In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
a stately Pleasure Dome decree
where Alph the sacred river ran
through caverns measureless to man
down to a sunless sea.
Why fool with verse? That’s why, see above. Even a rather nasty 15 y. old can be stirred by that and have his life start to change.
And where do our Braves come into all this? Don’t you feel the cold running through it? Underground caverns full of icy mountain water. And flowing where? Down to a sunless sea. It was COLD. We are in Colorado. It should be cold.
And this. Rocky Mountain High. Coleridge was about the first major poet to admit he was an habitual opium user. He knew high…. So, to the game.
FIRST. We wasted a ringing lead off double from Ender- Ozzie, Freddie and Neck disappoint.
Sanchez issues a 2 out walk to Arenado but no problem.
SECOND. It must be the weather – it’s warm – we go quietly 1/2/3. Bettis likes the Braves and it’s showing.
Parra with a one out single, left stranded. It’s 57 degrees for pete’s sake, now they tell us.
THIRD. AÂ 5/4/3 DP ends our effort after catcher single.
Charlie Blackmon scores the games first run, driven in by Arenado. Perez throws him out.  Colorado 1-0
FOURTHÂ Â Ozzie lines out to right. Neck a 2 out single, the great Tucker makes the final out. Philly leads Miami 20-1.
Story with a 2 out solo homer to left. Colorado 2-0.
FIFTHÂ After a lead of walk to Dansby was wiped out with a DP, nothing. For the first team this season Acuna would not have been superfluous to our offense. We are having the usual problems with Bettis and look thin.
Great work by Sanchez. With runners on first and third, one out, he completed striking out the side. I think he’s a good guy to have around, great change up.
SIXTH…
With one out Ozzie is called out at first on a challenged call when he appeared to be safe but FF came up and doubled to left center driving in pinch runner Lane Adams. If Ozzie had been successful in his challenge he would have tied the game. Tucker came up with 2 out, 2 on, again hit the ball hard but right at second.  Colorado 2 – 1.
Sam Freeman pitching. He walks one, strikes out two. Nothing doing.
SEVENTH.. Brian Shaw pitching. Perez hits into his second double play to close out the innings.
Winkler comes on in relief of Sam, strikes out Arenado to close out the innings.
EIGHTH.. McGee on to pitch, shuts us down.
Winkler continues, gives up nothing, great defensive play by Ozzie.
NINTHÂ Â Wayne Davis goes for the kill. If I could remember everything that happened in the top of the ninth and by whom it would be written down. Suffice it to say we tied the game after a one out walk and a single by Dansby led Flaherty to drive in the tying run. We were unable to take the lead but we got Davis out of the game.
After they put two on with no outs we were bailed out by Blackmon’s inability to get a bunt down but, more particularly, a phenomenal diving catch by Ozzie producing a double play. Minter not impressive.
TENTH..We got Ozzie to third with the go ahead run and two out. Nick hit a bona fide line drive over short stop which Story made a great leaping drive to catch.
A great game ends anti-climatically when with bases loaded and two out Vizzy couldn’t re-find his control and walked in the winning run on four straight pitches. Wow.    FINAL  COLORADO 3  BRAVES 2
So frustrating. Some of the details left out include… why didn’t Dansby score on the Perez flyout in the ninth? Every pitcher gets crosswise sometime, Minter was unlucky on the first bunt hit (by the catcher!) and he pitched out of it even if it did take a Ozzie gem. Our bullpen is really good based upon the Freeman, Winkler, Minter performances…. at Coors. The 10th not only featured a walk-off-walk (wait, where have I heard that before) but three straight walks. I question the decision to intentionally walk Parra; lefthanded or not he is not worthy. Why are we scared of LH hitters with Viz? Shouldn’t we be more scared of his control issues? There were already two outs – take a chance on pitching to Parra – you can always try to be careful. Viz got to 2 strikes on Story and couldn’t put him away. Then a ?!@?#!! four-pitch walk.
I suppose we shouldn’t complain. We got to Davis; they got to Viz. Oh well. I just hope we don’t lose the WC playoff by one game.
Maybe if you’re Lane Adams, (literally the 25th man on the roster) you keep running until the umpire actually calls you out.
That said, Vizzy imploding would’ve been that much more worse if he had done so after we had actually taken the lead.
