The Polish Prince abdicated. Mike Foltynewicz no longer claims royal blood. As the son of Foltyn, the name translate to “son of he whose arrows never hit target.”
Baseball sometimes features the unprecedented. Also, it sometimes features the “this has probably happened, but it sure doesn’t come around often.” The first inning was more in the second vein. There was a runner on second and 2 outs. Then later, the bases were loaded, one run was in, and Folty still had the no hitter going. How can such happen, the ignorant masses might say. 3 walks loaded them and a hit by pitch scored one. As Hoyt would say “Not too good.” Then, a double made it 3 to 0 going to the bottom half of the inning.
In the third, Ozzie Albies walked. (I know you who didn’t see that are going “no way” but it is right there in the box score and play by play). Then Freddie Freeman cut it to a one run trail by not failing to launch.
Then, more runs by the Sanctimonius Fowl. In the 4th, one on a solo home run. In the 5th, 2 on a 2 run home run. But, bottom of 6, Tyler Flowers hits a magic sac fly that scores 2 and it is 6 to 4. Then in the 7th Nick Markakis doubled with 2 outs and Wash and Freddie couldn’t get Freddie home and Johan Camargo stranded Freddie and Neck. That was as good as it got on this night.
The Sanctimonious Fowl then got 3 more in the eight off of Rocky Jesse Biddle and then 2 more in the 9th off of Arodys Vizcaino (see, he may not quite be ready to go).
The Cheese Steaks dropped another one, so the Journey through the back door continued to progress.
According to this, Holbrook actually called a decent game, though all six borderline balls that were marginally in the zone went against ATL (the green squares).
http://www.brooksbaseball.net/pfxVB/zoneTrack.php?month=9&day=17&year=2018&game=gid_2018_09_17_slnmlb_atlmlb_1%2F&prevDate=0917
The Braves’ journey to the division title is becoming a death march.
Good lord. Posting a YouTube link breaks the entire page. Nevermind.
Just asking…
Do you think that Snitker is the A. short term answer B. long term answer or C. no answer at all as manager of the Braves?
My take, he’s perfectly cromulent, but neither great nor terrible. I do think he is bad at managing a bullpen, and there are no doubt other managers that would manage it better. However, they may lack the positive attributes in team morale, etc. that he apparently provides.
IF the Braves somehow blow this lead, having said all of that, I’d fire him as soon as the last out is recorded.
@3, it sounds stupid, but if you want to post a YouTube link without the autoembed totally breaking everything, you can always Tinyurl it.
Doesn’t anyone in here want to win this thing?
Sheesh.
I’ll gladly take the division, but the playoffs are going to be embarrassing.
Unless they’re not. I mean, this team has looked pretty good during some stretches.
But see, not necessarily. We can be mired in a funk of the funkiest proportions, come out of it, get hot, and run through the playoffs like we’re the dadgum San Francisco Giants or Florida Marlins. And that’s baseball.
Last 3 games, starters have gone 11 IP, 13 ER, 12 BB. That’s obviously not going to continue, and we just had 3 bad starts. The bullpen is troubling, and the added concern that the bullpen is full of gassed rookies compounds it. But this is a slump, and that’s probably the worst you can say. It’s not indicative of the team’s overall talent level. It’s not like it’s FSU football or something.
@10
I agree. The sooner we can clinch this the better. There are a lot of guys on this team who need a few days off.
“I’ll gladly take the division, but the playoffs are going to be embarrassing.”
The final pitch of the Braves’ third loss in the 2018 NLDS:
https://tinyurl.com/y9nfz63y
And to piggyback on Stu and Rob’s points, this team is 6-4 over the last 10 games and it’s in a slump.
But, you know, it’s been this way with this group of fans all season. Braves can’t lose a few games without the same tired topics being dug up (“Fire Snit?”, “Blowing the lead?”, “Embarrassed in the playoffs”).
My favorite is “I don’t care if I expected the Braves to finish the season with 70 wins a few months ago. Now that they’re good, they need to win the World Series.”
seemingly unique about this Braves team is their refusal to let a first inning like this turn into a farce. They just seem to battle from behind unlike any team I have known. I was genuinely surprised when freddie K’d with the bases loaded. Whatever comes, this team is worth watching till the last out is recorded. that is nice to see.
@14 LOL, yep. I don’t get what’s wrong with just enjoying this team and celebrating the accomplishments along the way. Maybe… they will surprise in the playoffs. Maybe, they will play a very admirable playoff series (or two) and tip their cap to a better team (at the time).
