A long time ago on a sea far away, a most interesting confrontation ensued. Also, last night, a most interesting confrontation ensued. Hmm.
After 2 and a half wary innings Braves broke through and got 1. To this point, Julio Teheran had looked like VERY GOOD Julio. Also, John Lester looked pretty good and certainly not like the “Master of Disester” (intentional homage to blazon) of recent starts. So far so good. Kind of like when the U. S. Fast Carrier Task Force knocked off a few warships in the Tulagi invasion to open the “Coral Sea.”
Like the Japanese, the mighty Cubs then started asserting their might looking for the lowly Braves in order to crush them. Runners on with no runs in 3, 4, and 6, but in 5, they sank the Lexington and damaged the Yorktown (scored 2). They were convinced the Yorktown would sink or be useless for at least 90 days. (That error in understanding would contribute to a serious disaster at Midway. May the Cubs make such an error).
In the ninth the Braves took out Shoho and Shokaku (got 2 runs), but couldn’t get the third run (I mean carrier).
At the time, Coral Sea was a U. S. desperation survival move. With the line of history it probably serves much as Churchill described the Offensive Battle of El Alamein. “It is not the beginning of the end, but surely it is the end of the beginning.”
Even the ’91 Braves dropped a game here or there. Thanks for contemplating our naval past, cliff. On to Midway.
Danny Santana
will run the bases in a most aggressive manner
How to get him on them?
be creative and, if necessary, con them.
When Lester settled in last night, in his groove, we had a weapon we didn’t use.
Pinch run, early if necessary, eg Cakes, Sean, Kemp(late)
Pinch Bunt for a hit – always where he will have to field
If all else fails remember who likely has our longest HR at STP. Amazed us all.
Remember those 3 stolen bases at the Coliseum.
@126 previous
Byrd is good company, talking pitching
but Joe transfixed me
the Heyward top hand, last second twitching.
On the one close up they allowed us to see it was eerie to watch. Roll over.
For someone at my level of understanding of the finer technical points of the game Joe can be enlightening.
Plus he’s avuncular which coop and I both enjoy.
Sounds like Dansby may get sent down.
Also, Acuna had the hardest hit ball by a Brave at any level last night
Yes, blazon, being a grumpy old man myself, I like listening to Joe when he’s talking mechanics. Paul Byrd, however, is very good, and Chip is less obnoxious, barely, with Paul than Joe. Where have you gone, Ernie Johnson?
Kolby Allard
if he were a duck he’d be a Mallard
they fly only with their left wings
the other a spare until they get the hang of things.
The Braves need John Smoltz in the booth on a regular basis.
If you think Albies long term is Juan Pierre, does that excite you?
Chief,
If Albies long term offense is Juan Pierre, and if he is a league average SS or slight above average 2B, then that would make Albies a 3 to 4 WAR player. And that is something to be excited about. Remember, Juan Pierre was above average fielding and below average throwing in center field.
However, Albies power production and hit tool both seem stronger than Pierre. Right now, Albies may not have the walks and bunt hits, but those can be improved upon.
Pierre was average defensively with a .704 career OPS, but did average 50 SBs per season. I don’t know if he’s the best comp. They’re both fast? Ozzie would have better defense, less stolen bases, more power, and more plate discipline based on his career minor league numbers. In 14 seasons, Pierre only had 3 3 bWAR seasons, and I think Ozzie will eclipse that as well.
Why in the crap did Sneaker mess with a lineup we are on a hot streak and he takes Swanson out and put Rodriguez in who hit .082 in the minor leagues before call up .. looked awful at plate.. not sold on Carmargo yet .. just let Carmargo and Rodriguez man 3b when Freddie not there .. and spell Ss and 2B from timet
I think playing SRod was a very Bobby Cox like thing to do. You got a veteran who has worked hard to get back this season, so you reward the hard work by giving him a start his first day back.
Let’s see if we can get back on track tonight.
Pierre posted an overall bREF WAR over 2.0 4 times in 14 seasons.
In his best SB season, according to rBaser, he produced 7 runs through his baserunning.
