The man has a bona fide big league win. Sean Newcomb started his fourth major league game and continued to look like he belongs up there. He lasted 6+ innings, gave up 3 hits, struck out 8, and walked only 1. It was only the Padres, but considering his alarming walk rate was a knock against him in the minors, you’ll take one walk against any team as a positive. Newcomb’s ERA after four starts now stands at 1.48, and as Peanut pointed out, he’s the first Atlanta Brave ever to start his career with four consecutive quality starts. That means pretty much nothing, but it’s fun nonetheless to watch him achieve some success at the major league level in his first few games. In our fast-paced, always-looking-to-the-future world, some people like to offer the sage advice to take time to smell the flowers. I think it more wise to say take time to enjoy rookie success when they start off on a roll. Sure, Newcomb will take his lumps in the future, but that shouldn’t lessen our enjoyment of what he’s doing now. Of course, I’m also allergic to most flowers and suffer from no baseball-related allergies, so that might be why I find the second proverb to be better advice.
The Braves offense pushed a few runs across the plate, enough to do the job while the pitching shut the Padres out. Johan Camargo doubled in the 4th to score two, and Nick Markakis put up an insurance run in the 8th with a sac fly to center. You like to see a few more insurance runs tacked on before Jim Johnson comes into any game (hey, if it’s not a save situation, he can’t blow a save), but he managed to get through a scoreless frame in the 9th, allowing a walk and single between three strikeouts. I think it goes against his religion to have a 1-2-3 inning.
The Braves continue to roll along, and with a win in the first game of this series, they have a chance to keep their streak of winning series alive, even with Bartolo Colon toeing the rubber for Game 2. The team now sits at a mere two games under .500, 1 1/2 games in front of the Marlins and 3 games up on the Mets. I don’t even know what happened to the Phillies this year. The Nationals are only 8.5 games ahead of the Braves at the moment. If they don’t win this division by at least a double digit lead, they should be ashamed of themselves. Or at least utterly embarrassed.
Natspos delenda est.
Thank you, Rissa. You’re wise beyond blazon’s and my years. Great recap.
We are 8 back of the second wild card. We get our best player back in the next two weeks.
If we add a really goo starting pitcher, we may be in this…
what did Newcomb’s fastball reach last night?
I saw 94 a couple of times on the Chip and Joe show.
@3 I think I saw 95 but I wasn’t always paying attention
91 thru 94 for me…it was certainly in a lower bracket than his usual…marine air Chip?
Rob, anyone…so who would you start in that WC game?
‘Rissa…thanks…omnia padria divisa est.
marine air
so that we might compare?
sea air the usual
best he post a recusal.
@6: Marcus Stroman
@6
If it is at home Garcia. On the road Julio
If we can hold pace with the Nats over the next week, the four games prior to the break could be big.
Strawman
@9
so you think he would wilt under the pressure? He has the best stuff, right?
I know it was past their bedtime, but Chip and Joe were a new level of bad last night.
Outside of Chip’s HR call on the Myers double, within a 30 second span, Chip referenced the shift the “Nationals” had on Matt Adams and Joe started talking about our #1 draft pick this year “Kyle Muller” out of Vanderbilt. I stopped keeping track at that point, but it’s a long fall from the halcyon days of Skip and Pete. It’s really too bad Boog Sciambi took the national gig at ESPN.
I just tried to refresh our blog page and got this instead. It appears to be a post from Mac in 2008.
Blog broken, but now fixed
@13, neither of them knew Kyle Wright’s name…that was soooo cringeworthy.
@13/15
My favorite cringe still the one talking about that guy who was the first man born in Africa to play MLB.He was from South Africa.
Joe got it but Chip persisted in saying South America despite Joe’s polite attempts to correct him.
Then we got to the next stage where, having been corrected, Chip would get it right once and then revert back to type.
Kyle Wright
it’s not right
to call him Mueller
wrong and certainly not cooler.