Quite a win probabliity graph from the top of the 9th on.
Can we imbed in comments?
Source: FanGraphs
Yes we can!
The Harper to Atlanta buzz keeps growing
Well, weave a ring around me thrice, blazon. Good show.
On this our day of WrestleMania, I have but one question – which Braves player would have been the best professional wrestler, and what would their persona have been?
Forty-four years ago today, Henry Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s homerun record.
@6 Kyle Farnsworth. Some sort of crazy accountant.
Boomer, current Brave or ever? Because I think it’d be difficult for anyone on the current team to have been a better pro wrestler than Kyle Farnsworth or AJ Pierzynski.
@6, You could see Freddie as a face, maybe a simpleton who doesn’t know his own strength and finishes opponents with a bear hug submission maneuver.
Or Dansby, an Adonis/Flair type of heel.
Moylan could be a third Bushwhacker.
Juan Berenguer had a pretty good scowl.
Well done, blazon.
Eddie Perez would be my WrestleMania pick.
Entertaining game last night. Go Braves.
The Klesko would be an imposing presence in the ring.
@5
the woven ring quote i’d been saving for the Acuna appearance…snap!
The Perez fly out in the ninth was to short right field. Billy Hamilton would not have scored from 3rd.
Adams had to have thought that he was tagged. There was no other reason for him to stop.
Sometimes you just lose. We’ve been scoring 8 runs a game, and we’re just not a team that can score 2 and out-pitch a team into extra innings.
With that said, this defense has been fantastic. We’d have lost the game in the 8th or the 9th if Brandon Phillips was on the team. Also, there’s just these little things that team speed adds. For instance, on Freddie’s fly out to deep left down the line in the 10th, Albies got all the way past second base, and he was able to retreat back to first with enough time. No way Phillips can do that. If that ball gets down, Albies scores easily; Phillips does not. All of those little things will add up as the season goes along.
Don’t forget about Bourjos going from first to third on a single to left-center.
Oh yeah. And if they had let the throw go throw, he’d have still beat it pretty easily. For the most part, they’ve also limited mistakes. One caught stealing in six attempts. Looking forward to them running more.
I’m not ready to revise any predictions about this team’s final record, but I’ve got to say the improved defense, baserunning, and bullpen (notwithstanding Vizzy’s meltdown) make this team so much more fun to watch than the last three years.
As to the misery of the last three years, dare I say “having once looked round – walks on, And turns no more his head”?
In fairness, the next line in that other famous Coleridge poem is “Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.”
Brent Lillibridge would be billed as “Wonder Boy” fresh from the arctic steppes of Siberia and he would suck in helium before speaking.
Or just trust that nature will tell our tale on its own. Listen…do you hear the song of any of Braves Journal’s boo-birds? No? Well, then. Enjoy before they come out for Newcomb today, or before the clock strikes midnight on our Cinderella players. It’ll happen. But for now, we’re pretty good. It’s fun to go toe-to-toe with a Rockies bullpen designed to be baseball’s best. We nearly pulled it off, and that’s the best you can hope for out of a loss.
How about Jordan Schafer as a B-Boy who only speaks in Beastie Boys cadence?
@9 All Braves are in play, as far as I’m concerned, though I like the idea of thinking about just the current crop of players too. AJ and Kyle are definite all-time contenders though.
I just now had the best mental image of Bobby Cox coming out with an urn to summon Zombie Chipper…
Al Hrabosky has the readymade wrestling nickname, the Mad Hungarian. Just exchange a baseball glove for a metal folding chair.
I’m going with a tag team of Big Handsome, Big Sexy and Ken Caminiti,
We could take this concept to some meta places:
– Pascual Perez as a wrestler who shows up comically late to every match
– Rufino Linares could win every match by extraordinary circumstances (e.g. outside interference), and his gimmick could be his childlike surprise each time it happens
– Martin Prado a literal dirty wrestler, using secret stashes of infield clay as a foreign object to blind his opponents when the ref gets distracted
I assume John Rocker is already a professional wrestler, or else he would have been mentioned by now.
Folk Hero, Brooks Conrad.