By way of comparison, Rickey Henderson had 8 seasons of greater than 7 runs via baserunning.
Lonnie Smith, a notoriously bad baserunner had only half as many rBaser as Pierre in his career.
My suspicion, is that the FO thinks that MLB pitchers will knock the bat out of Albies hands and that they aren’t much excited about a MLB position player that will hit 2-3 HRs per season over 162 games no matter how good of a fielder that he may be.
I see Albies as Quilvio Veras plus 20-30 points of batting average and better defense. That will play. That production generates about $120mil in excess value over his years of team control, or, you could think of it as the same value as what the Cubs just traded away.
It’s astounding to me that people are questioning whether the Braves should go for the playoffs this year… They are outperforming their pythag by 3 wins against the second easiest schedule in the league: http://www.espn.com/mlb/stats/rpi/_/sort/sos
Best thing for them is to lose like 8 of 9 to the Cubs, Dodgers, D-backs and go ahead and trade the guys overperforming (Phillips, Garcia, Adams, etc). Anything else is just sheer foolishness for the sake of it.
@14 that’s a pretty good comp.
Fans don’t “root” for the team to go on losing streaks.
That settles that. Sam has spoken.
As opposed to winning like 3 or 4 of those games and trying to convince themselves they’re something they’re not?
Sorry but this team isn’t making a playoff run, once you start there the strategy for the way forward should be pretty easy to see.
If for some reason John Copollela needs an omen to convince him not to trade Albies, I hope the Braves lose 60 in a row.
Seriously. He isn’t Peraza. This kid finds the barrel.
Flip Adams, play Camargo at 3B, see if he’s a player. Flip BP, call up Albies or don’t, let Sean Rodriguez get in shape against big league pitching, I don’t care. But you don’t abandon the plan because some of your 35 year old placeholders are playing above their heads.
I keep hearing (not necessarily here) comparisons to the 1991 team. The recent talk about this team outperforming its pythag has me curious. Has anyone done an analysis of the 1991 team and how it performed throughout the year relative to expectations (pythag or otherwise)? One of the things that bothers me a bit about using stats is the feeling that sometimes we look at the stats and say “there is no way they can sustain this level because… stats” and yet I feel like there are probably plenty of examples throughout the history of the game where teams did exactly that: out performed what their stats apparently said they were.
Albies has more power than those guys. He has 7 homers at this point. He may develop into a 10-15 homer a season player.
Fans can acknowledge that they’re not a particularly good team and shouldn’t sell the farm for a low percentage run at the edge of the playoffs, while not rooting for them to lose.
And yes, apparently I must speak simple truths to you lot.
Hap,
I lived through 1991. Everybody knew there were some good players that were young and could get better. Position players like Gant and Justice. Pitchers like Smoltz and Glavine and Pete Smith. They had a wonderkind in Avery. They picked up a decent left handed hitting platoon 1B (Bream) to go with Hunter. They picked up Pendleton who was generally thought of as “good veteran presents” and a pretty good fielder (subsequent analysis shows that when Scheurholz targeted Pendleton for fielding, that was s super move and then he had his 2 best offensive years as well). They picked up Nixon to add some speed and outfield fielding. They picked up what we would today call a good veteran #3 (Charlie Liebrandt) to add to the rotation.
That team was MUCH better situated to suddenly get good than this team.
And down the stretch that team outperformed its pythag. Alejandro Pena was perfect. You don’t see perfect very often.
Still a douche.
I’ve never read the Outfield Fly Rule blog, so this could just be prospect porn from some guy on the internet, but, hey, who doesn’t like prospect porn?
I learned a few things: Touki Toussaint has been working solely from the stretch for the last month and Ron Acuna’s nickname in the Australian Summer League was “The Answer to Everything.” (TATE?)
We’ve now reached the portion of the program where Sam is 100 percent correct and doesn’t say anything particularly worthy of vitriol, but because he’s Sam, everybody jumps all over him and more or less argues that we should be ROOTING FOR THE TEAM TO LOSE!!! For God’s sake, listen to yourselves!