I have Wednesday recaps, which means I’m always following up ‘Rissa. That’s not an easy task.
This is against everything I believe. Nevertheless, congratulations to the Florida Gators and the inimitable Rob Cope. They deserve the championship.
Now I must lick my dog’s behind to get the taste out of my mouth.
At least he has to follow ‘Rissa. Hahahaha ha.
Newcomb just maybe might could be a ballplayer.
The Cubs DFA’d Miguel Montero and called up former Braves prospect Victor Caratini.
When does Maitan debut? They’ve played like 3 games already.
He’s apparently dealing with a hamstring or groin.
Interesting takeaways from Eric Longenhagen’s prospect chat yesterday. Recall he had 9 Braves on his preseason top 100; Swanson, Albies, Acuna, Allard, Maitan, Anderson, Fried, Gohara, Soroka. And he had Pache as his last position player cut.
Of course Dansby has graduated but from yesterdays comments it appears we still have at least 9, possibly more on his mid-season list, even if he has dropped Fried all the way off from #62. He said Wright would slot in at #3 on the Braves and was very impressed with Pache’s performance who should of course move up easily. Newcomb and Wentz weren’t discussed but it would seem they’d have to be included now after making his honorable mention preseason list. Alex Jackson and perhaps others should also receive strong consideration. It’s a shame about Weigel because he was showing enough to also be considered before the TJ. Wouldn’t surprise me if the Braves wind up with 10 or more on mid-season lists.
Yes. No Maitan yet, but Drew Waters played today, went 2-5 with a HR and a triple.
Where does a man go about getting some GCL stats?
Milb.com
Not to be confused with milf.com
@27, hmm, you just gave me a plausible excuse when my wife checks my browser history and finds milf.com
COLON, GTHO.
Nothing in that first inning convinced me Bartolo is now “fixed”
Pretty done with this Bartolo fella.
It isn’t a small thing, being 8 games out of the WC, playing above .500 baseball since Freddie went down, having Newcomb come up and deal. The season is no longer a throw-away. As such, we can’t fart around and let Colon surrender 8 runs per outing. Or if we do, may as well go ahead and trade off the rentals. That’s probably what we’re doing.
Right. There’s enough of an expectation to win the individual game, which I recognize is quite new, that you just can’t give away a couple-few games to either clear Bart’s salary or get some fledgling prospect. I’m all about both of those things, but this so clearly looks like a drain on everything being accomplished.
‘Trying to win’…but not really.
This Colon must be surgically removed from the roster.
There is actually a medical condition called “toxic megaColon”. The treatment in severe cases (such as this) is a total Colectomy
@36
And I thought a “perforated Colon” was bad.
And we all had such high hopes for the Recker-Colon combo going into the season
Is it still an “episode” when it is continuous and unremitting?
@38, ok, you have to clean the whiskey and coke off my monitor now
Just checked in to see Colon predictably getting shelled again. At least this is probably the last time.
Yeah…at this point they’ve 5 starters. If one goes down Sims is a better option who at least has some upside. In an emergency, Wisler and Blair can suck just as well as Colon has.
Speaking of, why is Ian Krol still around?
Would you say this start was a “watershed” for Colon?
Bowman says this likely was Colon’s last start even if he had pitched well. So what was the point?
@43
Last ditch effort to trade him.
The creature in Total Recall just appeared on Tyler Flowers arm, IMO.
I hope Flowers didn’t break anything.
colonic irrigation
some gentlemen’s fixation
bartolic aberration
appalls the whole Braves Nation
39—Why do you ruin your whiskey with things that aren’t more whiskey?
This start doesn’t affect Bartolo’s trade value at all.
@48
Agreed
Why didn’t they give Colon a rehab start? He could have done this in Pearl just as easy
So Stu are you a Rusty Nail man?
For the record, I still love Bartolo Colon. We wasted a bunch of money on him after his tempus fugited, but I still smile thinking about him.
Fair winds and following seas, Big Sexy.
Recrapped.