Man, we get no respect. I hate these noon and 2:00 starts, and obviously MLB hates the Braves to impose these on us. I was able to watch the beginning, and saw Ronald hit a majestic blast to right to start the Braves first. I watched into the third inning but then had a meeting followed by a class. The Braves were trailing 4-1 when I went into my meeting. Mighty Max was a little off, but to my eye it wasn’t anything to be concerned about.
I tried to be a professional and not look at the app on my phone, but I peeked and saw the events of the bottom of the third. I saw that Ronald was HBP, followed by “on field delay.” Although I couldn’t see it, I could see in my mind’s eye Snit charging onto the field to complain about this turn of events. Don Mattingly’s idiocy in targeting RAJ directly led to the best possible response: the Braves scored a couple of runs in the bottom of the third on run scoring doubles by Marcell and d’Arnaud.
At that point I had to go teach a class. I reluctantly turned off my phone with the Braves trailing 4-3, and had to hope the Braves could come back without me. I did have on my lucky Braves shirt as I taught, figuring that was the least I could do for the cause. Several students took notice of my shirt (they were probably the same ones who were peeking at their own phones). As I ended class at 5:15, one of the students shouted out: “Braves lead 9-5!”
So I got to my car in time to hear the last out on the radio as the Braves did indeed win by a 9-5 score. In going back over the box score and the game summary, I learned what you already know, to wit, the Braves broke it open with a 6 run 7th, thanks to another rbi by Ozuna, and a 3 run dinger by Travis and a 2 run shot by Dansby.
The Braves are better than this Marlins team. The bullpen is the best I’ve ever seen on the Braves, the offense is relentless from top to bottom, and has a tendency to break out in the late innings. All of that paid off today. We are better at baseball, and the Braves have a better manager. Donnie Baseball is scum, and he’s also an idiot. They keep throwing at Ronald, and the Braves keep making them pay for it. I just hope we can get past these rotten fish without Acuña getting hurt. By the way, it’s not exactly a hot take, but this kid is a special talent—we will all look back many years from now and tell people we were witnesses at the beginning.
Our Hammers are the better team, talent-wise and morally, but there is still no guarantee we will win two more. But I like our chances a lot better than that of the Marlins. Jethro Tull goes tomorrow (at 2:00 again L), and it will help to go up 2-0. I predict we will.
I LOVED this recap. Thanks, TFloyd!
I liked what Snitker said during his in-game interview when asked about Acuna being hit. Something along the lines of, “If I said what I really thought about it, I’d get fined.”
Man, it’s nice to win decisively. After Fried’s tough start, it felt like the same script. Glad to be wrong.
The media doesn’t respect the Braves. The mopes on MLB.Network have to be paid to always tout the Yanks and Dodgers.
Today’s game reinforces to me the similarity between the Braves and last year Nats. You can never count them out! With that pen, and those bats, if you’ll excuse me, The Braves got back!
Well done, tfloyd. Bravo.
I enjoy watching Acuna explore the space.
I said it 2 yrs ago and say it again, Donnie Bushball is scum and so are the Marlins. The only HoF he belongs is the Bush League HoF. Piss on him and Urine and the whole organization. As Mac said, Pure Evil. Great recap, great game. This team may not quite have as dominant a backend of bullpen as the O’Ventbrel team but is close and has way more depth. As much depth at least as the ’02 bullpen, and considering the higher amount of innings this pen has to cover I think has more depth. And the offense: the ’03 team finished with a team OPS+ of 112. This team is 116. Despite fewer reliable starters that makes a devastating combination that should make a difference in an era when starters pitch fewer innings already, even fewer still in this weird year. Go Braves.
#4
Well, if you were a betting man right now, you’d still have to give the shortest odds to a NYY/LAD World Series.
One club went on a 116-win pace, boasts the best overall pitching in MLB & kept humming along in the 1st round. The other got its lineup healthy, finished the season scoring scads of runs & then racked up 31 in its first 3 post-season games.
As of this moment, it’s kinda hard not to be impressed.
Nice multitasking, tfloyd, though not as good a job as your students!