I would also point out that nobody here seemed to think Peraza was Peraza, either. Everyone was all up in arms convincing themselves he would be an everyday major leaguer…and he wasn’t. So forgive me if I’m not convinced when you guys tell me that Albies isn’t Peraza.
You know what? I’m glad the Braves didn’t pay the price to get Quintana, and I hope they don’t pay a similar price to get any starting pitcher.
That said, I don’t have a problem with the Cubs doing it. It might be the right move for them, because they are already good, and are already doing it with the fruits of their rebuild.
That isn’t the right move for the Braves because we aren’t good yet, and we aren’t young yet.
If we were doing what we’re doing now, but with Albies, Acuna, Sims and Minter instead of Phillips, Markakis, RA Dickey and Jim Johnson, I’d actually be okay with trading Ian Anderson and Austin Riley for a starter to put us over the top.
The 1990 Braves jettisoned Dale Murphy, they didn’t extend him and trade Dave Justice for a starting pitcher.
@24, I was there every step of the way in ’91 as well and that’s pretty much all right on. One minor correction: The Braves didn’t sign Bream to match him with Brian Hunter. They signed him to be the everyday first baseman. Francisco Cabrera spelled him every now and then for the first two months against lefties but eventually Brian Hunter was brought up from the minors to fill that role. I’d never even heard of Hunter, I don’t believe he was all that heralded a prospect. But he played pretty well.
A couple other acquisitions that year that didn’t amount to much: Mike Heath started the season as a platoon partner behind the plate with Greg Olson, and Danny Heep was acquired in May to serve as a pinch hitter. He did really well but I don’t think he wanted to ride the bench so they released him and he retired from baseball.
I’m not rooting for the Braves to lose, and I’m enjoying watching them win. That said, I’m all for sticking with “the plan”. I’m more than content to see how this next road trip pans out before worrying about one thing or another.
@28
The 1990 Braves finished 65-97, for God’s sake! Comparing this team to the 1991 team is a somewhat troubled analogy, admittedly, but it’s worlds better than comparing this team to 1990.
@27 – regardless of what you remember anybody here saying about Peraza, Peraza’s stock was on the decline in the industry before the trade because a consensus was being reached that he wouldn’t hit ML stuff. Albies is 19, two years younger than Peraza was, his power has already improved as he’s reached AAA, and therefore, no such consensus is being reached. This is also why Peraza was never even a top 50 prospect, and Albies was a top 10.
@32
…whose stock is currently on the decline within the industry.
@31- So then it’s like how they traded Chipper Jones in 1991 for Greg Maddux.
@15 It’s astounding to me that people are questioning whether the Braves should go for the playoffs this year… because anytime a team has a shot to make the playoffs, they would be fools to pass up on it. History has shown any team in the playoffs could win the world series.
Don’t bet hard on this team, but don’t fold without at least seeing what ya got.
Our pythag has to be skewed a bit by the fact that we got completely curbstomped by the Astros.
Should the Cubs not go for it? We may have a better record than them after this week…
Going for it doesn’t mean trading the farm for Mark Texiera. Maybe it just means keeping our vets and letting things play out.
There’s very little opportunity cost at stake if we aren’t able to unload Phillip or Garcia or Jim Johnson. You aren’t getting meaningful pieces back for them, no matter how hard you wishcast.
@34
OK, so now Ozzie Albies is Chipper Jones. Got it.
@33 – as evidenced by what? His drop from number 8 to number 25?
@37 – He’s not David Justice either, but you just purposefully misunderstand whatever you need to instead of making a point.
Chipper Jones wasn’t Chipper Jones either, in 1991. He’d just wrapped up hitting .229 in the GCL when 91 began.
No one is rooting for the Braves to lose. Everyone is rooting for the front office to be sensible and not take the current record for more of a sign than it is. If they aren’t going to do that, then I’d rather they lose than Coppy get jumpy.
@36 – if we don’t trade those guys, whatever. It’s suboptimal. But that’s miles away from trading Albies, Wentz and Riley for a fringe number 1 like Sonny Gray.
