There are few things in life more depressing than having to recap yet another loss against the imposing Phillies, especially when it makes the 5th straight defeat against them. In a year that has seen the Braves make quite a few strides forward, their play against the Phillies has been nothing short of humiliatingly abysmal. To put it into perspective:
- The Braves are now 2-10 against the Phillies.
- The Braves have more wins against the Dodgers this season than against the Phillies.
- A full 25% of the Phillies TOTAL wins on the season have come courtesy of the Braves (10 of 41).
- If the Braves had reversed that record and gone 10-2 against the Phillies, the Phillies would have a 33-77 record right now (a .300 winning percentage), and the Braves would be sitting comfortably in second place in the division at 59-52, seven games behind Washington.
- The only other team that Philadelphia has a winning record against this season is the Giants, against whom they are 2-1 (and the Giants have MLB’s second worst record, ahead of only Philly).
I could keep going, but I have to stop before I make myself cry. It’s as though the Phillies singlehandedly have crushed any of the dignity the Braves managed to conjure up this season.
There was little in this game you could point to as encouraging. Freddie hit a solo home run, but that was about it for the highlights. Teheran proved once again that SunTrust holds kryptonite somewhere within its mighty beams, as he managed to give up 7 hits and 5 runs to the Phillies in 5 innings. Max Fried made his major league debut and pitched two innings, giving up two hits and two walks and striking out one. It wasn’t a stunning performance, especially considering it was against the worst team in the majors (and, quite frankly, would probably be one of the worst in AAA, too), but considering what the rest of the Braves staff has done this season against them, Fried’s outing looked downright exciting.
Natspos delenda est. And Phillies delenda est, too, as slowly and painfully as possible.
Looks like Dans is coming back.
https://apnews.com/4e642edac8804e47bca3b2e6e3819cd9
Chief,
If I’m not mistaken, you haven’t been impressed with a single prospect the Braves have traded for or developed in the rebuild (maybe Acuna? Because he has power?). So if that’s not the case, correct me. But if it is, why be a fan of this team? You’re essentially saying that there aren’t any good players right now, and if that’s the case, this team won’t be competitive for another 5+ years. Just trying to track your argument here.
@134 last thread – we all knew that line from Coppy about winning more games with Aybar to be a sad piece of BS / PR when he said it. As discussed ad nauseum, it appears the Braves gave up hope on Simba learning to be a good hitter and decided to trade him while his contract and defense both looked to be amazing. Perhaps he never would have learned to hit if he’d stayed in a Braves uni – guess we’ll never know. As of now, looks like the Angels won the trade handily. This would be a lot more of an academic point if Dansby had developed as hoped.
@135 last thread – Julio’s stuff is mediocre, but when he’s pitching well (ie, most seasons other than this one) his control/command/athleticism allow him to generate results like you’d see from a #2 starter. Julio looked like garbage last night – he missed badly with at least one pitch in most ABs and he wasn’t able to put his offspeed pitches close enough to the strike zone to make the Phillies hitters offer at them very often. It’s easy to sit back and regret that the Braves didn’t deal JT last season for what we assume would have been a good haul, but (1) the offers Coppy had on the table aren’t public/confirmed that I know of so potential trade offers are speculation, and (2) JT is still young and has plenty of time left on his contract. He could and probably will turn things around soon.
@136 I think Dickey and Newk are starters on next year’s Braves team unless they are traded. Newk has so much potential as a starter that the Braves will give him time to develop that 3rd pitch / learn how to handle a lineup the 3rd time around. The Braves still have the “luxury” of open rotation spots at this point, and probably will for a little while longer.
@2 Rob – I don’t agree with Chief’s assessment of the Braves’ minor league system either but he’s entitled to be a fan of the team even if he isn’t optimistic about the Braves’ future. Plenty of people choose to be/remain a fan of certain franchises even when they harbor no real hope that the team will be good again (see eg, Cubs fans until very recently).
Dansby has been recalled. Doesn’t make sense but whatever.
Cubs always had a budget though. Tribune Company consistently attempted to get the right admin in place, and they always had money to spend. Inherently, that creates hope.
If the Braves are a mid-market team, they don’t have much of a core at all, and they’re going to eventually find out that the core they think is coming is no core at all, then that’d be a really tough position for a fan to be in. I can’t think of a team in baseball that has too little resources to field a competitive team and also doesn’t have a pipeline of players coming through the system. I guess that’d be the result of a low-to-mid-market team that’s in last-place team but they bombed their 3-4 consecutive high draft position drafts. But even that, I don’t think, has ever been done. I think that team would be having contraction talks.
