total, securing a high pick and money. In fact, many on here assumed that would have been the trajectory of the season, that we would have a better second half than first half. That was based on prospects being called up in the second half (especially pitching prospects) and playing well. Ball’s a funny game sometimes.
Absolutely.
You wouldn’t make moves to ensure you win 75 games, but it would reflect a team with more value in Majors. You would expect that team to be better going forward or to be able to trade talent for prospects.
@13
That’s the only thing disappointing about our current “success”: so many players don’t have a lot of value at the major league level. That’s why I’m excited to see Wisler get called back up (he’s now had two decent starts at AAA), and Perez/Gant/Blair get healthy. I’d love to finally see some struggle over which sub-25-year old pitchers will be in the rotation instead of scouring the waiver wire for who’s going to fill the rotation for a couple weeks.
But you really shouldn’t ever want a 60-win season. You have to have incremental growth unless you’re banking on a worst-to-first type of turnaround, which is just not likely. You need to win 60 games, then win 75, then win 90, etc.. 60-win seasons year-over-year so you can be stockpiling talent through the draft would imply that the talent isn’t developing. What makes a turnaround appealing is that it seems like the Braves will continue to draft and develop well even when we don’t have a good draft slot.
@11
Yeah, there’s “no reason” unless you actually enjoy watching your team and don’t see all the world as a front office parlor game. And unless you don’t buy that tanking, in and of itself, provides a better path to improvement, especially in baseball.
For the record, I get it this year (though I still loathe the tanking philosophy), but we’re starting to see a smattering of “I hope we finish with the worst record in baseball next year, too” comments around here. That should be pushed back against at all costs. The purpose is to win baseball games. You have to pull out of this rebuild and make a concerted effort eventually, and the first year you do is going to be a year where no one gives you a shot and it will come directly after a year where you were bad.
Everybody acts like 1991 was easily predictable now, but no one saw it coming in 1990. You can sit here and say “We’re nowhere near as well off now as we were in 1990” all you want, but I’m pretty convinced those of you saying this would’ve been full-bore in favor of tanking 1991 had someone asked you your opinion in August 1990.
Preach it, Nick.
@bledsoe, Aaand let’s go to the tape. Q: Is Heyward a platoon player?
1.) Heyward ranks 3rd on the Cubs in plate appearances. 2.) On July 18th Willson Contreras played LF and Heyward didn’t start.
Hrmmmmmm.
I agree wholeheartedly with Nick @15. And the biggest reason to think this team can improve a lot for next year is just how bad they have been at so many positions. They should be able to upgrade at 3B, SS, C, LF, and SP, at the least. This is one reason they need to aim higher than Adonis and his replacement level play at 3B in my opinion.
Yeah I’m not saying we should tank every time it looks like we won’t win 90 games. I’m ok with tanking this season, only because there wasn’t any hope of competing given the roster situation.
Of course, the roster situation was 100% self-inflicted, and I’m certainly on the side that the “full rebuild” is stupid and that what we did in 2015 will not matter one bit in the long run.
I’m just saying that since this is the path the FO has chosen, then it makes sense to get the first pick out of this lost season.
I will add that there are some that might say that this tank isn’t even 100% intentional, and instead it’s the fallback narrative that the FO can apply in a wink-wink fashion and come out looking smart, when instead the truth is they fully expected this shit roster to be .500.
That’s the very scary version of things. I’m not sure I want to believe.
I’m at the point where I’d probably give the full time job to Snitker unless there was a “wow” candidate (Maddon-esque) out there, and there’s probably not.
Maybe Fredi would have gotten a dead cat bounce out of the team too – but his tenure didn’t exactly instill confidence in his ability to arrest a death spiral.
Man, these conspiracy theories.
Per MLBTR:
“For their part, the Yankees aren’t inclined to give away McCann and the $34MM remaining on the five-year, $85MM deal they signed him to before the 2014 season.”
Hope that rules us out, then.
I’m not sure what I think about reacquiring McCann. The problem is, I just don’t see too many good catchers that will be available – or for that matter, many good catchers at all. If McCann is the centerpiece of our offseason acquisitions, we are in big trouble. However, if we need someone to hit about .230 with 20 hrs and a .750 OPS, I think it is reasonable to assume that McCann can continue this for a few more years – or at least get close to this. For the right price, I’m okay with him coming back. Having only two years left on his contract after this year is a good thing.