I dislike the Astros, but if the Yankees win their series and Houston wins theirs, I’ll buy one of these Joe Niekro 1980 Throwback Jerseys and root hard. https://www.customthrowbackjerseys.com/products/JOE-NIEKRO-Houston-Astros-1980-Majestic-Cooperstown-Throwback-Baseball-Jersey.html
Some brutal strike calls in this yankees rays game. Oh, it’s CB Bucknor…..we dodged a bullet.
How do they let Bucknor work the playoffs? Oh, that’s right… Eric Gregg is unavailable.
And Angel Hernandez is working the Dodgers/Padres series. Pitiful.
Hernandez is officiating in the playoffs because he’s suing the league for allegedly discriminating against him in not letting him officiate in the playoffs, so it seems likely that they’re playing him so they won’t lose in court.
It would be really great if they could just put him on a PIP and manage him out, but that ain’t how it works.
How many umps will NOT get a post season game this year? There were 48 used just in the wild card round.
Edit: I guess they are using some of them multiple times. Bucknor also did Yankees – Indians.
I hope you’re sitting down for this Stanton homer.
https://streamable.com/40lcf6
Globe Life Park looks pretty blah.
Sandy Alcantara, after the game:
“I don’t know why they, always, like, every time we hit Acuña it’s on purpose… we’ll keep throwing inside to him, don’t matter what happen.
…
If he’s ready to fight, I’m ready to fight, too, don’t matter what happen.”
Even if you take that defense seriously, he basically admits that some of the time they hit Acuña it’s on purpose, just not all of the time.
Just class acts all the way around. Seriously, fine every single person in that whole bush league clubhouse.
http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=30056308
Melodrama at the conclusion of the NY/TB Game 2. Rays won 7-5 with their chosen manufactured closer(?) alternating with back to back walks, nowhere near, then almost walking the bases loaded only to find nirvana and close it out.
To the detached observer it’s obvious the dominating feature of these games is the five in a row reality. Coaches can be working 2 games ahead – we did to some extent with Fried- but then their bullpen arms are way behind ours. Fresh and hale for us , theirs were worn and strained. Lucky us. Or thank you AA for these costly, precious arms.
Final note…Stanton’s two home runs, the second plated three and exited at 118mph, some kind of record. It’s going to be desperately difficult for Tampa to pitch nine innings every day from within their tattered pen, trying to keep up with these single shots that dominate the scoreboard in a moment.
Hopefully the Braves forget about the smack talk and focus on winning. This can be addressed next year.
By the way, the fan-less playoff games definitely feel different than the usual playoff atmosphere you expect. The SD-LA game feels/sounds like a random game in the middle of May.
There have been an awful lot of impressive pitching performances in this postseason, but I am only absolutely terrified of one guy- Dustin May. 99mph two seamer that starts over the middle of the plate but ends up sawing off your bat at the hands if you’re a righty? Sure. And then he follows that up with an 86mph slider, from the same slot/release point, that looks just like the fastball until it moves 12″ away and like 9″ down? Impossible to hit. I don’t know how anyone has ever put the bat on the ball against this guy.
And to top off this humiliation, it’s coming from a guy who looks like a stretched-out Carrot Top.
Rafael Ortega smacked a grand slam off May last year.
@20- I’m sure that did happen but it is still literally unbelievable to me.
A self-named Phillie fan commenting on FanGraphs pointed out that the Braves have hit Anderson and Rojas six times each in a similar number of PAs to Acuna’s against the Marlins. I hadn’t realized that, but it looks like everyone hits Anderson – the Nationals have hit him eight times (no other team has hit Acuna more than twice), and overall he’s been hit more than twice as often as Acuna. Rojas gets hit more often than Acuna too, though the difference isn’t as extreme. I assume the Braves have hit Anderson and Rojas with errant curves a few times, not the fastest fastballs their pitchers have ever thrown (Urena).
@18,
Oddly enough, our game felt like a mid-September game in Miami. Except the cutout fans were more life-like today.
@22, yeah — doesn’t quite pass the smell test, since it looks like EVERYONE hits Anderson. He’s fourth in MLB in HBP since 2018, with 36. Acuna is tied for 32nd with 19, literally half as many as Anderson.
