Doubles, wild pitches, walks, balks, and 3 run homers, as Earl Weaver once said, probably. Ronald Acuna Jr.‘s 3 run, game-tying homer in the top of the ninth capped a 4 run rally, and the Braves went 1 for 2 in save chances in extras to complete the 3 game series sweep.
Down 5 – 1 in the 9th, Tyler Flowers hit a one out double off Sergio Romo, advanced to 3rd on a wild pitch, and scored on a balk after a Matt Joyce walk. A Johan Camargo single set the stage for Acuna’s heroics.
If you’ve ever considered what a Miami team would look like if Rachel Phelps had gotten her way, you can probably hear Harry Doyle’s voice (Ball 4. Ball 8…) as Tyler Kinley walked 4 consecutive batters with 2 out in the 10th. The Braves were not able to add any Luke Leeway though, and it proved costly in the bottom of the inning when Harold Ramirez singled off Luke Jackson, and Martin Prado tied the score with a double.
It took an Ozzie Albies triple and a Joyce single in the 12th to finally put it away; Josh Tomlin was able to close out the second chance. Matt added 2 doubles to go 3 – 4 on the day.
Max Fried went 6 innings, allowing 6 hits, 3 runs, 1 walk, and striking out 7. The other 2 runs were charged to Touki Toussaint, who pitched a 4 hit 7th. The Marlins wasted 6 innings of 4 hit, 1 run, 7 strikeout ball from Pablo Lopez, and 3 hits and 3 RBI’s from Austin Dean, including a lead off home run.
The Braves kick off a 10 game homestand Monday at 7:20 vs. Pittsburgh; Kevin Gausman and Joe Musgrove scheduled.
( JC’d from previous, thanks for the courtesy shown Rusty and your own stylish as ever recap.)
‘How sweet it is that all these good happenings at the end today soften the truly dreadful memory of Riley’s last at bat.
It wasn’t just a strike out, one of many recently including three today. It was as though he knew it was going to happen, again,and all he wanted to do was get it over with SAP.
Culminating in strike three where, i swear, he started his cyclone style swing with the pitch still 30 feet away.
Does this diminish in any way my belief in him as the natural successor to the Babe. Certainly not. Look at all the things he doesn’t do.’
That was a really sloppy looking inning from Touki, disappointingly so. 4 hits, 2 runs, 27 pitches though 19 strikes.
At times he even looked as though he couldn’t be bothered. He must be told in the present situation he has reached that his young career is on a fulcrum and could tip either way. Hard work – I wonder if he has the appetite for it.
I grew up in a town where there was a guy picked in the 3rd round of the draft, sometime in the early ’70’s. He never made it past A ball. Mike Stone. He was a great player. An amazing talent. He worked hard. I think about that every time I see some utility infielder on MLBTV: he’s great, though not by the standards of the highest league in the world, and he’s busting his ass.
When I see a player performing badly, I almost never see someone who’s not trying. Insinuating that someone isn’t, without some obvious evidence to that effect, is crap.
I’m ready to see Joyce get several more chances over Markakis. Nick has earned a bench spot for a while.
Joyce has definitely earned a start once a week against a righty. I think this was only his 3rd start of the year.
Winning ugly is better than losing ugly. Using your bench players to rest your starters is not a crime. Johan and Matt need more playing time. Gaus and Faulty need to pitch better than they have to date this year or step aside for someone who does. There. I solved all the Braves problems.
Great recap, Rusty S. Thank you.
@3
Stories like the one about your friend Mike Stone are powerful. They hurt because of the amount of effort he must have put in, to no avail.
A natural consequence to that is to be critical of uber talented youth who have made it to the League and who can appear at times ‘sloppy’. On his behalf you might say.
That’s all.
Thanks coop.
So Langeliers signed 1 Mio below slot.
He’s supposed to be the best defensive catcher in the draft.
Thinking of Mac when I read that about catchers… Probably means he won’t ever hit.
Blazon, in my personal opinion, it’s unfair to impugn the motivation of a guy who makes a bad play. I don’t think it’s fair to assume that guy doesn’t care.
