A few of the younger set might not be familiar with our “quotee” today. Al Davis was the managing general partner of the Oakland Raiders from the early 70’s until he died in 2011. He liked to take on players with discipline problems. He believed in clawing and scratching your way to the top, as he had done.
The 2018 Braves continue to “just win, baby.” April looked like a very daunting month. So far, so good. .600 ball gets you in the playoffs everytime. Stay tuned and we will see if it continues.
Julio Teheran seemed to apply smoke and mirrors to the Phillies. Can he continue to make this work? Who knows. But at least for one night, Jome Julio was a positive, and not a negative. Check these numbers. 96 pitches, 6 innings, 3 BB’s, 9 K’s, 5 hits. Helped a little by a good strand rate and the seemingly asinine base running of Odubel Herrera.
Meanwhile, Aaron Nola continued to suppress the Braves offense. only 2 K’s, but also only 4 hits and one walk. But the Braves squeezed 2 out of him and the Phillies only got 1 of Jome Julio and the pens didn’t allow any runs. Arano pitched 2 great innings for the Phillies, while Shane Carle and A.J. Minter were like Weebles, they wobbled, but they didn’t fall down. But then Arodys Vizcaino had a good ninth for the Braves FIRST SAVE OF THE YEAR.A few of the younger set might not be familiar with our “quotee” today. Al Davis was the managing general partner of the Oakland Raiders from the early 70’s until he died in 2011. He liked to take on players with discipline problems. He believed in clawing and scratching your way to the top, as he had done.
Just win, baby.
The Braves and Phillies are currently tied for the two WC slots in the NL. The play in game would be in ATL due to the tie breaker.
Nola non contendere
He cannot beat the Braves
for when it comes to saves
five is not enough
and minus one is silly stuff.
AJ Minter
back to back walks in the deep throes of winter
can only dilute your projected machismo
your cutter’s required to be more than a gizmo.
Folty to take the mound today. Here’s hoping that he continues his string of strong outings.
Sam @ 3
Most interesting RH numbers about Ozzie- all MLB?
Soft contact- lovely phrasing, for a change.
What would be really interesting to know is how his LH power numbers this year compare to last’s. Too early to say no doubt but using your eyes, and ears, there is no one hitting the ball harder for us than Ozzie, both sides. FWIW, Freddie isn’t for example.
Last night, left side, he hit two rockets back through the middle.
So I’m excited. If he can continue this seemingly drastic power improvement from the left what kind of ballplayer do we have? Altuve light – maybe not so light.
Since WAR is taking into count additional things that Ozzie does really well (speed, defense) that your bubble gum stats aren’t going to grab, it’s no shock that he’s 12th in baseball in WAR. He’s not running, and rightly so considering he’s got FF5 behind him and Ender struggling ahead of him, and he’s not walking, so if he puts it all together, hoooo boy. But he’s also tied for 7th in HRs, and we know that’s not going to continue.
I just love how Ozzie, Dansby, and Acuna can all distract everyone from each other. To have 3 position players seemingly hitting all at once is going to accelerate this rebuild. Ender will inevitably get hot, Flowers will be back, FF5 will be FF5, and this thing will be humming.
On the subject of Ozzie Albies – in the early going of 2018, it sure looks like he’s joined Team Launch Angle, trading ground balls for fly balls. It’s worked swimmingly so far but there’s no way he can keep up this HR pace (obviously. he’s on pace for 50 dingers). I suspect he’ll start taking more walks and hitting more 2b/3b instead of HRs as the season goes on. Ozzie has also hit a lot of infield popups so far this year; he’ll need to cut back on those. Freddie can school him on how to hit liners and flyballs without ever popping up; I understand he got the knowledge directly from Joey Votto, who in turn got it from The Splendid Splinter.
My expectation is that Ozzie will end the season with 15-20 HRs and 15-20 SBs, and a .350+ OBP, and the Braves are going to be ecstatic with that.
If I’m AA, my goal for next offseason is to see if I can lock down Ozzie, Acuna and (I’m just guessing here) Soroka to long-term contracts.
@6 If you actually want to know which Brave is hitting the ball hardest, you could use your eyes and ears or you could check Statcast. So far, Giancarlo Stanton and Jose Abreu have the highest average exit velocity. The only Brave on the first page of the leaderboard is not FF5 or Ozzie, it’s Preston Tucker, Mr. Acuna Blocker himself.
Is Ozzie hitting to all fields?
Ozzie isn’t going to walk much hitting in front of Freeman.
@9 Here’s Ozzie’s hit spray chart if you’d like to peruse it.
Ozzie (as Sam noted earlier) is a far more successful hitter from the right-handed batters’ box than the left. In his short career, he’s batting .397/.453/.750 (!!) right-handed and .264/.321/.440 batting lefty. Unfortunately, 76% of his ABs thus far have been against right-handed pitchers.