Yeah, but the point is that hopeless baseball fandom is fine. You can love a team knowing full well it will suck for the next decade. Not trying to ascribe that stance to anyone here, but you don’t have to believe in the rebuild to be a fan.
That’s wild. I’m not old enough to have allegiances that run so deep that I would still love the team and follow it closely if they encountered, say, 10 years of ineptitude. I know Braves fans in the 80’s endured 6 straight losing seasons.
It would be extremely difficult to be a fan of the Pirates during their 20 straight losing seasons. That reminds me of growing up in northeast Florida and the troubles the Jaguars have had. I was 9 when the Braves won their first WS, so I’ve largely never known the Braves to be a losing team. My college football team, Florida, also had their own run of dominance as I was growing up. So I just couldn’t get myself to root consistently for the local expansion team, the Jags, because they just seemed to be inept at running a franchise. They haven’t had a winning season in 9 years now, and they continue to be on the short list of relocation candidates.
Perhaps I just can’t relate, but if I thought that the top prospects were not going to produce the fruit necessary and/or the Braves didn’t have the budget to fill the roster otherwise, then you’d have to assume you’re signing up, as a fan, for 7+ seasons of losing baseball (past 3 including this year and probably 4+ going forward). That’d be tough, but to each their own.
I’ve been a Braves fan since 1968 and have seen my share of ineptitude and losing seasons. I became a Braves fan because of Hank Aaron and continued to follow the Braves after he was gone because I liked the players and Skip, Pete, and Ernie. I’ll continue to follow the Braves because I’m like a junkie and just can’t quite quit I guess.
@8
It’s not that difficult, your fervor just becomes somewhat lesser. As a fan of the Hawks, I can tell you that the year where they randomly won 60 games, I was super into it. Like, I honestly didn’t know I was that big a Hawks fan. Every other year that I’ve been following them, though, I knew for a fact that there was no way they were gonna even sniff going deep into the playoffs. And so they’re still your team, and you’re still happy when they win, but you’ve certainly got your armor up because you know exactly what’s gonna wind up happening.
There are other examples. I was super into Tennessee basketball during the Pearl years (almost to where it was equal to or maybe even slightly more meaningful than football in my mind); now I follow them, but don’t have much hope. My fervor for Tennessee football waned some when the team was terrible. My fervor for the Falcons wanes some when they’re terrible.
I’m a bigger Braves fan than any of those other things, but I can tell you that my fervor now is not what it was (or will be again) when the team was good. I don’t share Chief’s view that every single prospect sucks, though I do think that if we’re looking at the prospects as our lone salvation, this is never gonna work. But I will say that I’m interested in winning games at the major league level, and that’s all I’ve ever been interested in. I don’t care that the minor league system is good if we’re not winning games, and I don’t care that it’s bad if we are. I know the two things are directly proportional, but what I’m saying is that Max Fried pitching in another pathetic loss to the Phillies means not much other than another pathetic loss to the Phillies. I can’t make myself get excited over a crappy baseball team.
Skip, Pete, and Ernie in their prime would have been a treat. I’m in the minority, though, of people who like Chip quite a bit. I also have a feeling that Skip, Pete, and Ernie would not have aged well into the sabermetric era, though.
I was a huge Thrashers fan and that franchise never had their act together. We root for our teams to get better but when they don’t we stick with them anyway. To me, this is part of what being a fan of a team (and not just a fan of the sport) is about.
@8, I definitely fall into the category of fans that loves the team but isn’t optimistic about the rebuild. Outside of Acuna we don’t have any high-impact players that are anywhere close to the majors. Our pitching has depth and numbers, but nobody looks like a huge game changer. If I had to bet I’d bet that Coppy will not be employed long enough to see the current draftees reach the majors.
I want Swanson and Albies to do well, but I think their top-end is MLB-regular. Our FO doesn’t spend money wisely, and really never has, and they are constantly saddled with bad contracts. They care about running the real-estate empire more than they care about the product.
That doesn’t mean I don’t love the Braves. I want them to win. I cheer when they play well. I get upset when they don’t. I’ve watched most every game they’ve played since the mid 70s. I can’t just turn off that allegiance. This is the part that makes it even more sweet when they actually *do* win.
@11
Pete would have loved it.
