Win, win, win. Â
Skip Caray’s wink at the notion that winning can ever become tiresome is something Braves fans from both Skip’s era and today can appreciate, and a 4 game winning streak surely has some Braves fans headed for a tipping point on the traditional Hope/Doom binary.However, a quick look at the Padre roster, and Braves fans especially will quickly recognize where the Padres are on the rebuilding curve, at least at the Major League level.
Today, Brandon Phillips and Tyler Flowers went a combined 5 for 7 with 5 RBI’s, and Ender Inciarte hit his 4th home run in 4 games. Bartolo Colon was dominant on the mound, allowing 1 hit, 1 walk, and 1 run in 7 innings.On the negative side, Flowers left with a hamstring injury in the 7th and is listed as day-to-day.
The question of the day is: are the Braves the team that was no-hit for 4 innings today by Trevor freaking Cahill, or the team that scored 9 runs in their last 4 at-bats?Why not both?It’s the nature of the sport, and today’s game can serve as a metaphor for the season to date.After a 1 and 6 start, the Braves are now at 5 and 6 and (it’s never too early to say) just 1 1/2 games out of first.Â
The Braves have played some good teams and some bad, some road games and some home, faced all grades of pitchers, and will be repeating this process for about 24 more weeks.The long slog continues Monday as the Braves go for the 4 game sweep.
Funniest thing I ever heard about San Diego: I would post the funniest thing I ever heard about San Diego, but I was advised to stay classy.
Great recap, and the Skip reference warmed my heart.
I was at the game today. Here’s my take overall:
– Don’t sit in left field. You can’t see the scoreboard.
– Parking isn’t bad. But they need more signs and maps to get back to your car.
– The Battery is going to be awesome.
– STF is more intimate than Turner.
– It’s a mall/amusement park with a baseball field. Much like Turner.
– There’s not enough space in the main walk ways.
– I thought the monument park would be campy. I was wrong. Very cool. It’s a little campy in spots (Sid Bream’s knee brace)
– It doesn’t have a ton of personality yet. It’ll get there.
– The support staff is still figuring things out. But everyone is a lot friendlier than Turner
– I give Turner a B+ and I’ll say STF is an A-
4 game sweep of the Pads would be nice. Being 6-6 without Kemp’s bat and this awful bench is not a bad start.
So, the new Bobby Cox statue at STP is him leaning against a brick wall on the dugout steps. Anyone else feel that it should’ve been him walking down the hallway to the dressing room after getting the heave-ho from Cowboy Joe West?
I read this piece on swing plane and flyballs in the off season, and now I’m wondering if this is the new approach for Ender.
Grant McAuley just informed us on Twitter that Travis Demeritte will start spending time at multiple positions around the diamond in Mississippi (or I’m speculating Gwinnett, should Rio get called up to take Flowers 25-man spot). I’m lusting over a completely versatile bench in 2018 with speed, a good bit of power, and tons of defensive flexibility.
@5
Ender has always seemed to have a loft in his swing plane, which I always felt was out of place based on his game. He’s added exit velocity, so more hard hit balls, and with his swing plane, they’re carrying out. These are previous fly outs that seem to be becoming HRs. 40 extra TB through 10 fly outs becoming home runs changes his stat line considerably. An Ender with a little more power comps to Lenny Dykstra, Jacoby Ellsbury, or Shane Victorino, who was ironically the player that blocked Ender, leading to his Rule-5 departure.
@2
I’m writing up a post for my trip to the stadium, but my thoughts echo Smitty’s quite a bit. Overall a very good experience, but like Smitty, I also couldn’t see the scoreboard from my right-centerfield seats (I was right behind the home bullpen). I thought you could solve that issue by turning the left-centerfield screen into a mirrored screen, but that would solve Smitty’s issue. From where I was, you could not see the video screen very well at all due to a glare.
@6
Really sucks about Flowers, but it’d get Recker more playing time, and could turn Ruiz into the first bat off the bench, so that ain’t all bad.
@4
Good one. I thought it should have been a statue of him picking his nose.
@4,8: I thought it should have been one of him cracking a mean fart in the dugout
@6
If Ruiz got off to a better start, he may already be on the team.