But if they lose in the opening round, we already know the posts that will be blasted on here. “Should’ve just folded in September and saved us all the embarrassment.” “I’d have rather had another year’s worth of high draft picks versus this farce of a winning season in the weakest division in baseball!”
Sigh…
“. . . between grief and nothing I will take grief.”
–William Faulkner
The Wild Palms
Well, that’s Chief for you. Some people really like him.
The thing that Brian Snitker is better at than just about anyone other than Bobby Cox is getting his guys to shake off a loss, trot out the old cliches and mean them.
Obviously, Bobby had trouble winning a single must-win game, and we’ll see if Snit has a knack for winning in October. But I think we can trust that he’ll keep his boys from getting too high or too low, and we can clearly see that they adore playing for him.
Pretty much all we need to do to win the World Series is for Ronald Acuna and Ozzie Albies to eat their Wheaties, and literally everything that happens from this point on is found money.
“I could have missed the pain, but I’d have to miss The Dance.”
I know I have no issues with where we are right now. I definitely understand that there’s an element of streakiness with the team recently, and if you’re swayed by such things, it can put you on some high highs and low lows. Going back to the end of August, we lost 3 straight, won 2, lost 3, won 5, and now lost 3 with only two games of non-streakiness within all of that. But that’s why you have to look at the longer stretch: 9-7 in September, 6-4 in the last 10, etc.
Hey, I am an Enneagram Type 5, the ultimate pragmatist.
We have a pretty good team. We will probably win the division. We might win a postseason series. We might not.
I don’t think there’s anything dishonest about appreciating and enjoying your team but realizing it is not built for the postseason and not wanting to be embarrassed.
To quote a country song, I love this bar.
As for Chief, I really appreciated his post regarding Snitker. Like, in spite of the bullpen management, that post said a lot about Snitker’s strengths. It’s a valid question and statement to say that if the Braves somehow didn’t win the division, it would be hard to move forward with the same leadership in the dugout.
2011 was an embarrassment. Having watched this team all season, I doubt we will be embarrassed by the showing in the playoffs. Disappointed, perhaps but not embarrassed. Even in a rough loss last night, the team showed a lot of fight.
@22 The embarrassment will exist only in the minds of those insecure fans.
To add some more perspective, our magic number is the lowest in the NL including the WC. We are still in line to be the first team to clinch a playoff berth. I’d still like the number to be 4 or less when the Phils come to town so we can split and clinch at home.
I am always very disappointed by our losses especially the ones where I think we have not played up to our potential. I never think “doom”. And the things I post about are never generic “we’re terrible”, “we’re going to be embarrassed”, etc… but more of why can’t we fix things that seem fixable (like throwing strikes). This team is really good and has the potential even how it’s currently constructed to be as good as any team in the league. They just need to dig deep and do what we all know they are capable of.
And then, I’m ready to build an affordable super team over the winter.
Should we get to the playoffs, my level of expectation is set at “Acuna will do something awesome at some point.”
@26 I’m with you regarding playing up to the potential and especially the walks. It has been a head scratcher. Even guys who had great command and superb K/bb ratios in the minors seem to come up and become nibblers at the strike zone. I actually believe Flowers works a better game with any of our pitchers over Suzuki, and the Braves should prioritize getting the best out of our pitchers over any available bat at the position.
I wonder how much different our playoff roster will be when we play the AL champions and have the DH. (-;
Lucas Duda – your 2018 WS MVP as the Braves DH.
I think this team could actually do well in the postseason, especially if we can rest some guys the last week of the season.
We have lots of speed and force the issue on the bases. If our pitchers keep the walks down, they will be fine.
We have had stretches where the offense or the pitching has carried the team. They could both get hot and we go on a run. Plus, the NL is weak.
@17 very fine
Alex’s successful YouTube embed was made possible without solicitation by David Appelman — yes, THE David Appelman, the creator of FanGraphs — because I broke our site today and he helped me get my act together. He’s not the hero we deserve, but he’s the hero we need.
TEST
@18 LOL.
Also, nowhere in my post did I say “Fire Snitker”. In fact, I gave three choices and asked to discuss them. I don’t think it unreasonable that if you blow a 7-8 game lead with 2-3 weeks left that you should be fired. In fact if that did happen, I’d expect and hope that they would clean house.
David Appleman. I am genuinely starstruck.