Also, we got precisely squat for Dale Murphy. Didn’t matter, because that team lost 95 games and there was nothing to play for, but if that team had had a playoff spot as any kind of possibility, trading Dale Murphy for Jeff Parrett (whose largest contribution of any type to the Atlanta Braves was breaking Danny Bautista’s face with a pitch years later as a member of the Cardinals) and Jim Vatcher (whoever the hell that is) probably wouldn’t have been the thing to do.
Albies isn’t Chipper Jones. He’s also not Jose Peraza. He’s a very good prospect who has lost a bit of his previous shine because 1) he’s stalled a little at AAA and he’s still Very Small for a Major Leaguer*, and 2) prospect fatigue. That said, they shouldn’t trade him for a guy in China that gold mines in World of Warcraft or anything. If they get a real value for value deal, he’s not untouchable, but he’s not part of the problem to be flipped for the sake of flipping.
That said, the idea that he’d slot in and replace better than league average production at 2B without blinking is wishcasting.
Also, “douche” is totally hurtful and a specifically gendered sort of way and, ya know, “no politics” and all. Such the meanness. So cry.
And at the risk of more Ire From The Sky Lords Who Hate Snarky Stadium Nicknames, the Falcons debuted the “finished product” photos of The Great Mechanical Sphincter of Northside today.
Chaz Roe traded to Tampa for a player to be named later.
Gird your loins, people. Coppy’s only getting started.
For the record, I do think Albies is significantly better than Peraza and am not in favor of flipping him into a dumpster somewhere in exchange for a rotten banana peel. If I had to guess, Albies is an everyday major league middle infielder (regardless of if it’s shortstop or second base). Not a superstar, but solid. If I had to guess at the time we traded him, I’d have guessed that Peraza wasn’t worth hanging onto at all…a major league utility/bench player. I’m only upset he was in the dumpster fire that was the Olivera deal insofar as it kept us from immediately flipping him for a moderately less useless piece than Olivera.
My problem re: Albies is this idea that we shouldn’t include him in a deal for a team-controlled frontline starter if that deal is out there. Albies is not the type of prospect you sit on and wring your hands over if you can make a deal that makes your team significantly better.
@43
Why so paranoid? Are you doing anything douchey?
By the way, do you have a comedy album I may be able to purchase?
Any body got $10 mil laying around? You can buy Cal Ripken’s absurd estate. Tough sell.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/13301-Dover-Rd-Reisterstown-MD-21136/2097035057_zpid/
@44, the AHole? The Big A? It’s hard to be clever when it totally looks like a prolapsed butthole. Goatse-inspired architecture. Keep doing you ATL, up here in the unwashed burbs we gonna keep things family friendly.
I believe both of these things:
Albies is a better player than Camargo or anyone else we have to play 2b next year, and he has the upside of an occasional all-star.
Also, If promoted at the beginning of the season, Albies would likely not have performed better than Phillips has this year.
I also believe:
Albies is just as likely from this day forward to perform as well as Phillips is from this day forward. I believe this because a) He will be a better defender than Brandon Phillips, b) he will be a better baserunner than Phillips and c) if you take OPS as a quick and easy standard, Phillips has so far hit at a level he has not accomplished in the last six years, and a level that he has not topped but twice in his entire career. Unless you believe way more strongly in the power of acupuncture than I do, you can not really expect Phillips to finish the year with the rate stats he’s currently hit for.
I think that Albies’s all around value, at 20 years old, has every chance to match that of Phillips’s at 36 years old.
And I think, in this imaginary scenario, where Albies is called up today and Phillips is traded, even if he doesn’t quite match in 60 whatever games as a Brave what Phillips does as a Rockie or whatever, it matters little, because the Braves aren’t going to the playoffs in 2016 and Albies will be better in 2017 if he reaches the bigs in 2016.
Even if you disagree with my whole second list, you only have to agree with the first item, that Albies is our best 2b option for 2017, to decide he’s worth keeping.
@41, I don’t think we’ll do that. I mean we make make a trade for a pitcher, and it may involve prospects we all like, but I’m fairly sure the return would be better than Sonny Gray. Otherwise we shouldn’t bother.