Albies is playing well, wonder how long they can keep him down? “He’ll tell us when he’s ready”
@10
I found it interesting that Albies has been spending time at SS this week. I wonder if they’re preparing him for a SU role for 2017 with full-time access to 2B in 2018. Will next stop for Albies at Gwinnett be 3B?
This stuff kills two birds with one stone. Improves the bench, which is great, but also gives us more young players to enjoy. Ruiz is not such an uber-prospect where you need to not call him up to get some starts against righties at third and be a bat off the bench because you don’t want to stagnate his development. If we were a contending team, he’d be up. Same with Albies. Hopefully they’ll be up at some point soon.
Demeritte is raking in AA. You see a ton of teams going for versatility, and I’m glad we’re no different. But we also see a lot of teams with 8-man pens, and that’s not something we seem to be close to no matter how much it was talked about.
The Padres have 3 guys who haven’t played above A-ball and two Rule-5’s on their roster. If that was a strategy the Braves would take, I wonder how many rookies would be on our roster right now. Pads have the #3 farm according to K-Law, but I’d bet there’s a big drop between them and the Yankees, specifically with how far many of their top 20 is from the majors according to Sickel’s rankings (Law’s are behind a paywall). Say what you want about the new stadium, but the money spent on Garcia/Colon/Dickey is almost the exact amount of the increase from 2016 to 2017 payroll. Simply put, if we didn’t have this stadium, we probably have a completely different team.
If Demeritte can play third or left, we may be on to something.
That Mississippi team looks pretty special on paper. I had a scare when Meneses went missing for a month or two last season, but I’m relieved see his offense is flowing again.
I see what you did there.
Well executed.
Nice play by Dansby…I thought he got him
I have seen enough of Garcia…dude is throwing batting practice
@17 Dansby got Margot by an eyelash – umps missed the call but it was really close. Once the Bravos challenged, the umps (understandably) upheld the call because there wasn’t clear enough evidence to overturn.
Also, I definitely recall Jaime Garcia as a much better pitcher in his Cardinals days. Hopefully he’ll figure things out soon – it seems like he’s struggling with most (all?) of his breaking pitches right now and throwing a lot of meatballs.
This Jaime Garcia thing isn’t working out so far.
@2–I have not been to a real game yet, but I did go to the exhibition against the Yankees a couple of weeks ago. The seats are generally closer that at Turner, and they are all slightly angled to the plate for even better sight lines. My biggest complaint was also a problem seeing the big scoreboard in center field. We had seats on the field level on the first base side, on row 17 I believe. I was surprised that we were pretty far underneath the overhang for the second deck; I imagine those seats in the 200 level are much closer than at Turner. But the overhang extends out so far that we had to lean forward and crane our necks to see the scoreboard.
To be clear, I’m not complaining about missing dance cam, kiss cam, and the thing where you guess which of the three hats something is under.
Also, I loved monument garden. It is very well done–don’t miss it.
I believe Freddie likes the new park and the right field dimensions
Garcia getting into a groove. Didn’t know he threw that hard. 93?
Garcia is rolling now. Not sure he’d be so effective against a major league lineup.
Freeman is a monster and that wall just ramps up his superpowers
That brick on the right field wall is actually a pretty cool feature of STP. Going to be lots of lefties banging loud doubles off of it like Freddie just did.
@25 you jinxed him
and that is why he is not the closer
Seems like a lot of homers are being hit here so far.
May need to drop Dansby down in the order to get him going
Boom!!
Have a night Freddie. Wow.
I just love Freddie. He’s just… so great. So… Freddie. Ahhhh. Love. Freddie. He’s the best ever.
Babe Freeman.
Interested to see if Luke Jackson will pitch the 9th. I hope he does, and they can save JJ for the Nats.
One thing is for sure: Braves got it right on Heyward vs. Freeman.
There is no way I could have known this from a one game sample size but watching that first game I knew STP was a homer haven in the making.
I’ll take a walk here
Dans!
Dansby finally got one to drop.
Mr. Perfect comes through in the clutch. Isn’t he dreamy?
Freeman’s second homer was more than impressive.
Sweet! .500 again. Didn’t think we’d get back there so soon.
Thanks Padres. You have done everything to help us to win.
recap up.