The Braves had me at hello.
I’m not a poet, and although I blog, I don’t communicate my thoughts as well as some of my other learned colleagues here in this fine establishment. (seriously)
I LOVE the Braves. Like love them. I was a the Padres brawl game. I used to watch Chief Nocahoma in his tent and now wonder if the smoke was more than just smoke, LOL.
I’ve loved them through Brad Komminsk and before to now.
But what I really like, in life as well as my fandom, is realism. I just do not believe in prospects. And the reason that I don’t is because of the unending weight of history. There has been MLB since 1871. 17K players have played in MLB. 150K or more have played in miLB if not more.
I’m not going to get into individual players, but yes Acuna is the only prospect that I believe that we have. IMO, ALL of the rest are suspects. krussell is right, Albies and Swanson are just going to be guys.
While I will applaud a Lucas Sims for his bulldoggedness, I also have to say that I think he can’t keep the ball down, or that whatever that I think I see, I see.
Fried has a good curve, but discounting for nervousness, he’s as wild as a march hare.
Newcomb is either on fire or he couldn’t hit a barn.
I mean I could go on. I get that they are young. I get that there is time.
FWIW, I agree with @13 that Coppy won’t be around when the rebuild is rebuilt, because I suspect that there won’t be a built. When you won’t spend any FA money except on guys that you waste it on, or you sign them because they are from Atlanta, your goose is cooked.
Scherholtz, McGurick, Liberty all need to go. Whatever gets us closer to that end result is what I’m rooting for.
All that said, I’d rather watch our suspects pitch than be subjected to more years of filling out the rotation with guys that are about to retire and just want one more paycheck. It makes me happy to see that we finally may have reached the point where they have to promote guys, put them on the 40-man, or lose them.
I’m not really sure we can bemoan Andrelton Simmons finally having a quality offensive season (while riding a somewhat absurd BABIP rate in the small sample of half a season, at the age of 27) and in the same breath write of 23 year old Dansby Swanson’s sophomore slump as a failure to “develop as hoped.” I mean, if we’re going to take our knocks for giving up on Simmons too soon, don’t we have to give The Good Hair a little more time to work things out?
@18 totally agree. Call them all up. IMO.
Even given your stringent brackets of what makes a “real” prospect, Kevin Maitan exists.
@19
Simmons age 23 season he finished 14th in the MVP and won a gold glove. Advanced stats show he probably should have finished much higher in the MVP that year. Obviously Swanson needs more time to figure his shit out but the results thus far are no where near what the bar was.
@21, Kevin Maitan is 17 and the odds are overwhelmingly against him even playing in MLB. I don’t understand why Chief is the only one that gets that part.
I’ve sometimes wondered about Braves fans who started following them in the 90’s. This has been a remarkably successful franchise from 1991 to 2014. Although the remarkable division streak ended in 2005, the team won more than it lost and was in contention more years than not even through 2014.
I have the great advantage over Rob of being much older. My Braves fandom encompasses 25 years of real futility. I became a Braves fan as a kid in Atlanta the day in 1965 that they announced they were moving to Atlanta. I started going to Atlanta Crackers games at Atlanta Stadium in in 1965 (they were the Braves AAA affiliate for that year). Although 1969 and 1982 were great fun, they were also flukes; the team in the 70’s and 80’s was mostly terrible. But my obsession with them never wavered.
Don’t get me wrong–I enjoyed the 90’s much more than the 70’s and 80’s. And I’m not trying to be morally superior about supporting your team, good or bad. I’m making an empirical observation: once a team is imprinted on you the way the Braves have been for almost all of us, it’s for life–for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.
In tough times, some fans wear rose colored glasses and are convinced the prospects are great and the future is bright. Some fans cope with failure by insisting that things will only get better once the idiots in charge are fired. But they are all fans.
@24
I mean, I had the great fortune of starting to follow the team in 1991, but I have seen a handful of crappy seasons at this point and am still here. I’ll still be here if this rebuild takes 10 years, though somewhat less enthusiastically. I think those of us that have teams in multiple sports are likely to have at least one of them be bad at a given time (or at least in the recent past).
It feels ridiculous to even type this, but I was a senior in college before a Braves team that I followed failed to win the division (notwithstanding the strike year, obviously…though I believe they were leading the wild card at the time of the strike, if I’m not mistaken), and I started following them when I was in second grade. I mean, that’s just absurd, and I’m fully aware of that. But as I said, I grew up a Falcons fan, and they won the division precisely once (with a couple more moderately to extremely toothless playoff performances thrown in), in the first 13 years that I followed them. I mentioned Tennessee basketball, and they were completely wretched until I was in high school. So it’s not like I didn’t know what it was like to follow a bad sports team.
