Atlanta continued to play down to the level of its competition Friday night, dropping its third straight game to a team languishing below .500. This time, graciously allowing Georgia native Niko Goodrum to show off before his family and friends with five hits (two of them homers) leading to an 8-2 loss to the woeful Detroit Tigers.
Mike Foltynewicz pitched adequately through the first four innings, giving up a 2nd inning bomb to Grayson Greiner followed by a 3rd inning homer to the aforementioned Tiger shortstop. Atlanta cut the lead in half in the bottom of the 3rd, when Ronald Acuna Jr singled with one out, stole second and advanced to third on Greiner’s bad throw. Dansby Swanson drove him in with a ground out.
The Tigers extended the lead in the 5th. JaCoby Jones led off with a triple, and one out later Goodrum singled him home.Nicholas Castellanos then homered with two down and Folty was able to finish up the 5th by inducing Miguel Cabrera to ground out. Mike gave up 7 hits in his five innings pitched, 3 of them long balls. However, he did strike out 8 and walked no one. So if you’re desperate for a silver lining you got that going for you.
Anthony Swarzak pitched a scoreless 6th, and Snit ran up the Human White Flag,…err…inserted Jerry Blevins for the 7th. Goodrum led off with a double and was singled home by Christin Stewart. After Josh Donaldson couldn’t come up with Castellanos’ slow roller, Brandon Dixon singled in Stewart one out later. 7-1 Tigers and the rout was on.
Meanwhile Detroit starter Spencer Turnbull was pitching efficiently and limiting the Braves to weak contact. In the bottom of the 7th, he tired, and loaded the bases on singles to Donaldson and Nick Markakis, and a walk (!) to Austin Riley. The delightfully named Buck Farmer came in and traded a run for an out, getting Brian McCann to fly out. Ozzie Albies reached on an infield single, reloading the bases, but Folk Hero II – Charlie Culberson, grounded into an inning ending double play.
Josh Tomlon came on and allowed Goodrum to finish up his career night by surrendering the second dinger for the final margin.
Anyway, time to get off the schneid. Of course Mike Soroka will probably give up 7 ER in an inning and a third tonight.
Timely. And something that had to be done. Thank you.
The Glorious First of June, 1794, big naval battle.
We need our guys to battle for us this afternoon, not roll over for a bunch of kids.
Looks like he just hung a few. 96MPH fastball, he liked his stuff, McCann liked his stuff and says he called a bad game. Struck out 8, walked no one. You’d think he’d have done better.
In 31 starts last year, Folty had 7 where he got completely bombed, including 4 starts in a row. He had a stretch where he got bombed in 4 straight, then 5 straight with 2 ER or fewer, then one clunker, then two good ones, then another clunker. That’s the closest stretch to this year where he’s had 4 terrible starts in a 7 start stretch. I’m not necessarily comparing the two since this stretch is much, much worse, but I’m just saying it to say that while he had a nice 2.85 ERA last year and an objectively great year, they weren’t all 7 IP, 2 ER; 6 IP, 2 ER; and 6 IP, 3 ER starts. He’s just going to get bombed sometimes, and he’s also clearly in some sort of slump.
Problem with Folty, too, is that he may never get into that top 5-7 SP section — the undebatable TOR section — because he’s just not efficient enough to pitch deep into games. He finished 18th in fWAR last year, but he couldn’t rank any higher (and may never) because he couldn’t get those last 20 IP of the year that you’d expect your ace to get to. As an example, he had 9 starts last year where he pitched only 5 innings but gave up less than 2 ER. Of those, he had 5 outings where he pitched exactly 5 IP with 0 ER. I think when people are talking about an Ace(TM), you’re talking about pitchers who don’t leave before the end of the 6th, which is what he did in 14 of his 31 starts last year.
Hope you liked my (Not) Fun Folty Facts.
Who or what is a “Spencer Turnbull”? He sounds like an Andrew McCarthy character that Mollie Ringwald broke up with.
Perhaps he was a semi-recurring character on Saved By The Bell? Coulda fooled me.
Phils trade for Jay Bruce. I guess he’s Herrera’s replacement? They had Cutch in CF last night then Kingery took over. Kingery had been playing CF exclusively.
Good luck with that.
The Phillies have been talking about wanting a LHB pinch hit type for their bench.
Recap for today’s game…has anyone on line now been scheduled to do this ?
Yes, I’ve got the recap.
And I’m committed to a better result than Roger, JonathanF, and Seat Painter brought this week. Now it’s up to the team to deliver.
We should have brought in Gwinnett to play the AAA team in Detroit. Maybe they would fair better against this vaunted pitching staff
thanks Tfloyd…bring ’em home for pete’s sake.
Team is still rancid… I believe they would be under .500 if not for Riley being unreal for two weeks.
When is the hitting coach to be fired? Whatever philosophy he’s preaching, it ain’t working.
@14 agreed… the philosophy appears to swing early and often
@14
I believe they would be under .500 if not for
Riley being unreal for two weekshaving good players in a deep farm system.FIFY
The Phil’s Cutch/Kingery/Harper outfield has got to be one of the worst infield/outfield units amongst the 4 NL East contenders.
Disclaimer: if Kingery can keep up his .945 OPS, then I’m very, very wrong.
Swinging at the first pitch huh? Atta boy Freddie
Freddie is our Chipper. Wish a few of the other boys could figure out how to treat Detroit pitching the way the other 28 teams do.