I’d feel a whole lot better about acquiring McCann if we could first get Cakes off the books.
@24, I’m for McCann for the following reasons: I like him. I think he’d be a genuinely marketable player for the team. His mitt isn’t a repellant force to baseballs. Even in decline, he’d likely be a better hitter than anyone we could put out there over the last two years of his contract. He’d be a good balance with Tyler Flowers, who I’d like to see stick around. He’d be able to resume a leadership role in the clubhouse. They say he’d be a good guy to work with our young pitchers, and I see no reason to doubt that.
Reasons I wouldn’t want him: If he cost so much in dollars that it hurt our spending in other areas where better options might be available. If he cost us anything but an outlay of marginal prospects.
$34 million for two years of Brian McCann sounds like a lot of money to me. If we can afford it, fine, but I don’t want to diminish our future by trading anything of value to pick up that tab, or to avoid paying that tab.
Concur. Flowers and Recker together cost less than half the bucks and none of the talent it would take to get him. Nostalgia aside, why would we even consider bringing him back to our major league sized ballpark? We don’t play that many games in bandboxes, and BMac is playing out the string. Let him do it in New York.
The Yankees can play McCann and first, catcher and DH next year. I’m not sure they are in a bad spot with him. They would want an overpay for him. Let the Indians do it.
Anthony Recker has a .198 career BA in 5 ML seasons. Yeah, no.
It’s like you guys would have wanted Brooks Conrad as a starter.
The pending list of catcher FAs, per Cots Contracts:
Drew Butera, Jason Castro, A.J. Ellis, Ryan Hanigan, Nick Hundley, Jonathan Lucroy, Wilson Ramos, David Ross, Chris Stewart, Kurt Suzuki, Josh Thole, Matt Wieters
Perhaps David Ross would be willing to come back on a 1-year deal? He is an excellent receiver, might be a good choice to mentor the many young arms on the Braves’ pitching staff.
How about Tyler Flowers + Kurt Suzuki?
Kurt Suzuki has a vesting option for 2017.
I was pro-McCann before it was cool, but I would like to see minimal prospects changing hands and cash coming back from the Yankees. McCann would be worth two of our 20-30 prospects and $12M coming back ($6M per), IMO. I think you do that deal if you’re the Yanks, and I think you do that deal if you’re the Braves.
But just look at the catching market. Matt Wieters, he of the lifetime .737 OPS, took the QO of 1-year, $15.8M to go back to the free agent market one year older (as a catcher). At age 30, he’ll be looking for a 3-4 year deal. Heap is 32, and he’s only signed for 2 more seasons. And Wilson Ramos, 28, will be looking for a $100M+ deal.
It’s not about nostalgia, looking back in the rearview mirror, etc. Brian McCann plays baseball good and we can afford him. That’s it.
Another thing in favor of McCann is that we have Flowers guaranteed for one more year and then a relatively cheap option (4 mill?) for one more year.
McCann’s loss of offense is heavily platoon dependent. Probably he is easily 750 ops hitting righties and then Flowers is similar. So, the sum of those parts is greater than one. You let Flowers catch the middle game anytime there are 3 righties in a row and then McCann is catching 100 and Flowers catching 60. You carry Recker for a bench bat and to let you pinch hit and pinch run for catchers.
By the time the 2 years are up, you can evaluate all of the system catchers and know where you stand.
Probably moot anyway, and I don’t get a vote. If I did, I’d vote no.
@32, it looks unlikely that he’ll reach the target PA’s to vest.
I think I should respond to Nick @15, since it seems like the entire post is in response to things I said in the last thread.
1) I don’t advocate pure tanking. I don’t think we should ever try to lose, and I think we should try to win next year. What I don’t think we should do, however is win a bit more next year at the expense of future winning. The reason is obvious–I don’t expect a few extra wins to mean diddly next season. Practically, this means a hard NO to proposals to trade future assets (prospects) to get a couple years of a declining star player like Escobar, Braun, Lucroy, or McCann.