I had forgotten that we had a player named Chaz Roe. What sort of horrorshow parents name a child “Chaz Roe?” That sounds like an overly expensive sushi dish.
@50
In a world (and we may be in this world, for all I know…trade rumors are not facts) where he isn’t the difference between us having a frontline starter and not having one, I agree. In a world where he is the difference between those two things, though, I’ll take the frontline starter and take my chances with Camargo or a new long-term plan at second. This isn’t about Brandon Phillips, really (though if we’re still in some type of “playoff hunt” at the trade deadline, I wouldn’t trade Phillips unless I was really happy with the return I got back).
@46: thank you, John R.
Who are the cost controlled frontline starters who may be available this month who are better then Sonny Gray? I’m not being snarky–just not sure who the trade partner(s) might be.
@50 If Albies gets the call up and is on a tear, then you could consider trading Phillips. However, Phillips is apart of this year’s core. Trading him definitely sends a message to the rest of the roster. I don’t know how you see past it unless you are intentionally bowing out of the race early.
You just don’t do that. It’s the kind of bad karma that tends to come back on teams.
PS. I’m taking this with the assumption that whatever the team got in return for Phillips would be less of an impact player this season than Phillips is likely to be.
Would you trade Albies+metric-ton-of-cash for Verlander? I think I might.
@49 – Anyone asks, I’m telling them it’s a dead Transformer that landed butt-up. Especially if it’s someone’s kid. “That’s the rotting corpse-hole of Bumblebee, little man.”
Making children cry is comedy gold.
Is the team better with Verlander+current rotation+Camargo/Phillips than it is with Curren rotation + Albies?
You can always play for Archer in the off-season. You can do some more gymnastics, too, like moving Julio for prospects to backfill what you gave up for Archer.
But you have a LF, RF and 2B that average 35 years of age. You have only two ML-ready impact prospects for 2018 and they play RF and 2B. Trade someone else or you’re just creating new problems.
My last hot take is that 146 years of baseball history say it is more likely that Albies is Quilvio Veras-lite than Jose Altuve.
I would not do that for Verlander, I would do it for Fulmer though.
@59, yes, by a lot, imo. Assuming his arm doesn’t fall off between now and next year. It’d be a risk, but I’d go into 2018 thinking we’re going to contend for the division and might even be favorites.
Would Detroit do that? Probably not. Their fans are going to want a haul for the face of their franchise. Albies is not a haul.
@56
And that’s the factor that the vast majority of folks seem unwilling to consider. Some would say it’s irrelevant, but it’s not. You don’t just tear down this team because your spread chart says it’s unlikely to actually contend for a playoff spot, unless you want to seriously piss off the clubhouse. What does a seriously pissed off clubhouse get you going into next year? I honestly don’t know, but I’m pretty sure I’d rather not have one.
That doesn’t mean you can’t trade for prospects, but you do have to be able to go down to the clubhouse and convince them that the team is better after these trades than it was before. Selling off established players for prospects and doing nothing else, you’re not going to be able to convince them of that.
Verlander is 34 and has been worth 1 win. He’d replace and upgrade the role of Dickey in the rotation, but he isn’t the ace to make us a real WS threat.
Betting on anyone becoming the next Altuve is a bad prop. Little guys generally don’t turn into Jose Altuve.
@ 59 and @ 63,
I might take Verlander, but I would give NOTHING for the right to pay him 28 mill for the next 3 years. and I do mean NOTHING. Maybe a low level prospect to get them to pay this year’s prorated salary and then next year that is Garcia plus Bartolo money. Look at Verlander’s age and performance this year.
Coppy is at least testing the waters on Fulmer AND Verlander (with his contract) for some type of real haul. That, I could go for.
I would rather watch Albies and Acuna play on a team not contending for the playoffs than watch Phillips and Markakis play on a team not contending for the playoffs. Whatever return you get for Phillips and Markakis is just bonus, there’s no point to having them right now.
