Not the finest three hours for Chris Conroy. In addition to some questionable ball-and-strike calls, he called Joc Pederson out on a foul tip the catcher couldn’t corral, and called Freddie out on a play at the plate where he slid in under the tag. (Not for nothing, but third base umpire Bill Welke’s literally been fined for blowing calls before.) Do better, blue.
Not a great game all around, to be honest. Charlie Morton wasn’t his sharpest. He struck out nine and walked nobody in five innings. But he also gave up another homer to Giancarlo Stanton, which you could understand, if he hadn’t also given up a homer to Rougned Odor, a guy whose OPS is under .700.
Meanwhile, the Braves struggled to score off Andrew Heaney, who came in with an ERA of 5.51. He allowed just three hits in four innings. Thankfully, one of those hits was a two-run Dansby double. In the fifth, the Braves put together a rally and scored one run. They should have been credited with a second, but Freddie was called out on a play that was inconclusive in real time, but the replay made it pretty clear he got in under the tag.
In yet one more example of the CYA “call stands” malarkey into which the umpires have turned baseball’s ineffectual instant replay, he was called out. Then, Chris Martin yielded a solo insurance homer in the 7th.
In the final frame, Aroldis Chapman completely struggled to command his fastball, and the Braves managed one more bases-loaded walk. But with the bases still loaded, Freddie flied out.
The Braves have scored a total of five runs against Yankee pitching staffs led by Jordan Montgomery and Andrew Heaney, and that ain’t enough, especially if our pitchers insist on continuing to pitch to Stanton. Two off days in a row feels perverse, but these fellas look like they sure could use at least one of them.
Thanks AAR. I’m glad I missed this game.
I don’t know if anyone has noticed but Heredia has turned back into a pumpkin. He now has an OPS of .663.
I thought Pederson was hit by the pitch and the issue was whether he swung, no? His flop on the ground and grimace certainly made me think he was in pain. Didn’t see any of the postgame press session, so I don’t know whether Snit or anyone said anything to the contrary.
Btw, I don’t know how many years ago Bally/SportsSouth started televising the postgame press sessions, but it seems like the sort of obvious thing that once they start, you wonder why they weren’t doing it before.
@1 I like him as a defensive replacement for sure but he has been an offensive pumpkin for a while.
I just watched the replay of Freddie called out at the plate in the 5th inning and… sweet jiminy cricket, if the umpiring crew won’t use (slow motion replay) conclusive evidence to overturn the on-field call then there really is no point to having replay.
Also, I tuned in last night just in time to see the epic FF5 AB that ended the game. The Yankees are incredibly lucky to have gotten out of last night’s game with a win – their pitcher got himself down 3-1 and had to execute five consecutive well-thrown strikes before Freddie finally flew out on the 9th pitch of the AB. If any of those last five pitches was out of the zone, Freddie is walking to first and if any of them were a little more hittable, the Braves probably walk it off. Tough, tough loss.
PS – I used to be “Game, Blauser” but am changing to a new punny name and will offer the disclaimer that I am not actually a dedicated Camargo fan.
Ask not for whom the Bell tolls / On first looking into the possibility of a Chapman Homer.
There is nothing in baseball that can compete for sustained drama and its accompanying bays of delight from a home crowd as the gradual disintegration of the other guys pitcher when the game is on the line and it becomes apparent he’s losing his fastball, he won’t even throw it any more.. He’s frightened, he can’t walk one more off the loaded bases without giving up the lead. The noise is amazing and only feeds off itself. Sustained, almost primitive.
Last crescendo as he is taken out, an abject failure. That one we won.
Not a real win. But, for as long as it held life, close.
Tangential to last night’s results, question for y’all! There was a moment—I think when Pederson got hit/K’d—with runners on 1st & 2nd, and 2 outs, where Chip got really excited about Pederson potentially getting on base, so Morton would come up in that inning to, if nothing else, at least “clear the pitcher’s spot.”
I feel like I hear Chip say this a lot, and I know that accusing Chip of not thinking something through is like accusing a window of transparency, but giving him the benefit of the doubt here, I got legitimately curious— is there actually any real benefit to “clearing the pitcher’s spot?” That is, ending an inning with a hitting pitcher making an out vs. starting an inning with a hitting pitcher making an out? I will say I don’t really know what I’m talking about here; if I had to say, if the assumption is the pitcher is going to make an out, I’d guess you’d want it in the lowest leverage possible? Which, to my mind, would vary, I guess, and in the case of last night, would not have been with the bases loaded in a close game with two outs? But again, don’t really know & thought I’d put it to the brain trust here.
Thank you, Alex, for your gift of words.
Cph, JonathanF and others do what they do for fun. Profit appears to be a minor consideration.
What minds light this juke joint!
Take a couple of days off, Hammers. If God so wills, we will be here when you get back.
A lotta lotta replays showing how the ball deflected made it look strongly like a foul tip.
Welcome back for the first time, Camargo Cult!
“Camargo Cult” is almost as excellent a username as “Dale Murphy’s Mistress.”
Morton in post-game interview questions what we all do and that is, while in video review, why does the initial call bear any weight? It’s beating dead horses, but this seems the biggest problem.