2) I agree that nobody could’ve predicted 1991 (or the subsequent 14 years) in 1990, but what you could’ve predicted was a significant improvement. David Justice had hit 28 homers in the second half of the season to win the ROY, giving us two premium middle of the order bats. We had smoltz, glavine, leibrandt, and Steve Avery ready to become a contributor. What we did that offseason was NOT trade prospects for expensive aging stars to go for it. JS made value signings that made sense.
We are not in a position to do what that 1991 team did because we don’t have those sort of assets on the mlb roster. However, I do suggest we still make value signings to try to be more competitive. That means trying to find underappreciated vets that won’t cost us draft picks or prospects. It probably also means not signing guys to long deals who are very likely to have their worst years in 2019-20 when we are more likely to compete.
*just upthread Rob is suggesting 2 of our top 20-30 prospects for the privilege to pay McCann 9-10 million per year for the next 2 years. Utterly insane.
@ 15
Nick…could not agree more.
Chaz Roe
had nowhere else he could go
waived by the Birds
with an ERA of twenty and two thirds.
Note: By all means read Clerihews, if you do, as yet another inspired source of what’s happening deep within the FO and assorted Barber shops but do not bet the ranch on all the details therein. The numbers ‘sound’ right, a lively antidote to the norm!
@36
I think everyone would prefer finding another Tyler Flowers at $2.5M per year then having to go get someone like McCann. If the Braves can get a .750 OPS against righties and a good game caller outside of McCann’s cost, then great.
I do think you might be over-estimating what the internet and social media culture would have thought about Smoltz, Glavine, Leibrandt, and Avery in 1990. Avery was terrible. Leibrandt was very good, but he was 33 (so, ya know, an aging veteran on the decline), and Smoltz and Glavine were still very much figuring it out. There was no one on that staff as promising as Teheran is in 2016 in terms of past/current performance and contract, Folty very much resembles Smoltz, and if the Braves today would call up a 20-year old like Avery to pitch the way they did with Avery, then I bet the results would be similar. I’d take Wisler in 2017 over Leibrandt in 1991, and I’d take Jenkins/Blair/Whalen over a 20-year old Avery with a mid-5 ERA. And the 90’s team’s bullpen was putrid. There was not a single shutdown reliever in that entire group. There is so much more reason for optimism, aside from not having that second middle of the order bat, with the 2016 Atlanta Braves than there was with the 1990 Atlanta Braves.
We had the makings of a respectable rotation. If smoltz, glavine and Avery had been all-stars already, we should’ve been projected to win the division. They were workable pitchers with experience and potential. They were very unlikely to all break out in 1991 (in fact smoltz barely did), but you know who’s even less likely? Jenkins, Wisler, Folty in 2017.
Also, when you say “aging veteran on the decline” about leibrandt, it suggests you think I’m opposed to acquiring that sort of player. I’m not. I’m opposed to trading things for them.
@38, Wait, what about Steve Avery? He was the 3rd pick in the 1988 draft and for good reason. He was a phenom. His 1990 stats were ugly, sure, but he was 20 and it was his first year of major league ball. The Braves brass had high hopes for him to be exactly what he became in the years 1991-1993 (some might also include 1994). None of Jenkins/Blair/Whalen have been hyped to be what Avery was in those sparkling years where he was a dominant force in the Braves rotation.
I’m also unclear about your point about the bullpen. Maybe it’s the garbled grammar, but our 1991 pen was pretty good. Our ’92 pen was even better, and our ’93 pen was lean, mean and kicked all kinds of ass.
There was at least some optimism because of Gant and Justice, but yes, the pitching looked bad (even worse than right now perhaps). Still, if we had two young guys OPSing .900 then I’d be more hopeful about our timeline.
Nobody had any idea that we’d get Pendleton and Bream in the offseason. Pendleton wasn’t a washed up vet playing out the string – his peak seasons were his first two with us. Give us a similar influx of talent and we’ll be competitive in 2017. Two big position player acquisitions, and call up Newcomb to be our Steve Avery.
Lol. It’s silly to compare 1990 to now. Not gonna happen. But I’ll admit it’s fun.