Ozzie’s left-handed hitting spray chart shows something interesting: he pulls nearly all of his grounders, and doesn’t appear to hit any line drives to the opposite field. In fact, Ozzie has no hits of any kind to the left side of the 2nd base bag while hitting left-handed in 2018 – everything has been hit in the air with enough hang time for an outfielder to get there and without enough power to go over the wall.* As a righty, generally speaking, Ozzie pulls grounders but has been successful hitting flyballs to the opposite field.
* Ozzie did hit one opposite field HR batting lefty in 2017.
@ #11
Thanks!
Where did his single to center land last night? If it wasn’t on the left side of the bag, it must have been a foot to the right. But that kinda proves the point…
Nola has shut us down twice now and we’ve won both games. Maybe luck will be on our side this year.
The highlighting defaults of the current theme don’t make it clear or obvious, but the blurb I’ve quoted @3 is also a hyper link to the article I pulled it from. Also from that link:
Loved Minter’s usage yesterday. Fireman in the 7th, heart of the order in the 8th. I’ll buy that for a dollar!
It bears mentioning that while Julio was doing his best dance-off impersonation of Jair Jurrjens all night long, the single run he gave up was on a full count pitch that was only thrown because Joe West is a shitty umpire and missed an obvious called third on the 2-2.
17-I’m glad someone else mentioned that. The pitch missed the target by a wide margin, but was undoubtedly a strike. Suzuki didn’t do Julio any favors on the frame job but still…
Ivan the Great. (is it kosher to post this here, please advise? I feel we owe them some thanks for their excellent, daily MiLB reports. )
I’ve posted a couple of times earlier this year about this guy and what puzzles me about him. He has great journalistic skills, intense and deep analytics and a modest, pleasant style. Rather like me, in fact.
The puzzle was what’s he doing giving so much time and effort to TC for a few hundred dollars(guess) a month. He should be moved way up the order in WP or go elsewhere.
Well now, lookee lookee. In posts over the last day or so two two new windows have been opened. He is Russian, came here age 5, couldn’t speak a word of English until his second year at school. For whatever reason I find that fascinating(would have made a perfect cover for The Americans were they not winding down).
And, pure speculation it may be, a couple of guys on there seem to think he’s angling for a job with the Braves. He would be terrific for that. They want Rob but he’s selling too many houses.
Nah, feel free. Ivan The Great… is great. I really enjoy reading his analysis, and I find myself reading over at Talking Chop every couple days. It’s a well-oiled machine, and they enjoy the benefits of the SB Nation umbrella. My only critique on ITG is that he can be a little too analytical, and my only beef with Talking Chop is that it is so busy that sometimes it can be hard to follow the debate in the comments because there’s so much going on at once. I, too, like most here also don’t enjoy the threaded comment system (I guess that’s two critiques).
I’ve enjoyed the couple weeks off from having to keep up with the content, and even my best laid plans of previewing every position on the field didn’t come to fruition, but I’m hoping to give each recapper a week break starting next week by filling in as a super-sub in the recaps over the next several weeks, and we should see an off-day post with something interesting every day this season. Next offseason, I’m hoping that between southeastern college football (not necessarily just SEC) and a few different series, we’ll see a full plate of content next offseason.
But, yeah, Ivan’s great.
The Mets have been fantastic to start the season, but they had their own little collapse yesterday, so it’s nice to see real contending teams have the same issue as us.
I don’t know if he’s getting paid, but he is unbelievably knowledgeable about statistical analysis. His Dansby Swanson entry was very insightful. He’s certainly good enough to be writing for Hardball Times or a higher publication.
The open question I have now is if “Tarkus” from Talking Chop’s comment threads is Terry May from the old asb.ab Usenet days.
Blaine Boyer apparently saved his teammates from icy doom.
Are Boyer and McCann the only two Baby Braves still getting reps in 2018?
That was nice of him.
Also not sure if Ivan gets paid.
Should I be working on a better link highlighting scheme for the sight? I agree with Sam; it is hard to recognize a link from normal text with the current display.
25 — I believe they are.
Chase Whitley was activated from the DL and sent to Gwinnett.
@8
Ozzie is on pace to break the single season doubles record by about 20. It’d be a hell of a thing if he started hitting more doubles.
@27 – I was thinking last week that the links don’t stand out, but didn’t know if it was feasible.
Yes. Make better link highlighting…HAPpen.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!
The “Baby Braves” were generally agreed to be:
Andy Marte, Blaine Boyer, Kyle Davies, Kelly Johnson, Pete Orr, Wilson Betemit, Ryan Langerhans, Jeff Francoeur, Roman Colon and Brian McCann
Boyer is still plugging away in the Royals pen. McCann won a ring with Houston last year.
Kelly Johnson and Jeff Francouer managed to hang on through 2016. The rest were out of baseball prior to that. Andy Marte, of course, is dead.
Andy Marte, sadly, may be the biggest prospect bust of my lifetime. I remember all the anger (myself included) when he was traded to the Red Sox for an aging Edgar Renteria. Of course, Renteria gave the Braves 2 good offensive seasons while Marte was flipped to the Indians for Coco Crisp and never hit at the major league level. This was right about the time the PED crackdowns began, I might add.
