Dansby Swanson may look like Ryan Howard from “The Office,” but tonight he hit like Ryan Howard from the Phillies.
Swanson doubled, homered, and drove in 5 runs on his way to a 3 – 5 night. Among numerous other highlights, Ozzie Albies homered, doubled twice, scored 3 and drove in 3, Marcell Ozuna homered for the second straight day, and Austin Riley added a 458 foot homer. Ender Inciarte added a couple of hits and a couple of RBI’s. William Contreras added 3 hits, and Freddie Freeman scored 3 runs.
Sean Newcomb was allowed to throw 82 pitches, but only 42 were strikes and his lack of control cost him a win, as he could only survive 3 1/3 innings. Newk allowed 3 hits, walked 2 and hit 2, and was charged with a wild pitch. However, he managed to allow only 1 run, despite only 1 strikeout.
Jhoulys Chacin went 3 2/3 innings in relief, allowing only one hit, and was awarded the win. Tyler Matzek and Grant Dayton finished up uneventfully.
IWOTM, but still – 14 runs is a lot of fun. The Braves take the series 2 – 1 and stand tied for first with the Marlins in the NL East, with 5% of the season already behind us.
At Tampa Bay on Monday, at 6:40. Mike Foltynewicz and Tyler Glasnow scheduled.
So, we’ll just score 2 TDs every time Newk pitches. EZ-PZ.
Onto Tampa’s enormo-dome…
Let hope the BoSawx keep the Mets in a funk… we get them next weekend, too. And it’ll probably be deGrom on Monday’s 4th game.
If there’s anything better than beating the living hell out of The Mets, I don’t know what it is.
Have fun tomorrow, Ububba!
Answering a question from the last thread: 2009 was the last year nobody went 3-0 at the start of the season. 2005 before that. 1990 before that.
https://stathead.com/tiny/GHwHt
Was out and about tonight with kids at the beach and didn’t get to participate in the thrashing. Thanks for the quick turnaround of a recap, Rusty!
Thank you, Rusty. That was fun.
Go, the Atlanta baseball club!
Thanks for the info on the last season start with no one going 3-0 or 0-3 JF. That’s a pretty obscure stat but cool you found it so easily. I think we’ll see a lot of crazy things before this season ends. I still think the players are as safe or safer in this environment than they would be otherwise.
Just like Ryan started the fire, so did Dansby. Nice work, Rusty.
@4 – They say “Quick, cheap, or good – pick any two.” So… 🙂
bon vivant…living well…when your ball club wins in this manner.
the Life of Riley…glorious, happy power.
The Marlins home opener has been canceled.
I feel like the second I get emotionally invested in this season MLB will shut it down. Probably when the Braves are 32-8 and look like the National League juggernaut.
Cain and Abel…he’s better says the elder…well, yes.
What a game! From feast to famine from an offense point of view.
But just what does the Braves offense truly look like this year?
And is Dansby about to really bust out in 2020?
And what about Newk – – might he just need glasses? He’s got the stuff. Alas, that’s been said about thousands.
2-1 feels good. Even if it shoulda been 1-2.
Cheers all.
Damn. A dozen Marlins and two coaches. I don’t think MLB will shut it down for one team but if this starts happening all over… 🙁
@11
This is why all of this is a farce.
Craig Mish is secretly a fake person and his account is Chief’s burner:
Like many of you, this gives me a fair bit of anxiety. Everybody just needs to chillax and not do anything rash.
Cancel it now. I’ve watched all three games. These games are complete and abject farces.
PURE EVIL.
The Marlins screw up everything even when they’re not playing the Braves.
C’mon Chief. They were 3 really good games from our perspective (hat tip to Degrom). If 12 players are positive I can’t see how the Phillies aren’t going to be affected as well. I knew I should have had the chicken…
@16
Actual national reporters are saying there’s no current serious discussions of shutting down the season, and I’m sure they know more than the Marlins podcast guy.
The Phillies will be a big harbinger of how MLB plays this. If they start to have an outbreak on their team, too, then this goes south in a hurry. If not, or even if it’s just one or two guys on their team, I think the season goes on.
Assuming the season does go on, how many Marlins games will have to be postponed and how MLB handles that situation will be interesting.
