Willy Adames homered in the top of the first, and the Brewers scratched across another run in the fifth on a couple of singles and a ground out to take the series and the game 2 – 1. Those were the only 3 hits Charlie Morton allowed in his 6 innings. He struck out 6 and walked none.
The Braves only run was scored by leadoff man Ozzie Albies in the sixth. Austin Riley had the RBI, and was the only Brave with 2 hits. Chris Martin, Luke Jackson, and Richard Rodriguez each threw perfect innings to finish things up.
So I’m going to hurl myself against the wall
sang Warren Zevon.
‘Cause I’d rather feel bad than not feel anything at all.
The Braves have now officially felt the most nothing at all of all the nothing at all feeling teams in MLB history. They are hurling Adam Duvall, Jorge Soler, and Eddie Rosario against the wall to see if anything sticks. There’s a fair chance they don’t perform any better than Abraham Almonte, Guillermo Heredia, or Ehire Adrianza. What they bring is upside; a chance to get lucky that the latter don’t provide.
It’s August 1st and the Braves stand at 52- 54, 4 games behind the Mets. Two months remaining. Let’s do something different for a while.
The Braves head to St. Louis to play Tuesday at 8:15 EDT; Max Fried and Jon Lester scheduled.
Well said, Rusty.
I know St Louis has a slightly better record than Atlanta, but they are 9.5 games off the division lead and 6.5 games out of the wildcard. Any insight on why they were buyers and not sellers at the deadline?
Hopefully Lefty can get the Braves going on a winning streak. Winning streak, yea one of those things were you win more than one game in a row.
I sure miss Warren Zevon.
Great in concert.
Matt Wisler, model American and shutdown closer, got the save for the Rays against the Red Sox tonight. He threw 23 pitches, ALL sliders.
Is this an anomaly? Are there other pitchers throwing one pitch 100% of the time? Even Lukey will sneak in a fastball every now and then.
Thank you, Rusty.
Morton pitched well. Riley is still serving me crow. I guess it was unrealistic to expect Freddie to sustain his July assault through season’s end, but I would really enjoy a nice string of wins.
You may not believe this. I just watched the Red Sox , Rays game. Now dig this, it was the Rays fourth straight win, and the Red Sox fourth straight lose. No kidding two streaks in one game. Such a thing.
Stunning.
Speaking of Warren Zevon & lefties:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03nHPUfp8kE
What is this every other game they lose their ability to hit crap? They have really good players, they know what they need to do but just can’t do it for some reason. Just really crazy. Been a Braves fan for 35 years and things going on right now is making me want to stop watching and just stop going to any games. Anyway, had to vent because they’re really just somewhere out there this season.
@7 – I first heard of Warren Zevon in an article about Bill Lee in Sports Illustrated by Peter Gammons. Not sure what I had for lunch yesterday though..
Are we reaching historical levels for the gap between our expected won/loss based on run differential and our actual won/loss?
I think that’s JonathanF’s bat-signal…
I always feel a little jealous whenever a kid who played high school ball in Georgia gets drafted and excels with another team — Gerald “Out” Posey comes to mind — but it’s hard to begrudge Akil Baddoo. Seems like a really great guy who has seriously busted his hump to make the most of his opportunity, especially on a team without a lot else to root for.
https://theundefeated.com/features/detroit-tigers-akil-baddoo-is-making-the-most-of-his-rookie-season/
I don’t know about history, but the Blue Jays are underperforming slightly more than the Braves this year.
And the Mariners are overperforming more than either the Jays or the Braves are underperforming.
At the moment, this is the Braves worst Pythagorean difference in Atlanta history and third-worst in franchise Retrosheet history (post-1920). Here are the top 6.
I’m too lazy to label this chart correctly, but the columns are runs, runs against, wins, games, losses, winning percentage, pythagorean winning percentage, and difference, sorted by difference.
1935 BSN 575.0 852.0 38.0 153.0 115.0 0.248366 0.327484 -0.079118
1945 BSN 721.0 728.0 67.0 154.0 87.0 0.435065 0.495580 -0.060515
2021 ATL 503.0 454.0 52.0 106.0 54.0 0.490566 0.546754 -0.056188
1951 BSN 723.0 662.0 76.0 155.0 79.0 0.490323 0.540239 -0.049916
1923 BSN 636.0 798.0 54.0 155.0 101.0 0.348387 0.397655 -0.049268
1973 ATL 799.0 774.0 76.0 162.0 86.0 0.469136 0.514539 -0.045404
for anyone interested, the pythagorean projection is (RS^1.83/(RS^1.83+RA^1.83))
@14 That’s awesome. Thank you, JonathanF.