23
Well that’s a bit extreme. Maitan is in fact 17, but odds are not overwhelmingly against him ever playing in the MLB. He was referred to by scouts as the best July 2 prospect they had seen since Miggy. He has a higher probability than your average 17 year old. There’s admittedly a chance something happens with someone that young between now and the majors, but his odds of being a major leaguer are far from minuscule.
Rebuilds take time and most of the prospects will fail. That is the truth. Do not be surprised with 3 or more bad seasons. I am not knocking what has been attempted by the organization but when you gamble on teenagers shit happens and does go wrong most of the time.
@ 13 & 18 You say it all so well — I agree with every last word. I’m likely the longest Braves fan here (1951 — yes, that’s Boston) and I have loved the two (near) dynasties and lived thru the horrendous slumps and all the so-so years in between. If you’re a serious Braves fan, it gets into your blood, and you root for them no matter how many favorites are given away (Andrelton, Kimbrel, etc.) and no matter how questionable the rebuild becomes. This team has suffered from horrible general managing/absurdly bad spending for the last decade, and the current moderately talented front office has made as many mis-steps as positive moves. I’ll still be a Braves fan even if only Ronald Acuna and Luiz Gohara have major star potential, or if Dansby never progresses beyond an average shortstop with leadership potential, and regardless whether Kevin Maitan develops from a 17-year-old hopeful to be the second coming of Eddie Matthews.
People seem to forget that the rebuild has two prongs: restocking the farm system and regaining financial flexibility after some bad long-term contracts. They started spending more last offseason, and I think the strategy of going after 1-year deals was correct at that point. This offseason they will have money to spend, and I think now is the time for them to go after more controllable, core-type players. The choices they make going after those key additions will be important. I wonder how they’ll go, but I would be looking at 3B and a front-line starter.
@26, the odds for Maitan are much better than the odds for me when I was 17…but they are still very low. Penciling him in at 3B in 2020 is full-on crazytown, and more than half the fanbase is already doing it. 100% of the bloggers and new-media types that cover the Braves are already doing it. It’s dumb.
@29, the people doing the rebuild are responsible for the bad contracts. That doesn’t bother you, at least a little?
As a 90s kid I’d never suffered baseball this bad until the rebuild. But as a Tech fan I realized a long time ago that being a fan has very little to do with waiting around for championships. You’re either born into it or you fall in love yourself later, but either way you’re stuck for life.
I’d say the odds of Maitan making the majors is about 85%. I’d say 60% odds he’s a regular in the big leagues for several years and about 33% he’s a star. I may be slightly optimistic but I’d say these are close to the general consensus.
I will concede that Maitan being the 3B in 2020 may be a stretch, but certainly by 2021 barring injury.
@28–Well, that will teach me to be smug about being a long time braves fan. You’ve got me by 14 years and two former cities.
My latest on why BP should be grateful for position change: http://blog.walkoffwalk.net/2017/08/hey-brandon-how-bout-retrospective.html
Yes good piece Ryan. I had been thinking along the same lines, that this can only help his marketability. Interesting to see the defensive stats so far.
I started in 84-85. So I know some suffering but not like the 70s. That said, Maitan WILL see the bigs. Whether he sticks as an impact bat is open for debate.
He’ll get every opportunity to make the bigs, because of the self-fulfilling aspects that go along with give a teenager millions of dollars. Will he have a better chance of sticking there than your studs playing East Cobb travel ball who are also “best 16-year old I’ve ever seen” types? I say that he’s likely in that exact same player pool (and not head and shoulders above it).
Basically I don’t trust international scouts and agents, they aren’t much different than pimps.
31 — I find this argument about the FO being the same from the Wren years to now pretty bogus. It’s clear, if you are paying any attention, that the Wren FO and the Hart/Coppy FO have substantial differences on everything from scouting, to player development, to draft philosophy. The current baseball ops people have done a good job rebuilding the minor league talent in the org, and I hope they do a good job when it comes to FA signings.
our learned cognoscenti
grey heads so very far from empty
produce a remarkable afternoon discourse
concluding in the main the cart’s before the horse.
