When was the last time you saw a baseball game which contained three back-to-back-to-back doubles? This was the highlight of our game tonight which says two things. That it was the Mets who hit them, in the third, is a good indication our man RA did not have it today . And as these were followed in the bottom of the inning by a 25 second 1, 2, 3 outs by the Braves hitters this was not exactly a game in which the result was in any doubt .
The Mets must have enjoyed blowing up their 8 game losing streak against us . Jacob de Grom, the last man standing in a ravaged rotation, reminded us what a class starter looks like. He went seven, Freddie hit him hard twice, nobody else squared him up. Our kid phenoms looked particularly lost all night, it wasn’t pretty. 101 pitches of this quality were a lesson for all of us.
Which leads us back to RA. After the three doubles in the third we were down four. Then 5 in the fourth.He was done but in no sense had he given up at any time , gutting it out as he always does. What he also seemed to do at an early stage was to abandon the primacy of his knuckler. There seemed to be as many fastballs in his mix which suited the Mets hitters just fine.
With Dickey out the bullpen blues hit again with Sims pitching 2 ineffective innings and getting hit hard in the process. You wonder what he made of de Grom, looking at him all night. Good old Lane Adams cheered us all up driving in two runs in the bottom of the ninth off a very wobbly Ramos. Which made the final score look better than it deserved to be. This was Jacob De Grom’s night, he dominated and controlled the game. Which is ok in the circumstances, not the end of the world, just a salutary reminder there are pitchers of whom we have not the like. But he helped set our sights, who from our motley young arms will one day pitch like that? At least one, surely!
Thx for the recap!
Great piece about Lane Adams here: http://blog.walkoffwalk.net/2017/09/what-do-braves-have-in-lane-adams-with-q.html
I don’t know about Lane Adams in the long run, but he has the hot hand now and should at least get the start with Kemp injured. Of course, the start goes to Peterson, but Adams’ pinch hit single accounted for 2 of our 3 runs.
Thanks for the excellent recap, blazon. Re. previous threat, I am actually in Switzerland. All good here.
Ryan has a great piece on Lane Adams over at Walk Off walk. It’s enough to make me a big fan and hope he gets a lot more PT down the stretch. Maybe the Braves have their own JD Martinez here.
Braves are on pace for 74 wins. Many predicted the Braves to make an incremental improvement but fall short of .500. Kudos to you. The good news is our plan of becoming the Chicago Cubs is going rather swimmingly:
2012 – 61-101
2013 – 66-96
2014 – 73-89
2015 – 97-65
2016 – 103-58
Problem is that the notable additions to the 2015 team included Miguel Montero, Kris Bryant, Dexter Fowler, Kyle Schwarber, and Jon Lester so I’d bet we won’t be adding that many players of that quality. I could see Acuna putting up the .275/.369/.488 line that Bryant put up in his rookie season, and while Lester was a huge get, he still only produced a 114 ERA+ and a 3.1 bWAR. The Braves will have to markedly improve, oh, about 7-8 roster spots. Easy.
Went to the United match with 70k* of the neighborhood yesterday. Haven’t seen that sort of grass roots excitement about sport in ATL since 1991.
*I think the announced attendance counted tickets sold rather than turnstile turns; I have some doubt that more than 50K were at Mercedes Benz for the match itself, though I could be wrong. A lot of people never stopped milling around the concourses and never sat down. MB makes SunTrust look like a joke.
CB Bucknor. Oh man.
Julio is painful to watch tonight.
Kemp would have had that.
Manny Machado and Clayton Kershaw would solve a lot of problems wit this team.
AJ Minter is impressive.
Thanks for the shoutout guys!
Lane Adams is most definitely one to keep an eye on. The article talks about his swing transformation. He has the smarts and the talent to be a Major Leaguer, role to be determined.
Meanwhile, Jace Peterson, Emilio Bonifacio, and Danny Santana were/are still first in pecking order for Snitker. I’ve pretty much kept my opinion on Snit as neutral, but I’m frickin’ ready for a new voice that is from outside the organization.
Recapped.