Luiz Gohara had a terrible first inning in his first rehab start.
Too many damn walks.
Acuna hit his first homer.
So…he’s ready!?
@37
Yes
Sam’s hyperlink was hard to see because it was the entire paragraph. The simpler the theme, the more monochromatic it is. The more monochromatic it is, less colors, obviously, there are. Are hyperlinks hard to read?
Where does Atlanta need to get before they start to make decisions on prospect usage that are predicated on 2018 success? Calling guys up early, SPs in bullpen, position player prospects on the bench, etc.?
I am doing a triple post to store into cyberspace my moniker on my iPad.
If I were manager, we’d win a lot less games than we do, but I would pinch-run my catcher in the late innings of a close game every time. And if doomsday occurred, someone would grab their catcher’s mitt and Teheran would go play LF.
Moylan has now appeared in 7 games, pitched 4 innings and allowed 0 runs. I think this is mostly due to good follow up work (mostly by Freeman) and quite frankly, smart usage by Snitker. There was concern at the first of the year that Moylan would be used incorrectly, but I have no complaints so far. I’m still not sure if Moylan will make it through the year though.
Well, I expect Jose Ramirez to be DFA if he blows this
Please go away Jose Ramirez.
Every Braves reliever has thrown at least 2-3 balls before throwing a strike. Several issued first hitter walks. Just disgusting. We must find a better reliever or two. Surprising mostly with S. Freeman – two games in a row with a bunch of non-strikes.
Rhys Hoskins kills pitches out away from him.
How many more times with this clown? Absolutely useless….
This team is going nowhere with this bullpen. No where good.
I tell you, when Ramirez blows it, he blows it BIG. Three run triple or two run double…… I believe that was the first extra base hit in the game.
The Braves hitters were terrible situational hitters today. Why didn’t Ozzie try to steal to get in scoring position with Freddie up? Even if he gets out, Freddie gets to hit the next inning.
Ramirez can take this one for the team now. Call it his parting gift before he goes away for good
Wow, just wow. Ramirez has finally regressed to his peripherals. I agree, Chief, we need at least a couple of replacements. I also agree with carl, the last two performances are DFA worthy.
Snitker is gonna keep using him in close games no matter what.
10 walks…… 10. Three by Ramirez.
I fully expect a different pitcher in Ramirez’s place tomorrow
BBraves
The problem with having 13 pitchers is that sooner or later you’re going to use 13 pitchers.
Now Ramirez has come out and said his shoulder has been hurting since Spring Training. So, no way he isn’t going to the DL.
You have to walk Hoskins in that situation. Snit happened.
Ramirez’s nickname is White Flag.
Neural baseball..the next new thing? Love the secrecy!
Measure the impact of the decision to swing.
Neural sports science
may well be met with an aura of defiance
but had it been made available to Frenchie
there might well have been less need to bench he.
the decision to swing
you and I might have thought of as an instinctual thing
but apparently there must first be a meeting
all neurons may vote, no tolerance for cheating.
Oh, wait. Snitker loves analytics now. He’s born again!!!
https://www.mlb.com/braves/news/braves-paying-attention-to-analytics-data/c-272604954
And what’s better, they gather information every day and use it every day!! Wow…. *turns off dripping sarcasm*
I wonder what statistical information they’ve gathered on Jose Ramirez.
Billy Bean
says this is taking us places that challenge the gene
my Money Ball now looks simplistic
all data research by corporate lab, so fascistic.
I think you should pay attention to analytics, but it’s not the end all do all.
@64 I generally refrain from going directly after anyone on forums. In this case, Roger, I feel compelled to ask you what analytics in baseball (or any sport) actually looks like. I know what it looks like inside a tech firm, so why don’t you explain to us how baseball teams get their data and what the whole process looks like from data lake or warehouse to dugout since you like to make fun of the coach regarding anything he says about analytics.
Recapped.
@67 Donny, I am not the only one who is not happy about the way Snitker manages (he seems to be a good player manager but has poor decision making in critical situations). The fact that winning baseball teams have been using analytics for 10-15 years now makes Snitker’s revelations annoyingly funny since he’s making way more mopney than I ever could. I hate to think you are the only one here that doesn’t know where baseball data and analytics comes from. Scoresheets, Statcast, spray charts, pitch counts and types, the backs of baseball cards, wherever…… data comes from everywhere. All you have to do is record it then figure out how to sort it and analyze it. The trick then is to figure out what it means. It’s not that different from a tech firm – same concepts applied to a billion dollar game. Baseball teams now hire tech firms to do their analytics, if they don’t essentially create on themselves internally. It’s really easy to make fun of the coach and GM when they pull such obviously idiotic shenanigans like signing Jose Bautista and continuing to run out guys like Ramirez who are consistently failing while releasing guys like Akeel Morris who have some future potential.