I will say that it seems very much like yesterday’s Marlins-Phillies game should’ve been called off. Why it wasn’t, I haven’t the foggiest…even (or perhaps especially) after reading the Jayson Stark-Ken Rosenthal co-written piece about the situation. (You can find it here if you’re an Athletic subscriber.)
Chief, I’d have more respect for your words if, when visiting the blog, you ever brought words that were positive. We are at a 10+ year pattern of constant negativity, no matter the subject.
It’s exhausting.
It’s October of this year. The current incarnation of the season has gone off mostly without a hitch. One odd thing is that the Marlins FO has been finally fired into the sun. The Dodgers have won the World Series. Mookie Betts is sipping champagne out of the World Series trophy. Atlanta was bounced in the first round.
And Chief is still telling you how terrible things are about to get.
I often disagree with Chief–see, e.g., the prospects of numerous Braves prospects.
But there is a real possibility that this season will be scuttled within the next few days. I fondly hope and fervently pray that the outbreak in the Marlins clubhouse is an isolated event, and that no similar outbreaks occur elsewhwere in MLB. But if I had to put money on it right now, I’d say the odds are in Chief’s favor that we will see more clubhouse outbreaks and the season is cancelled.
P.S I still disagree with Chief about Riley’s batspeed and likelihood of being a very good ML hitter. I’d love to see Austin’s development this season.
To be fair, most of that did seem pretty terrible, Rob.
I’m not calling out Chief’s stances on subjects. I’m calling him out for only using the blog to share his negative thoughts. I’d challenge anyone to find his last positive comment. It’s always bothered me, but as the person in charge, my feelings have escalated as it makes it hard to grow a blog and we need growth to stick around.
Nick, I wanted to be realistic and a first round exit is the yearly nightmare we can all count on.
Chief is more often negative than positive. And he can speak for himself, he doesn’t need me defending him. But he’s been positive on some of our prospects.
And I agree with tfloyd — I’m finding it hard to completely ignore my own pessimism, when there’s a raging global pandemic that’s affecting our sport, infected numerous of our players, essentially shut down one of the 29 teams, and raising grave questions about what the hell happens next.
We’re all on the same side here but I’d just respectfully request that we be allowed to share our thoughts, as long as we’re not attacking one another.
Yonder Alonzo has been restricted.
Chief is one of the original (if not the original…can’t remember) “only-show-up-when-things-go-to-hell” people. Back in the day, we could’ve been on a 10-game winning streak and would not have heard so much as a peep from Chief the entire time, but if we fell behind 5-0 in the fifth inning of the 11th game, you’d be sure to see Chief. A lot of sports blog communities are made up of a majority (or at least extremely vocal plurality) of these types of people, so I think it’s a testament to this one that Chief is an outlier.
The schtick comes across as more charmingly amusing sometimes and is just gratingly irritating at others. I agree that I’m in no particular need of an update that Chief still thinks this season is a farce every time an MLB team comes back with a positive coronavirus test.
@30
Likely means he opted out? I guess? People who test positive for the coronavirus go on the IL, not the restricted list.
I guess it is possible he tested positive and then bagged it since he was on the taxi squad already.
They have to trace it back and see what “went wrong” with the Marlins. Then understand why it happened and take action. If everyone is sticking to the “rules” there is a good chance that the season will be played. If players/employees are not, we’ll have more cases like the Marlins.
Has anyone heard anything about D’Arnaud and Flowers at all?
Folty versus Glasnow today. I kinda feel like Chief probably does about that matchup.
To really be fair to Chief, he’s the only person on this site who has been willing to state repeatedly what should be plainly obvious to anyone with even half a brain, which is that MLB’s plan has been a complete farce from the very beginning, and if anyone out there thinks that what has happened to the Marlins isn’t going to happen again, repeatedly – or rather at least once more, after which the season will be cancelled – he is totally and completely clueless. The chances of this succeeding without a bubble were always pretty much zero.
Hey, you know who else I bet would have had some offensive – but actually rational – opinions on this? That’s right, the regular poster on this site who actually had lots of interesting things to say, what was his name, Sam or something, what ever happened to him? Oh, that’s right …
I think MLB will be okay. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the season cancelled, but I think there’s a reasonable path forward and an ability to contain.
What I really struggle to see happening is football, barring a 180-degree turnaround of the general COVID19 environment in the U.S.