It used to be that a guy like Freddie saying “I felt the glove on my back after my foot touched the plate” might have some weight. What I can understand and it was evident on the Riley call was that the ump is the closest to the play and most often has the clearest view and that should have some weight. BUT, it should not always have any weight especially if it’s clear that the ump’s view was blocked. I think the ump’s full view of the Freddie play was blocked by Sanchez’s body and leg. That should vastly reduce the weight of the original call.
Even the Yankee announcers on MLBN were saying they thought Freddie was safe.
Oh, and listening to the Yankee announcers (including Cone) was painful at times. They always come back to 1996 and Leyritz.
Interesting little tidbit from last night – only 4 pitchers ever have won 15+games at least 16 times – Maddux, Cy Young, Walter Johnson, and Spahn. Only two have done it 18 times and that’s Maddux and Young. That is remarkable.
@6, if you assume that the options are either having Pederson make the last out of the inning or having him reach base and having the pitcher make the last out (with no runs scoring and no pinch-hitters in either case), then the second option greatly increases your run expectancy in the following inning. Also, if the pitcher somehow gets on base, there’s a chance of a big inning with the team’s most prolific extra-base hitter up next.
If Freeman had walked to tie the game, we had a decent chance of seeing Fried pinch-hitting in the 10th, as the pitcher’s spot would have been due up 5th. I assume he’d be the first choice among the pitchers and Ynoa the second.
@ 6,
Not sure of the current updated numbers, but one of my most statistacally “wow”moments was supplied by Tim McCarver. I think it was on a Braves postseason game broadcast in the early 90’s. Went about like this:
“Through Major League history, when the first hitter reaches base safely, teams have a 50% chance of scoring one or more runs. When the first batter makes an out, that drops to 16%.”
So, yeah, a .200 obp pitcher is a big drag compared to a .380 lead off hitter.
I know we lost, but last nights game is why I am a baseball fan. Bases loaded, bottom of the 9th, 3-2 count, reigning MVP at the plate. That’s the game you live for.
I can’t wait until the Skankees come back to Earth.
Tough loss, exciting game, hope we see them again. If the Yanks score runs, they’re tough.
But, back to NL business…
#5
“For Whom the Bell Tolls…”?
Funny, I’m headed to the Hemingway Museum tomorrow.
There are two rules I would change in baseball if I were commish for a day.
First, a ball that is pitched over a batter’s head that incidentally hits the bat should not be a foul ball. The pitcher should get no benefit from almost hitting a guy in the head.
Second, when a batter is trying to avoid getting hit with a pitch riding in, you shouldn’t be allowed to call a checked swing, because how much of that motion is a swing and how much is get me out of the way of this 100-mph pitch is impossible to tell. If someone makes a full swing, fine, but a check swing where the ball is riding in, the benefit of the doubt needs to go to the hitter, not the pitcher who nearly broke someone’s wrist.
I had similar comments after Culberson got hit in the face a couple of years ago and Dave Martinez was trying to argue he swung. These are terrible rules and something should be put into place to protect the batter or at the very least not reward the pitcher for a reckless pitch.
It’s not that the call on the field should carry no weight IMO. There are some replays where you can legitimately not decipher what happened, because of bad camera angles or the tag and the runner touching the base happening nearly simultaneously or whatever. In those cases, the call on the field should stand and the replay official shouldn’t be flipping a coin and relitigating it IMO. However, it goes back to the difference between “clear and convincing evidence,” which was supposed to be the standard, and “beyond any doubt” that I’ve talked about before.
Also, MLB’s complete unwillingness to string different camera angles together to tell what happened is completely absurd. If they’d have done that last night, Freddie would’ve been called safe. You could tell from one angle when Sanchez tagged him (but not really see the foot touching the plate) and you could tell via another angle when his foot touched the plate (but not really see the tag). If you use those two together, you would know that the tag hadn’t happened yet when his foot touched the plate. However, unless every single piece of needed information is all right there in one angle, they just throw their hands up and declare it inconclusive. But it wasn’t inconclusive, MLB just isn’t trying hard enough.
It does seem like MLB has improved a bit on overturning calls that were clearly wrong since the Alec Bohm catastrophe on Sunday Night Baseball. That was an instance where every piece of information was available with one camera angle and they still refused to overturn the call on the field, and everyone saw it because the game had an exclusive window on national TV. Since then, I haven’t seen anything nearly as egregious get upheld. However, they’re still not making good enough use of the system they have to get calls right, because they’re apparently still not using multiple angles at once.
Also, Chip kind of mentioned last night that in the Japanese and South Korean leagues, they use 4D technology for instant replay, which automatically strings different camera angles together (it’s that technology where you’re looking at a replay at one angle and then they pause it and the camera seems to seamlessly pan around to a different angle), and wondered why MLB wasn’t using that technology. If what he said about Japan and Korea was accurate, that’s a damn good question.
If you’re wondering why MLB steadfastly refuses to make use of technology, the only answer is that its leadership is proudly backward and always has been. Plenty of owners resisted using lights for decades!
@16 In Key West? I want to see the Hemingway house so badly. A friend and I had planned a trip there this winter but decided against it due the Covid problems there, etc. We decided to go to the Outer Banks in NC to see the wild ponies instead. Hopefully I will get to Key West one day. Maybe next year.
New thread.
https://bravesjournal.mystagingwebsite.com/2021/08/25/decisions-loom-for-braves/
16 and 20 – If in Key West I highly recommend booking a seaplane to the Dry Tortugas.