@39, Going down memory lane here… we traded Gerald Perry to acquire Charlie Leibrandt. Worked out pretty great for us. Perry was useful off the bench of a few teams thereafter, but I’d love to trade his equivalent for a guy who did what Leibrandt did for us in our rotation.
Although come to think of it, I don’t think we have a roleplayer as valuable as Gerald Perry on our team.
I think there might be some benefit of hindsight to this discussion. It’s super easy to see now that they were right to stick with Smoltz, Glavine, and Avery. I mean, of course. If we knew Folty was going to be Smoltz, Wisler was going to be Glavine, and Newcomb was going to be Avery, then we’d be out looking for Terry Pendleton and Sid Bream. The Braves took a chance and were rewarded for it. Really, nothing in Smoltz/Glavine/Avery’s stats suggested they would explode in ’91, and if those stats lead you to that belief, that what does Teheran/Folty/Wisler tell you?
Maybe I can be more clear:
Nobody could’ve predicted 1991, because it was so improbable.
Therefore,
A) let’s go for broke because what the hey, 2017 might be our 1991!
B) let’s take a conservative strategy because 2017 is an even less likely breakout year than 1991
Which approach makes more sense to you folks?
Smoltz and Folty are very similar in my opinion. The stuff isn’t in question, it’s the command and mental outlook that needs refinement.
There won’t be another Glavine, since the strike zone won’t ever be 11 feet wide again.
Avery and Newcomb seem pretty similar as well, though Avery was a much better prospect — hitting the majors at 20 means that people see you as something very special. If the internet had been a thing back then we’d have been hyping the shit out of Avery.
You know, Foltynewicz could probably use a red sweater somewhere in the stands.
Nice
Bad play, Nicky, but the home run was nice.
Chip is making an important point about how Kemp is responsible for the runs others are scoring and driving in.
Whale Medlen?
Adonis is not a bad third baseman.
Nice 1-6-3 there, Whale.
Cute, Adonis.
Hoo-hah! We don’t need no stinkin’ catcher. We got AJP.
Good for you, Ender.
John Smoltz in both 1989 & 1990 threw 200+ above-average innings with WAR of 4.0 & 3.6. No young Brave has numbers that promising. He was already a top-20 pitcher coming into 1991. Don’t know what more you could want in a ‘breakout’.
Oh, and Glavine was #44 by WAR in those years.
Glavine was a major outperformer of his FIP over his career (he was willing to walk people with guys in scoring position), so that WAR might not fully capture his performance.
The splits on his walk-rate are pretty pronounced
Bases Empty: 6.0%
Men in Scoring: 14.3%
A bit off-topic, but I love that stat.
While Smoltz was great in ’89, times have changed. No team is going to let pitchers that young pitch so many innings so that they can amass that much WAR.
The 1990 and 2016 teams are different teams. The personnel is different, the strategy is different, and the timing and resources are different. Tonight’s start is an example of why we probably should be waiting until the end of the season to see where we are. Assuming health, by the end of the year, Blair should get 5-6 starts, Folty will have another 8-9, Wisler another 7-8, and some combination of Whalen/Jenkins/Gant/Perez are going to get 9-10 starts. We will probably see about 50 more relief innings by relievers with future value. We’ll know a lot more about where we stand for 2017 with all of those innings tallied. If Folty gets his ERA south of 4, Wisler’s south of 5, and one or two of these other guys go on a bit of a run, then the outlook for this team is going to look a lot different, and it’s by design.
How many double plays are we going to hit in?!
I like Mo. He seems to be a good kid. He throws pretty hard too.
Can of corn, no problem. Whew.
Whew. That really looked gone.
Mauricio is electrifying, but I don’t think he’s a late inning option yet. Just too scary.
I hate it when Chip says, “Jeff Francouer grabs a bat.” I also hate it when anybody else says it.
He must have grabbed a couple with holes in them. Three swings, three misses and a few happy chillun.
I fear we’re doomed. If it be done, ’twas better that it be done quickly.
Checking the Gwinnett box score: Rio Ruiz had a nice night, 3 for 4 with a double and a homer. Game’s still underway as I type this.
But a name jumped out at me: Carlos Portuondo. He pitched 4.2 innings in relief, 4 H, 1 BB, 2 K, no runs allowed. But who the heck is he?