(Anthony Rizzo is first with 57; there’s a huge dropoff between him and everyone else. Canha is second with 38. Anderson is just two behind him.)
That’s the thing about Acuna, it’s not like he crowds the plate, far from it. If you miss enough to hit him you’ve missed big time. The one yesterday was way off the plate and I think intentional. Given the Marlins history with Ronald, impossible to give them the benefit of the doubt. It’s annoying because he can get hurt when they are playing those bush league kinds of games and he has been hurt in the past.
Oh well, make them pay in the box score and settle scores in 2021.
26-Thanks for posting, I mean, you can can fit another whole strike zone between Ronald and the plate.
I’m not in the hit-batters-for retaliation camp. I’m in the beat-you-for-retaliation camp.
However, I am also not in the chump camp. If this is still going on next season, I would definitely recommend to institute a program designed to motivate Marlins batters to encourage their pitchers to work on their control.
Also agree — retaliation just drags us down to their level. I’d prefer a campaign of public shaming of the Cro Magnon barbarism of the atavists in the other dugout. I hope they spend the rest of their winters in the quarantine of their deserved guilt and embarrassment, the yutzes.
Acuna did a good job not getting suckered by the Marlins’ bench jockeys yesterday, and I hope he continues not rising to the bait. One of (for example) Lewis Brinson’s jobs is to antagonize Acuna into doing something stupid, and they are going to keep at it for the rest of the series, if not the rest of time.
I’m usually anti-retaliation, but Acuna’s been hit 5 times in the last 2 years. Enough is enough. And while I’m anti-retaliation, I am very much of this mindset:
Jim Malone: He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.
I think you let them hit Acuna one more time, which leaves no doubt what is going on, and then put one in someone’s earhole. I know how disgusting that sounds, but if you want to stop this behavior permanently, you put someone on the ground with a fastball to the noggin. If anyone wants to blame someone for someone potentially having a serious injury, look no further than the 4 pitchers that have hit Acuna 5 times. Because at some point, one of these horsesh*t moves by these Marlins pitchers might end up with Acuna being the one taking one in the noggin. It’s either them or us, and it better not be Acuna.
BTW I 100% cosign this tweet.
It’s notable that every single one of these HBPs to my memory has been the pitcher’s best fastball, starting about six inches in off the plate and running straight in on Acuna. Not an errant breaking ball in the bunch. It’s obviously intentional, they’re trying to get in his head because they think hitting him will cause him to lose focus or something. I even think they’ve been right about that a couple times (causing him to lose focus I mean, not that it was something they should’ve done or anything). If Acuna and the team keep responding like yesterday, the Marlins will keep looking like utter fools.
Game thread!
Exactly. And what’s most troubling is that Alcantara’s fastball velocity yesterday (97.5 MPH) matches Urena’s first fastball that hit Acuna. You’re exactly right; they are clearly trying to put their best fastball on his hip. For the people that don’t want to find a definitive, albeit too aggressive, way to put a stop to it, how are you going to feel when one of their max-effort fastball’s sails a little and hits him in the temple? The way I see it, there are only so many ways to stop it:
-Talk about it publicly. That hasn’t worked.
-Complain to the umpires. That hasn’t worked.
-Hit a guy on the butt. We’ve tried this, and that hasn’t worked.
-Benches-clearing brawl. We’ve not tried that yet, and I’m not opposed to that. One of these pencil-necked Marlins pitchers needs to catch a fist from the biggest guy on our team. Where’s Kyle Farnsworth when you need him? And I would make it very deliberate: when the benches clear, you find every single pitcher still on the Marlins that has hit Acuna, accident or otherwise, and you pummel the crap out of him. And don’t hit anyone else. And then tell the media after the game what you did, take your punishments, and move on.
-Put one in a guy’s earhole. We’ve not tried this, thank goodness, but this is something that probably puts a stop to it pretty quickly. And the reality is that, despite your best effort’s, you probably can’t even hit the guy in the head. So it either hits him high on the back or sails over his head. Either way, message sent.