@33
Last I heard, Flowers and d’Arnaud had still not tested positive but were both still dealing with cold-like symptoms.
Somebody somewhere (I think it might’ve been Jeff Passan on the pregame show last night before the game on ESPN, but I truly can’t remember for sure), said that the Marlins had all had to sit on the tarmac in a bus for an hour last week for some reason (I guess probably at the Atlanta airport waiting for their plane to get ready to fly to Philly or something?). If true, that could certainly account for the large team outbreak.
My guess is Alonso got mad no team claimed him to be on their major league roster, so he didn’t show up to the minor league squad.
@34 I don’t think you necessarily need a bubble. We have enough example of sports leagues where it worked without a bubble. Having said that, and not being political here, in those instances, people – not just the teams – mostly stuck to the rules. That’s what the MLB teams have to do in order for this season to be played out.
@38. LOL, name me another league anywhere in the world that has tried to play in jurisdictions with ongoing outbreaks even remotely as bad as in places like Florida, Texas and Arizona. And even if you could find a league like that you’d then still have to fail to see how the way in which matches and training are scheduled in those leagues is vastly different than what baseball is doing, which involves having players routinely sitting in close proximity on a bus to an airport before flying a charter to a different city where they share a dugout and a locker room, before flying home for a few days where they interact with families and whoever else before traveling again to another city. The Marlins likely didn’t do anything different from what every other team is doing.
Sam attacked people repeatedly and relentlessly. That’s the absolute bright line. You just can’t do that.
@39 Korean baseball would be one example. All soccer leagues in Europe.
The outbreak, yes, is a lot worse in the US.
@41. LOL, you do realize that Korea’s protocols were so strict that if even a single player on any team tested positive the entire league was shut down for three weeks, right? Not only were there hardly any new daily cases when Korean baseball restarted, but compared to protocols that Korean teams had to follow, MLB’s are completely laughable. Ditto with the European soccer leagues, where not only is access to the stadiums extremely limited but the stadiums themselves are broken up into zones with access requiring bio-passports, and players on individual teams are further segregated in various ways – e.g. some teams have staggered access to the locker room or where transportation is necessary players drive themselves in their own cars or teams use multiple coaches with all players sitting more than 2m apart (as well as being required to have a negative test on the day of travel).
Braves14 more or less hit the nail on the head @37:
@42 You’re not quite correct about the Bundesliga protocols, those were not really as strict as MLB for example but you’re certainly right – rules were followed. Same needs to happen for MLB teams in the people around them to succeed.
AJC’s Mark Bradley:
https://www.ajc.com/sports/mark-bradley-blog/should-mlb-shut-down-maybe-will-it-not-yet/5O35JUXAQJBAFISYUH7BKBEPMA/
WashPo’s Thomas Boswell:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/07/27/every-sport-has-coronavirus-plan-mlbs-lasted-four-days/
I think we’re quickly reaching a crossroads for the season. The players and the teams need to take it more seriously. But we’re either going to play this season with a few guys from each team always cycling in and out, and even a couple of teams cycling in and out, or we’re probably not going to make it through this. If you shut an entire team down for a week, what’s the big harm? We’ve already gone from 162 games down to 60. What if each team ends up only playing 55? Is that significantly different?
I made quite a few folks agree on Twitter for this, but I’ll say it again: there is currently one team in this predicament. Shut it down, get it figured out, and the show goes on. Next week, it could be another team. Shut them down too. If we start getting to a point where 2, 3, 4, 5 teams are severely impacted, then the season is done, and rightfully so. But somehow, someway, I think the world is going to go on without the Miami Marlins.
I’m really glad we’re hearing from Dale Murphy’s Mistress on such an important topic. Once we complete this, let’s move on to geopolitical economics and then nuclear physics.
The crucial difference between pro sports in US on the one hand and Sports leagues in Europe and Korea on the other hand are the countries they play in. Unlike those countries, we have relatively uncontrolled community spread in the US. Even fairly strict protocols have a good chance of failing.
@47, LOL, says the guy who thinks shouting into the echo chamber on twitter is the same thing as “mak[ing] quite a few folks agree” (cf. @46).