Just another quick kudo for @3. I loathe the tendency of fans/commenters to go magic internet psychic about a player’s motivations and internal work ethic. Those guys are busting their asses 24/7. They had an off day.
Koochul is pitching for Rome tonight.
@3, @11, same goes for all the moaning and whining about Folty’s body language on the mound. None of that shit matters. Some guys wear emotions on their sleeves and some don’t. There’s not any causality. If there was, then every single player in the league would be super-shiny-happy all the time. In reality, a lot of top players are red-asses and don’t handle failure well.
@13 Precisely. When Andruw Jones came up he got railed for “smirking” when he struck out. No one bothered to notice that *that was just how his face looked.* Andruw had “resting smirk face.” But he didn’t throw tantrums or kick things or break the bat rack, so he must not have cared.
God, I hate that crap.
“Because Hank was black—its own stimulus for thoughtless indignities and so graceful he seemed never to be burning an extra calorie, even writers who meant to compliment him seemed to always extend his real name with deprecating adjectives: Slow-talking Henry Aaron. Uncomplicated Henry Aaron. Anecdotes about his “natural ability” accumulated by the scores….
“They wrote so often about me having ‘natural ability,’ as if thinking or hard work was never a part of my game,” he said. “Well, there’s no such thing as a dumb hitter. You have to study things like what a pitcher likes to throw in a certain situation, learn to recognize the pitch from its release point, know what pitcher will get impatient and throw one down the middle if you wait him out.””
(from an old Atlanta Magazine article)
For a long part of my childhood, Hank Aaron’s autobiography was my favorite book (I was, as you might guess, kind of a weird kid, though maybe not so weird among y’all). I reread it multiple times, and parts of it still pop up in my head sometimes. I’m not at all saying that this is where blazon was going with this, b/c I feel like I know him well enough from these digital pages that this wasn’t at all his intent, and I don’t mean to pile on here as others have all said this well.
But Hank’s story– of his first manager in Milwaukee, Charlie Grimm, calling him “Stepanfetchit,” of Joe Adcock calling him “Slow Motion Henry”, of the wider narrative that it wasn’t intelligence or drive or discipline that got him to the big leagues, but simply an otherworldly natural talent, which all seems pretty impossible to separate from the racial context of his breakthrough– has always made me reflexively cringe when people start to imply that a player isn’t trying. To echo some others here, unless someone is going full Richie Tenenbaum at Wimbledon— “He’s taken off his shoes and one of his socks and… actually, I think he’s crying” — it’s not quite fair to make assumptions about someone’s effort level or emotional state.
Agreed fully at 13 and 14. Because he’s winning, Fried’s demeanor seems intense and tenacious. Soroka appears calm and in control. If either starts losing, I guarantee you that can be turned against them.
On occasion I have been known to be a self-righteous jerk and imput intent to others they did not intend.
@15, one of Henry Aaron’s autobiographies, “I Had a Hammer,” was neck-and-neck with Lord of the Rings as my favorite book of my childhood.
I didn’t read too much into blazon’s commentary – I think Acuna especially might deserve to be called out for being a bit ‘sloppy’ at times, but he’s the best player on the team so you have to give the criticism proper context.
It just dawned on me this weekend that Brian McCann and Ronald Acuna are on the same team and we’ve yet to hear anything publicly about the unwritten-rules vs let-the-kids-play collision of worlds that must be inevitable.
One can unintentionally be sloppy without being lazy/careless/uninterested/unmotivated/etc.
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by…” in this case, maybe, just lack of skill. Or a drift in mechanics.
@20 – Pretty sure my mechanics have been unintentionally drifting for several decades now.
@18 – Yup, that was the one that got me, too. My folks also VHS-taped for me a TBS special on Hank that they must have done for either the 20th or 25th anniversary of him breaking the record, and I wore it out.
I always realize how little I actually like baseball, compared to others, whenever we start talking about books and movies on here. In fact, I think I’m really much more of a Braves fan than I am a fan of the actual sport.
I think McCann would probably still rail at a guy he thought was “showing up” his pitcher, while high fiving Acuna after he back flipped around the bases. Laundry is a powerful thing.
#24
Unfortunately, that guy is dead.
New thread!