It’s his first game in Gwinnett. He was promoted from A+ Carolina, where he pitched 17.1 innings, 14 H, 8 BB, 12 K, 10 ER. And that’s the extent of his career minor league numbers.
Turns out we signed him from Cuba in February. 28 years old. Had really crappy career numbers in Cuba. High ERA, terrible K/BB ratio. We signed him for just shy of a million dollars.
How does a guy like this succeed upwards at such a fast rate when it doesn’t seem like he’s done anything to distinguish himself?
@53, great stats. We had 3 legit starting pitchers and 1 stud rookie starter coming back as a sophomore. We are nowhere near that position right now. If you guys really want to win in 2017, start talking about pitchers you want to sign, not trading prospects for a 1 win upgrade at catcher. Seriously.
@60, I think that’s the guy we signed to give us the inside track on Christian Pache or one of these other stud Cuban players.
@61, I get that about his signing, but why promote him to AAA when he doesn’t seem to be all that good? I guess because he’s 28?
You’re failing to take into consideration AJP’s -1.5 WAR. Any above average power-hitting regular at SS, LF, and C is going to be worth a heck of a lot more than one win. Seriously.
Also, we have 2 legit starting pitchers, Matt Wisler, and 3 highly rated rookies coming back as sophomores. That’s really not that dissimilar, friend.
I’m not ready to anoint Foltynewicz as “legit” just yet. He’s had some eye-popping games that hint at his potential, but he’s also been inconsistent. Still a work in progress, seems to me.
I read about the promotion somewhere today, and the article said basically the same thing as John R. The article also said that with the recent shuttle between Atlanta and Gwinnet, Gwinnett needed somebody and the Braves didn’t want to promote one of the kids before they were ready.
@63, I’m not considering AJP at all. I’m comparing Brian McCann with another 0.5-1 WAR catcher we might acquire.
Nicky! What are the odds we score at least one?
C’mon, Gordo. That will do; thanks, Brewers. May we have more please?
AJP is slow and sucky.
Is that our old Blaine Boyer?
I’d like to feel good for Boyer, but I really don’t.
Do it, JJ. Enhance your value.
Jeez. More drama. Pass the Pepcid please.
Well, 50 more in a row and we’re playoff bound.
Mississippi won again. Sims was excellent and Albies had a good night.
Who’da thunk it? We’re getting good at this baseball thingy.
JJ
a good deal more than just OK….so he hung one!
Potential Play of the Game…Beckham, losing interest in the ball, totally focused on saddling Broxton…Chip’s verb, a good one.
Drecker must start the next 2 games. They are killing AJ on the bases.
I’d support just taking all of McCann’s salary and not giving anything up. We are historically terrible at signing multi-year free agents since Greg Maddux, the free agent market blows, and they only position a potential free agent isn’t blocking a legit prospect/established piece is catcher and 3B (and we’ve got some depth that may pan out at 3rd base). I’d rather pay McCann 2×17 than Ramos 5×20.
Don’t forget that 1990 team had David Justice and Ron Gant. A lot more power on that team
Nick Markakis: great right fielder, or greatest right fielder?
Over the last 15 games, Nick Markakis has an OPS over 1.1. Also, his luxuriant beard has absorbed over 1500 lbs of carbon emissions.
Good grief, he’s even out-bearding Player A right now.
Yeah, that’s a 0.7-0.8 WAR beard.
I imagine that chin guard ensures Player B will never sequester nearly as much carbon.
EDIT: Also, 1500 lbs…no wonder he can’t move his neck.
I just checked the stats for Player F. Player B has a .046 point OPS advantage on player F! My God, is there anything Player B cannot do?
I guess the only thing he can’t do is outperform Player F’s brother, Melvin Jr.
John R, there may be. But I certainly can’t think of anything right now.
@78 If he keeps going like that, Neck is liable to be acquired by a contending team or maybe even the EPA.
How about we start one of those fanboy costumed groups for Nick? We sit on the rail in right and wear nothing except athletic supporters. We call ourselves “Cakes’ Cups.”
Who’s in?
I’ll pass, Bledsoe, but I’ll take pictures and post them on Facebook if you’d like.
recap up