Wisler: 5 IP, 1 ER, 0 BB, 3 K
Fried: 4 IP, 2 BB, 5 K, 0 ER (so far)
Wentz: 4 IP, 1 ER, 1 BB, 3 K
Ynoa: Don’t ask
So Newcomb after one inning–16 pitches, 11 strikes and 5 balls. We’ll take that ratio any day of the week. Even though they got three hits, he gave up no runs (thanks to the DP). Let’s see more of that, Newk.
I like this Newcomb.
Let’s hope Inciarte pulls it together soon. From my perspective I think he’s very lucky to have a 237 batting average and a 550 ops. He hasn’t looked very good to me.
We need another big righty bat.
No reason to worry about Ender. Small sample–he’s not going to OPS under 600 any more than Flaherty is going to OPS over 1.000.
Having said that, at this stage of his career Ender has pretty much established who he is; he is a league average offensive player. I wish he walked more or could hit .320, so that he’d have an OBP of .375 or so as opposed to .350. If he has a slightly off year, so that his OBP is .330 or less, he will be a liability at the top of the order. Of course he’s a great player to have; he’s just not going to be a great leadoff hitter.
We have several guys in our lineup BABIPing well over .400. Ender is not one of them.
@33–I thought we might have that bat at AAA (there’s a 20 year old kid there that folks seem high on), but he is obviously a bust. Have you seen his stats after two games?
BABIP numbers:
Flaherty .522
Dansby .440
Tucker, Adams, Culberson .400
Freeman .381
Markakis .333
Inciarte.267
Suzuki and Perez .250
Albies .207
Bourjos 0
This is got to be the best Duke Newcomb has ever pitched.
Newcomb is flat out dealing right now!
He has terrific command of all 3 pitches today.
This Albies kid is pretty good.
@40, Sort of. I mean, he’s dealing–but part of his effectiveness is how he’s just on the edge of wild with the 4-seamer. I’d hate to be standing in the lefthanded batter’s box against him. Against righties, they’ve only barely been strikes. He’s setting everything up extremely well by painting with his secondary pitches, though.
Welcome to SSS theatre. 3 of our 4 players on the bench are batting. 375, .385, and .414. I understand the need to get some at bats for Culberson and Bourjos, but as hot as the other guys are, why start both of them in the same game?
Good game, Nuke.
Speaking of SSS, I know Carle will likely turn into a pumpkin one of these days, but so far he’s been a revelation.
That’s why Culberson is here.
Okay, Charlie. Make a play.
El Gato Grande and El Oso Blanco would make a fine lucha libre duo.
Peter Bourjos sucks, but I’m willing to entertain the possibility that this team might not.
Newcomb today looked to me a lot like Mike Minor with a stiffer fastball.
Flaherty’s BABIP is obviously unsustainable, but he’ll slide nicely into a bench role once the time comes. I feel like we have more BABIPs that are too low than too high.
SSS too, but the Braves are 6th in UZR, 3rd in UZR/150, 3rd in DRS, and 6th in defensive WAR.
Tops in the bigs in offensive WAR. 28th in pitching WAR. Ouch.
It’d be mathematically anomalous if we didn’t have mathematically anomalous BABIPs this early in the season.
Mike Minor’s beard is grey, and this upsets me more than it should.
If you can, turn on the Angels game. Ryan Schimpf just homered, and uh, something else is going on too.
I feel it important to overlook the fact that Snit did the whole “let your starter hit and then pull him after 2 hitters” routine. I do like that he’s used Vizzy in two non-save situations in back-to-back games. Maybe he’s caught the fever…. the sabermetric fever!
Of course Schimpf hit a HR. David Hernandez and Andrelton got better after going to LAA, so why not him? Oh, and JJ has given up 1 ER through 6 1/3 for them. GREAT!
@54, Can’t tell if you’re criticizing or not. Anyway, I think it was the right move. Newcomb gave up an unlucky hit when that grounder hit third. Give the boy a chance, show him you’ve got confidence in him.
Somewhat disingenuous to cheer insane SSS stats from Flaherty etc and then complain that Schimpf and Johnson are okay a little in Anaheim.
@56
It was the right move. I just know that some people hate that move.
@57
No. Ryan Schimpf literally couldn’t hit a baseball, and then he hit a home run in a major league game. That’s just, for us…. unlucky.
Recapped.