Olivera/Kemp, Colon, Markakis…can’t see how Wren can be scapegoated for those. That money has been lit on fire.
I recall a study posted on usenet back in the 90’s that looked at the futures of the top 10 in the draft Vs the top 10 biggest bonus babies in the international market. Iirc, the draft players had about a 20% chance of being a star and were at exactly 50% big leaguers. The internationals fared much better in both measures, despite being much younger. Bill James joined the discussion and opined that the top ten international’s pool contained far fewer pitchers and that was skewing the results, but even after correcting for that, the internationals had a significantly higher chance of major league success than did draftees of the era (approximately 1975-1995).
Well, a lot has changed since then, but top 10 international position player signees still reach the majors at very high rates and produce a disproportionate percentage of MVP votes. (This is still true only of the elite internationals: drafted players compare favorably to the rest of the international class each year.)
Which brings me to Kevin Maitan. Having seen pictures of him recently I also doubt that 3rd base will be an option at the time of his MLB debut. Having gone to a couple of game in Kingsport, however, I’ve also seen his swing and that will play in any league. This kid is going to be great, even if he starts in right field.
@38
a pimp i know’s a scout
with much to tout about
a scout i know’s a pimp
and both their judgment’s limp.
Good afternoon gentlemen – you have been at your very best today. Thank you all.
Tonight is the first time that we have the Swanson-Albies double play combo.
@39, what is Coppy’s philosophy other than not spending money for FA SP? Which, btw, I disagree with as an aside.
What is our scouting philosophy, what is our development philosophy?
Someone said it in an earlier post but this no FA/all prospect sort of mentality isn’t going to work. Period. They built a new stadium, they built a bunch of crappy restaurants and hotels, soon it will be time to break out the checkbook. Or expect much much more of same if you’re depending on the Sims, Fried(s) of the world to build a winner.
The new regime’s drafting ability blows Wren out of the water. Look at the 2013-14 draft. Barren. Things have been much better since.
I think the next and final stage is free-agent signing (serious signings, not stopgap signings) and dealing our talent surplus. That has yet to come. Until it does, it’s still normal for Braves fans to be suspicious. I’m still down with the plan…but I do have a few growing doubts.
I don’t get why, especially this coming off-season, people are so fixated on free agent signings. We’re more likely to trade for pricier assets in the very near term, right? If that wasn’t obvious from the Gray rumors. We’re still going to pinch pennies going for guys like Michael Fulmer, who is cost-controlled and won’t break the bank in arb because he doesn’t strike people out, wherever possible.
I’d be more than fine with Fulmer. Fulmer > probably all of our pitching suspects.
We are fixated on them because they are proven commodities, at least they are assets that have done something in the past and the best predictor of future performance is the past.
The suspects have no past.
However, for once, I WANT THE BRAVES TO BREAK THE BANK. GO SIGN THE TOP FA, etc.
I 100% understand that that yields some Mike Hamptons. But it also yields Greg Madduxes.
SHOW us that you are trying to win and not trying to be mediocre enough not to run the non fair weather Atlantans away.
I understand wanting to pay top dollar for Darvish, but we’re going to get outbid. Do you want to pay for what Arrieta will command? Tanaka or Cueto, if they opt out?
The stat discussed on the MLB site that Danby is 4 for 55 against sliders is amazing. With all the discussion about the FO, I have to say that the Olivera trade was stupid, but the Simmons trade is very difficult to forgive. I know he was going to get expensive,but his defensive skill set is as good as anyone on baseball. You should never trade away that kind of generational talent unless they are in the twilight of their career.
Tonight’s lineup is not murderers’ row.
Bigger thorn: Herrera or Harper?
We’re pitching that kid wrong.
First trip to WFF tonight. Jesus these guys suck.
Nice inning, Newk. Five or six runs this inning would be nice.
No hit, no field: we’re worse than the Phillies; and they’re going to get the first pick in the 2018 draft.
Cakes with the Prado on the fly ball. That should have been an error. DFA that clown…he got his 2000th hit so let’s cut bait and bring up Acuna
What a fiasco.
G’night, y’all.
Pitiful ..mgr needs to snake up lineup or something .. base running errors .. can’t hit .. can’t catch .. no excuses
This team is pitiful.
They might rally late in the game, but we shouldn’t wait until the 8th or 9th to get our heads in the game
@61 .. amen Rob
Washington is to blame for the Freeman baserunning issue. You can’t throw up a stop sign that late. Also, interesting time for a double switch. Adams was due up 5th in the 9th. Hope that doesn’t hurt.