@16 don’t get me wrong, I still like the Atlanta farm system as a whole, I just meant that Riley almost single handedly (on offense)was responsible for 3-4 wins on the previous road trip.
I hope Soroka goes at least six innings, one run, as is becoming the norm for him.
And here we go giving the lead right back…most likely. Team is just snakebit right now
Unbelievable..,getting lit up by a bunch of clowns hitting .220.
Soroka’s allowed more than 1 ER for the first time all year.
Does he have options?
We expected some players to be better that haven’t been that will probably get better. It’s nice to have a player you weren’t expecting to contribute at this point with Riley. It goes both ways, the way I see it.
And now its Sorokas turn to get trampled by the mighty detroit AAA unknowns.
One really impressive thing about Soroka and Fried is that they seem to consider themselves to be more of an athlete than the typical pitcher. Soroka gets a bunt down with two strikes, then when Norris made a bad throw, Soroka was running hard down the line and beat the first baseman to the bag. Then Soroka goes first to third on a single not completely into the left-centerfield gap. We’ve obviously seen what Fried does.
In contrast, Folty can’t be bothered to do anything other than throw the ball. I know we consider pitchers to be fragile, and they are with the arm/orthopedic side, but can’t we ask them to run hard, get bunts down, put a reasonable swing on a pitch, etc.?
And now because Soroka was playing baseball like an athlete and got his way to third, he scores on a fielder’s choice and we take the lead. Nice.
How long does Ronald have to be putrid as a leadoff hitter to admit we need a change of pace? Does he need a rest or a stint on the IL?
The real issue is our hitting slump. That actually makes sense as the last four pitchers (including Norris) have been pretty good.
Out pitching has been unnecessarily bad but may have been better with any run support whatsoever. Still, Blevins and Swarzak have to go. Each of the games, the Braves got behind and Snitker threw in the towel by not even trying to stay in the game. Causing a snowball effect.
I thought Soroka might be our stopper, the only one to be able to counteract the trend. But giving up two runs immediately after getting the lead is not the way to do it.
Agreed, Rob, Watching Folty take “swings” is painful to watch. I guess we should be grateful every time he does take one and doesn’t hurt his elbow in the process. Fried, Soroka and Julio at least know what they are doing at the plate, more often than not.
Good shutdown inning by Soroka after we got the lead. Let’s go add on
Well, of course, the minute I speak up Soroka throws a clean inning after getting the lead with 2Ks. THAT’S the Soroka we need. That’s real Ace-like pitching.
Let’s see what the bullpen can do.
Oh, and by the way, whoever has been talking about patience at the plate is spot on. This team has recently been giving opposing pitchers a lot of leeway by being so darned aggressive. We were near the top of the league in walks and fewest strikeouts and a lot of that comes by taking a few pitches and letting the other guy make mistakes.
@27 not sure the Donaldson in the cleanup spot is working either
Atta boy Riley!
@31 a few of us have been talking about early swings but last night it really hurt us. One thing we used to do really well was get into a teams pen with high pitch counts
Geez, Riley can’t help himself. Riley and Soroka, exactly what the doctor ordered to break a slump.
Damn, Riley, I can live with a 50% K rate if you’re going to hit 81 homers a season. Lol.
@33 Exactly, so. It’s even more important for us because we are loaded with aggressive swingers. Getting them to be more patient is a real challenge as it’s against their natural tendencies.
It’s also what caused us to be near the top of the league in OBP – patience, that is.
Albies should be leading off against lefties. I’m thinking that mixing the lineup more often might keep guys from falling into ruts.
We attributed the prior surge to Acuna being at leadoff. What if it was not that specific, but just changing the lineup around that sparked the team.
Way to go Donaldson. His past relationship with AA shouldn’t over play the fact he isn’t hitting or fielding
Three errors in five games is no way to go through life, JDon.
Unless Soroka asked to be taken out, that pitching change was garbage from Snitker.
Fucking 23 million dollar man booting another one.
Soroka was just at 100 pitches.
Clutch Dansby
Another extra base hit from a dude not hitting hitting his weight. The Tigers picked a great time to start acting like a major league team
@40 I doubt Soroka as pitched 100 pitches this year at all and he needs to be pitch limited so he’ll be available later this year. He would have finished 7 without the Donaldson boot. Snit probably waited too long to pull him because he doesn’t trust the bullpen with this lead.
Apparently, we didn’t have enough Webb Woom. Hope we have better luck with our Luke Leverage.
@42 Niko will be a .300 hitter before the end of this series with the Tigers.
Bold move putting Johan in at 3rd Cotton..let’s see if it pays off
Great job by Luke
That Luke Jackson guy is pretty good.
So Johan gets the start at 3rd tomorrow I bet
Now, we have enough Luke Leverage.
Sliderman, Sliderman, does whatever an elite closer can.
Luke = 5 outs, 5 strikeouts. BOOM.
We need to extend Jackson now on a full/new contract and give him a million or two. He has absolutely earned it and we should be embarrassed by whatever it is we’re paying him and the security we’re offering him which i presume is none.
Recapped
@52. So you want to throw more money at a fungible, no-track-record-at-all reliever for the sake of altruism while demoting your young star leftfielder because he slumped for a week? I’m very thankful that your strategic instincts extend no further than this blog.