I wish they had let Albies get healthy. He came back so quickly, and he had a OPS of .656 in April and .721 in May. He then had a .925 OPS in June and a .834 in July. He’s also stolen 21 bases against 2 caught stealing, and has actually played better defense at SS than 2B (hardly scientific, but 10 errors in 70 G at 2B and 1 in 13 G at SS). If the one question mark is his bat, then just play his bat at SS, but his hit tool was graded higher than Dansby’s anyway. You need a 2B, you have a 2B, and you’re going to trade that 2B for the one position you’ve been almost mocked for collecting too much of (SP). Lunacy, just complete lunacy. Oh, and he’s 20.
There are 6 untouchable Braves, IMO: Freddie, Dansby, Ozzie, Acuna, Allard, Maitan. That’s it. Just don’t trade those 6 players. Maybe Soroka gets in there at some point.
Verlander is still throwing as hard as ever and his periphs aren’t that bad. He probably won’t help our 2022 playoff run led by Kevin Maitan, but he would make 2018 pretty interesting. imho.
@68
Calling Acuna up at any point before September this year is a massive mistake IMO, just as calling up Swanson at any point before September last year was a massive mistake. Let him play the rest of the Triple-A season and we can see where we are with that.
@69, Allard is not untouchable. He’s on my suspect list (which is admittedly quite a bit smaller than chief’s).
Adams and Suzuki back in, Camargo still at SS
Dansby out of lineup again.
It’s madness to trade for a starting pitcher when the entire point of your rebuild was to not have to pay for starting pitching. If they make a trade like Albies for Verlander then everyone involved in the organization needs to be fired on principal. It’s just a tacit admission that their approach to this whole thing sucked and trading one of the few potential impact position players for a 34 year old is so stupid.
@74 and people are none too happy it seems
@69
The reason we’ve been mocked for that position is that, despite the sheer numbers, we still don’t have one guy from that entire lot that we know for a fact we can count on. That’s a major problem, and it’s a far more important one than the second base one IMO. We’ve done pretty well this year signing a guy from outside the organization to fill the second base hole. If Camargo caves in, we can sign another guy next offseason.
Despite signing three guys (or signing two and trading for one), we still haven’t remotely covered up the starting pitching hole. In fact, a new one has opened up where it didn’t exist before (Teheran). It threatens to be the thread that unravels this whole rebuild, and it absolutely cannot be left up to the developmental whims of the starting pitching prospects. We absolutely must trade for or sign a No. 1 starter to anchor this staff, if not this season, than during the offseason. It is the most important single flaw this organization has, and I would trade anyone other than Freddie and (probably) Acuna to get it fixed.
If you’re in your rookie season and you have a .619, what do you say you lighten up on the publicity moves there, champ:
That ball Acuna hit last night in AAA would have hit the second deck at STP. Day-um.
@77, spot on. Middle infielders are a dime a dozen. Great ones are expensive, but average ones aren’t hard to come by. Pitching is still what we need. I’d package Swanson and Albies in a heartbeat, for even just one good pitcher. The reality is that it’s going to take more than that to get a great young pitcher. I wouldn’t trade Acuna for anything. Everything else should at least be considered.
Ideally we use that sweet taxpayer money and we sign more pitching this winter.
@79
Yeah, that was crazy. That may be the hardest I’ve ever seen a ball hit. I’m surprised the ball didn’t explode on contact. He also hit a ball that he kind of got off the end of the bat to the base of the wall in right (opposite field) in his first AB and hit another ball that he was jammed on to the warning track later in the game. Not normally a prospect guy (I guess that’s probably kind of obvious), but I’m officially excited about Acuna.
Dansby needs to go to Triple A since he’s not playing everyday.
Dansby played 143 games in his first season of pro ball last year, and maybe it’s not the worst thing in the world for the world to slow down a little bit. Last two years: picked #1, paraded around Arizona, traded to Atlanta, 3 stops in their system, paraded all around in the offseason, The Savior in Spring Training, struggles struggles struggles, marketing marketing marketing. And he’s 23. Maybe he just needs to relax a little bit.
If we could go back in time to last season and send him to Triple-A at the exact moment we called him up from Double-A, then leave him in Triple-A until at least last year’s September callups, that would be lovely.
He’ll either learn to hit sliders (or take them!) or he won’t. Coddling him just delays things longer.