So, if you get to the end of the year, and Atlanta has significantly underperformed their Pythag, then is your conclusion:
A) Random/bad luck
B) Failure by the GM
C) Failure by the manager
D) Failure by the bench staff
If it’s failure by the manager or failure by the bench staff, then should any of them get the axe? AA isn’t going anywhere, so I won’t even bother asking.
And, by the way, if the run differential continues to be positive and the win differential continues to be negative, this will be the 4th team with a positive run differential and a below-.500 record. The others were the 1951, 1973 and 2006 teams.
Somebody did a study once to try and correlate under- and over-performance to managerial quality, and Bill James talked about it in the early 80’s Abstracts. IIRC, the results were that there was something there, but most of it was luck.
@16 And 2006 was the low point of the Reitsma Run. Then Jorge Sosa and Kali Yates failed as closer. They didn’t get Wickman until the trade deadline. What’s the excuse for this year’s team?
I found a study: https://tht.fangraphs.com/pondering-pythagoras/
I remembered it correctly.
But what Gassko finds is that bullpens are important (mirroring your Reitsma point.) You need to give better pitchers high-leverage appearances. Whether that’s managerial or the GM is unclear.
Poor bullpen performance may very well explain at least some pythagorean underperformance.
The other explanation for underperformance you hear is failure of hitters to deliver in the clutch (high leverage situations). I’m pretty confident that really is largely luck. You hear some psychological or characterological explanations (not on this blog), but that’s largely BS. And managers/coaches have next nothing to do with clutch hitting. The GM may have some responsibility for a poor bench/pinch hitting options.
The 1973 Braves were an offensive juggernaut (three players with 40+ homers) but a pitching disaster. The led the league in runs scored but also surrendered more runs than anyone in the league. I wonder if such teams are more like to underperform run differential?
Having a bad bench and bullpen is a great way to underperform, and we’ve had both this year. Now that the roster has been improved a little, then I would expect Snit to have more buttons to push. But we still have roster problems. Someone rightly noted yesterday that had Snit had one option yesterday to PH for Smith in the 9th: Vogt. Should he empty the bench and his backup catcher during regulation? That’s certainly a debate, but his decision to hit Smith is not indefensible.
Carrying 13 pitchers greatly limits your pinch hit options, especially if the backup catcher is off limits.
We need another position player, whoever’s fault that is. I’ve lost track of the number of times we’ve run out of position players, but I can tell you exactly the number of times we’ve run out of relief pitchers.
Edit: or what tfloyd said.
If you follow Ozzie on Instagram, he’s basically a pitch man. He’s promoting gloves, BMW, QuickBooks, all sorts of stuff. And I can’t help but almost feel sorry for him that he’s having to do this to make money that he should have made on his contract.
@23- I agree. It’s just dumb.
@25- No one made him sign that contract.
@25 – Yep, noticed that when he was pitching some stuff here at home (we are fellow islanders) during the off-season. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I thought the same thing.
@25 – I don’t generally feel sorry for guys that make over $3 million per year. At least not based on salary.
#22
Almonte was on-deck to PH for the pitcher, IIRC, so Vogt was the only option left to PH for Smith.
Vogt’s a lefty, so I’d still prefer Smith to face Hader, whose numbers vs. LHHs are death-like.
But no… Snit didn’t have a lotta good options there.
I knew that was a poor choice of words.
I don’t feel sorry for him. Free market. He signed the deal. But I do continue to wonder why he signed the deal. I dunno, fellas, I’m always going to wonder if something was going on in that situation. We will never know. It’s fair for heads to scratch when a player willfully signs one of the most team-friendly deals in the history of sports.
I probably shouldn’t be conspiratorial. He probably just didn’t trust his body to age well considering his body type. Maybe he thought pitchers would figure him out. It’s probably nothing more than that. But he basically signed the same deal Ender Inciarte did. You’ll never convince me Ozzie Albies thinks he’s on the same level as Ender Inciarte.
New thread:
https://bravesjournal.mystagingwebsite.com/2021/08/02/checking-in-on-the-braves-prospects-for-july-30-21/