If I were GM I’d keep Folty and shitcan everyone else. Maybe it’s good that I’m not GM. But…with this crew…we’re losing 90 games for 3 more years at best.
*If* you believe that a complete teardown was needed…then you should agree that we should have traded Freeman. He’s this generations’s Dale Murphy.
@19 Sam – either you don’t understand my point or you chose to argue against a strawman version of my point.
1) The Angels are way ahead on the Simmons/Newcomb trade – Simmons put up 3.1 fWAR last season and is on pace for 5.9 fWAR this year (courtesy of career-high walk rate and hard-hit rate, along with a reasonable if slightly high BABIP). He is under contract for way-under-market prices through 2020. If anything, I’d say Simba may be more valuable now than he was on the day the Braves traded him. On the other side of the deal – Newcomb has a good fastball and a really nice curveball, but has walked way too many hitters at basically every level of competition. It’s too early to for final judgment on the deal, but Newk would really have to step up big to get the Braves back in the neighborhood of even.
2) I am not writing off Dansby Swanson, I’m saying his 2017 season has been a miserable slog for him, and consequently SS is a position of uncertainty again. Entering the year, lots of people were ready to pencil in Dansby as the Braves’ #2 hitter and an above-average regular for years to come. Now, the Braves are talking about Ozzie and Camargo as the possible solutions at SS in case Dansby can’t stop bailing out with his back foot when he swings.
I still think Dansby is going to be good eventually, but he’s no Jeets and his early success (abetted by the Braves’ shameless marketing) got peoples’ hopes up for him too high, too fast. It sure would have been nice if the Braves had Simmons locked in at SS at this point, wouldn’t it? Dansby could just as well play 2B if he shows he can hit MLB pitching.
Nobody thinks Swanson is going to be anything that takes us to the next level, except for the most ardent homers. Could he turn it around and surpise us? Yes. Is it likely? No. Not likely at all.
Swanson could be our Jeff Blauser. That’s the best case scenario. FWIW, that’s not an insult…Blauser is one of my favorite all time Braves. The point is, that he’s not going to move the needle one bit as far as getting this squad to the playoffs. He’s a guy that can play competent SS. To make the playoffs we need guys that hit dongs and guys that strike people out.
@68, “guys that hit dongs”
We’ve already tried Kelly Johnson and Erik Aybar: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ouf5l3Z0Fcss5zqfh7R_LNiz1zQ=/0x8:815×466/1600×900/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/32597503/Screen_Shot_2014-05-05_at_11.14.04_PM.0.png
@68 Yes.
HR and OPS and K/9 and K/BB and GO/FO.
All day.
We have Nick Markakis playing a corner outfield position for pete’s sake.
Didn’t see the game, but Newcomb’s pitching line looks better.
#71 – Much better command
Thoughts on the stadium itself: great sight lines. More intimate to the field of play than Turner. A soulless mall with a baseball field inserted.
@73
That’s about what I though too. It doesn’t have any character yet. It will get there.
Looks like Newk had a great game.
Watching last night I would say Newk fought hard and had a good game. Great is probably not there. Needs more control / command and needs to consciously work on the change up. I think a little of both of these getting better is likely. He is definitely good enough to be one of 5 rotation pieces next year at 550,000 (or whatever ML minimum is now).
Please please Angelos take Johnson and Markakis. Then, we can pay some on Kemp and move him. then, at around 60 mill including all arb guys (maybe a little less), we can target 2, 4 WAR, FA’s.
@74 honestly two of the runs should have been unearned due to a catch Cakes probably should have made that led to a run
@76 I think there was something that screened the right fielders from clearly seeing flyballs as they dropped near the turf – not only did Markakis appear to lose track of one in the 5th inning that led to the Phils’ 3rd run, almost the exact same thing happened to Nick Williams in RF on Flowers’ flyball in the 7th inning.
The ebb & flow is stark with this team. The rebuild was feeling good a couple months ago. It feels pretty yucky right now. Come on, October.
@77, I didn’t see Markakis’ floundering but the Williams flyball incident was clearly something other than OF incompetence. Stadium folks need to investigate what that could be.
@64 agreed … not Freeman fault .. and yes I agree on double switch … it didnt hurt cause Peterson walked but in a 1 run game would have rather had Adams up there …
I was for giving Acuna more time, but the kid is ready.
Recapped.