I know, I know. Big. Got his email and everything. Let’s just call it “perks of the job”. You’re jealous. I get it.
Both of the other two NL divisions have two teams closer than the Phillies are to us. Just saying.
I feel bad that I’d never heard of David Appelman before today.
But I think that’s okay, because none of you probably has a clue who Glenn May is…
Someone please tell Snitker that Albies is hitting .250/301/354 since the ASB and shouldn’t be hitting 2nd.
@41 Camargo should be back in that spot. That was working well before before his growin’ pull.
42 — Agreed.
Chip: “Run prevention is almost as important as run scoring.” No, Chip, it as just as important.
Seems like every time we score, the pitchers can’t come up with a shut down inning. Anibal was perfect until we scored him a run.
Our pitchers are still about the worst hitting pitchers in the league as evidenced by Anibal’s bunt.
And Ender leaves his fifth and sixth man on base. I guess they’re not going to PH for him, huh.
Why ever is he batting in front of Charlie; I can’t imagine. I wish Snitker didn’t have some obsession with a “position” batting in a certain spot in the order.
Here we go again. Both those balls Sanchez just threw were definite strikes – not even on the black. Is it this whole crew or is Gameday wrong somehow?
Chip sucks.
Why do I keep letting Chip fool me into thinking balls off the bat I initially think are fly outs are home runs?
The six game winning streak is going to turn into a four game losing streak
Just discovered that this game is on ESPN if you want to hear someone different
Sounds like Boog
This set of games is aging me.
Winkler’s September WHIP is worrisome.
I said once the Braves have a habit of winning games and then instantly turning around and losing a bunch to throw all their previous progress away, and somebody said “they haven’t been a streaky team.”
I don’t know, maybe, but it sure feels like they had a lot of stretches like this. Win five games, then follow it up by instantly losing five.
I mentioned above that recently we’ve been very streaky.
Well, we managed to avoid the walks for 7.1 innings. Not sure what has happened to Venters, but Winkler got two strikes before throwing 4 straight balls. Just stupid.
Is it my imagination or has DeJong killed us both games?
At what point do we just start throwing Wright, Wilson or Fried in 3 inning stints? The pen is just gassed.
I know Hicks can’t be a comfortable at-bat for anyone, but I think he could have thrown 100 pitches to Albies and Ozzie still would not have put the bat on one of them. That was one of the most hopeless non-pitcher ABs I have ever seen.
Staring down a 4 game losing streak with a noon game tomorrow against a team fighting for their lives. Tough spot, indeed.
Where was Camargo on the ball? It looked like he went to cover the bag instead of trying to stop that ball.
This is just crazy. A great outing by Sanchez and we can’t score a jot.
Can we go on the road again, please?
I don’t want the Braves to limp into the playoffs, I can’t take any more of this!
I hope the guys wake the f up.
Look, most fan bases wouldn’t be nervous right now.
But this is Atlanta. 28-3. An 8.5-game lead to start September. Forgive those of us supporters who are biting their fingernails right now, call us crazy and nonsensical, but we’ve touched the piece of cheese that has given us the electric shock before.
I have the feeling that our batting order has had more of an impact than it should. We went into the tank as soon as Camargo pulled up lame. We haven’t been the same with Ozzie batting 2nd. Even Ozzie was hitting better down at 6th or 7th.
That’s 11 runs in the 8th and 9th over the past two days.
Hey, at least when Jim Leyritz hits a homer off Dan Winkler, we won’t be shocked!
We might as well be on the road. All the remaining fans are rooting for the Cardinals.
One cheerier note: we did sweep the Cards in STL.
Dooooooommmmmed. Count it.
I picked the wrong week to give up sniffing glue.
On the bright side, at least we’re not D-back fans. Wow have they ever spit the bit these last few weeks. Sure wouldn’t mind taking Patrick Corbin off their hands though, isn’t he a free agent after this year?
We need three dependable starting pitchers. Hope we can find out who they are asap.
By the way, if anyone is interested, Gwinnett and Mississippi have open job postings for General Manager: http://braves.hirecentric.com/jobsearch/
We take 3 out of 7 from Philadelphia and all this wailing and rending of garments won’t mean a thing.
Plus, both WAS and PHI have to fly to Denver to play a series with the Rockies, who are also fighting for their playoff berth as well.
We’re still in good shape. DoomCon still at 4 – Green Level.
Snit, use the extra arms. Duh.
Recapped.