By now, you know that Major League Baseball has announced a desire to crack down in earnest on all of the ways that pitchers have historically skirted the rules banning foreign substances on baseballs, and they are NOT HAPPY about it. As Timo noticed in the last thread, Tyler Glasnow says he tore his UCL because he had to death-grip the baseball once he could no longer use his trusty sunscreen to impart absurd amounts of spin on the ball, and for all I know he may be right.

But my first thought in all of this is that this kind of rule change must be good for the Braves, because one look at the box score will tell you that Braves pitchers just do not know how to cheat — either we’ve got the only honest pen in baseball, or our pitchers are just as bad at gunking up the ball as they are at locating it. So, I’m hoping that this belated rules enforcement will level the playing field.

Anyway, the game. The offense was good, the pitching was bad. Ho hum, what else is new? Ronald Acuna only went 2-for-5, so understandably he came in for some complaints on the blog; but actually, every regular other than William Contreras got at least one hit. The Braves got doubles from Ronald Acuna, Dansby Swanson, Guillermo Heredia, and Abraham Almonte. And Chris Martin gave up a two-out three-run homer in the 8th inning, and you’re gonna lose just about every game where that happens.

Nice to hear Anthopoulos say we’d have some money to spend in July and Soroka back in August. It would be even nicer if this team would be in contention by that point. It’s getting awfully late in the season to have never spent a single day above .500.

Here’s hoping that the Braves will, to paraphrase Abba Eban, “behave wisely, once they have exhausted all other alternatives.”