Everyone is ignoring it (likely because it’s soccer, which I’m told the Constitution says never should be paid attention to under any circumstances…I expressed skepticism, too, but I’m assured that it’s in there, somewhere toward the back), but MLS had some significant issues with the start of their bubble tournament. Two teams had to withdraw, and the entire thing seemed to be teetering on the brink of the abyss. That was three weeks ago. There have been exactly zero positive tests among anyone in the MLS Disney bubble since then. The National Women’s Soccer League just completed a similar bubble tournament which I’m not as familiar with, but which I believe had one team withdraw but no further major issues.
This tells me a couple of things:
First: If you’ll indulge a brief rant that doesn’t have much to do with baseball per se, columnists and talking heads throwing the NBA and NHL bubble concepts in with the MLB and NFL home-stadium concepts as equally likely to not work have no clue what in the hell they’re talking about. The bubble concept clearly works if properly applied. I know it requires being aware of something going on with a sport that isn’t football, basketball and baseball, but an attempt to keep up with pertinent things that are happening which could affect major sports would be appreciated for folks whose job it is to talk sports on a daily basis. I’m not even asking that they, God forbid, actually watch any of the soccer games. Just to be aware of this thing that’s happening in that corner over there that might have something to say about how the return of “major” sports might work would be enough.
Second: Back on topic, MLB obviously does not have a bubble concept, so they’re blazing the trail for the home-stadium concept at the moment. There is almost certainly more peril to this path than the bubble path, but the fact that those two leagues had two teams on the field at the same time in a similar fashion to baseball (really less socially-distanced than baseball, if we’re being honest), had initial issues, but the issues got ironed out and things went forward from there as smoothly as possible should provide at least some pause to people who want to shutter the entire enterprise four days in. Could it come to that? Sure. If it does, you can’t have any hesitation of pulling the trigger. However, two sports leagues were here three weeks ago and made it through. If you’re MLB, you have to give yourselves a chance to do the same.
And I will also note that I didn’t even mention NASCAR and golf, two sports that are actually traveling from town to town and have been largely doing OK with it for over a month.
There is testing technology out there that could potentially allow sport leagues to play safely (without fans), schools to re-open, and general society to begin to function again. Cheap, rapid, saliva-based testing that can be administered anywhere, doctor not needed. As applied to sports, everyone takes a test every day when they show up at the park or practice. If they are positive, isolate them. It is not as sensitive as PCR testing, but it doesn’t have to be — you only need to reliably detect who has enough viral load to be infectious. If you want to learn more about it, see here:
If grown men wish to take the risks to continue playing, that’s their right. I hope no one gets really sick or worse.
The issue I see is that the product is a joke. 60 games is already absurdly short. It’s one thing to axe Miami’s games this week because it’s early in the season and no one cares about the Marlins. What if it’s the Yankees, and it’s the final week of the season with a playoff spot on the line? Or worse, it happens the week of whatever the equivalent of the LCS is this year.
It feels like we’re pushing forward to have a season so we can say we’ve had a season, without regard to whether that season has any meaning.
Well, all I can say is, enjoy every pitch of every game. Never know when the Marlins are gonna screw something up.
I want to issue an apology to Chief. His comments don’t hurt me. His comments aren’t directed at me. It’s obvious that the negativity bothers me, but it’s not directed toward me.
As the person running the blog, I’ve got to do better.
Now, can we just destroy the Rays and all get along?
@27 Yeah, he’s annoying, but sometimes a villain is far more compelling to read in the comments section (one of the reasons it’s a shame that Sam is gone, his warts and all)
The fact that MLB and these other sports chose to play in a pandemic when member cities have hospital bed shortages and some of the cities had mobile morgues and refrigeration trailers will be viewed as a callous black mark on our society 25 years from now. It’s absolutely appalling that sports is even on our radar. We might as well just bring back gladiation.
It is 100% about greed and the almighty dollar and it is sickening.
To Ryan, no apology or anything of the sort is necessary. All I would say is that many on this site would do well to remember that all of us have opinions and how many of you have ever been to a bar where everyone agreed or got along.
Please stop passive aggressively whining to Ryan, behind the scenes and man (or woman) up and learn to see dissenting/ergo negative opinions about things you hold dear without devolving into babies.
And also, the product on the field is absolutely terrible.
New thread.
https://bravesjournal.mystagingwebsite.com/2020/07/27/game-thread-braves-rays/