I’m hoping they are breaking his swing down and building it back up, and it’s something that they don’t want to expose to game conditions until they think it’s ready.
#SlowTheFlow
Spoiled Salad.
Still don’t understand how Dansby’s back foot goes towards 3B. He’s not going to learn by watching every night.
@88, I don’t either. It’s a mystery almost as much as Jason Heyward’s imperceptible head jerk just as the ball is leaving the pitcher’s hand.
Chaz Roe
we are sorry to see you go
tho’ the fact we get Longoria
as PTBNL induces a real euphoria.
Chaz
such pizazz
Cash
for trash.
@79
Friday, at the latest. We should start a poll.
@90 – I like the way you think.
I’m afraid that for Chaz though, the player to be named later is more likely to belong to some expectant mother.
for exit velocity
there must be reciprocity
while attack angle
more subjective thus much prone to wangle.
@93
It was cash in the end, Rusty, a transactional medium that has the advantage of being easily reduced to the barest minimum. PTBNL would have been a vibrant, living thing. Well, maybe.
There’s a Cole Porter line in ‘Let’s Do It’…
‘Waiter, bring me Chaz Roe.’
@95 Alas. I hope it’s at least Pay To Braves, Not Liberty.
you’d be so easy to glove
so easy to tag, down low or above
now you can’t see
that fastball from me,
so you’d be oh so easy to glove.
Cole Porter Night at the old Ballpark…i’m done.
I like the DBags trade for Martinez
@99, IMO they took the Tigers behind the woodshed.
Three up, three down in Bartolo Colon’s first inning for the Twins.
Are they EVER going to play baseball?!
Update: They are playing baseball.
If/when Swanson gets sent down, does Ozzie slide back over to 2b?
well, no reason to stay up any further… all our starting pitching called up have sucked badly (blair,wisler,newk)
Braves should not trade youth for a starter. Just sign one or two in the offseason.
Giving up a couple runs is NOT a bad start in this environment. We have to score. If the lineup is 50% utility players like Camargo and SRod and Santana, then, well, what do you expect? Benching Swanson is fucking retarded. I don’t think he’s the second coming, but he needs to play. Our org is run by mental midgets.
Swanson should be in the minors getting AB’s, he’s hit .136 since his hot streak in June. the front office has to get rid of some players already so we can get some stability both in the lineup and on the field and in our collective minds.
newcomb is killing me with his wildness, you cant walk 2 and then give up a HR. (not with how this lineup is “hitting”) He’s missing badly with a lot of pitches and will be lucky to get through 6 tonight. Maybe time to give Sims a shot. Or maybe newcomb is just prone to teheran like momentary collapses.
Albies went 3-5 tonight and now has his average up to .293. Coppy said no one would block him and Albies would let them know when he’s ready…..he’s ready
White Sox now have more top 100 prospects. Game on.
Albies hitting .394 with a .950 OPS in July. I’m trying to convince myself that he’s not going to be traded and will play in ATL
I’m a little confused how people can watch Swanson struggle so badly as the league adjusts to him and still root for Alvie’s (much less Acuna) to be rushed up. CF Byron Buxton in Minnesota.
I went to The Big Juice Box in Houston last night. It’s nicer the STP. Probably one of the best in baseball.
Gattis crushed two homers (he says, “Hey”) He hit one ball foul that went about 430 feet. Then took the next pitch about 415.
He’s in the perfect park for his skill set
I’m glad the bear found his honey tree, but I miss him. He’s better off there than here.
@112 the thought process of people rooting for Albies/Acuna to be called up likely goes along these lines: (1) I’m ready to see the evidence of the rebuild succeeding at the MLB level *now*, (2) there’s no way to say with any real certainty that a talented prospect in AA/AAA like Albies or Acuna isn’t ready for the MLB – thus, the only way to find out is to call them up and see; and (3) if they flunk the audition, you can just send them back to the minors… the only harm done is to their service clocks.
For the record, I’m not in that camp – this Braves team is not ready to compete for a wild card in 2017, and I’d rather see the Braves get themselves in position to be the best team they can be in 2018 and beyond.
New thread.