“Arcia tomorrow night!”
~EVERY BRAVES FAN
There’s something special about our shortstop. It was Orlando Arcia who predicted Ronald Acuña, Jr. and Matt Olson would hit back-to-back jacks to open a game in earlier in the week, and it was Arcia who told his teammates he was going to walk it off if he got the last at-bat Thursday night against the Padres.
Braves Country was scratching its collective head when both Vaughn Grissom and Braden Shewmake were sent to Gwinnett a couple of weeks ago and Arcia was named the starting shortstop. A week and a day into the season, everybody’s like “Dansby who?,” Arcia is balling, and the Braves are 6-1 after a dramatic, come-from-behind, 7-6 win over the San Diego Padres.
Arcia is hitting .370/.414/.667 and leaving no doubt about the genius of AA and Brian Snitker, at least this early in the season. He’s taking advantage of the opportunity he has been given and is grateful for the opportunity. “I want to do whatever I can to help the team win,” he said after Thursday’s game. To this point, he has been great – holding off Vaughn Grissom who is pummeling AAA pitching at a .400 clip with an OPS of 1.260.
Our shortstop has been so great, in fact, that we are three paragraphs in and there has been no mention of Spencer Strider, who battled through five innings and left the game with a 4-3 lead. Strider struck out nine, walked three, and allowed four hits, the big one being a three-run shot from Matt Carpenter in the top of the fourth inning. Strider has 18 strikeouts through 11 innings.
Lucas Luetge looked human in his one inning and Nick Anderson was brilliant again before Kirby Yates hopped on the struggle bus in the top of the eighth. Yates walked the first two hitters he faced, wild-pitched in a run, and then should have eaten the ball on a bunt that he threw into rightfield, giving San Diego a 6-4 lead.
But the Braves have proven their mettle in recent years, often rallying in the game’s late inning. Arcia started a rally in the eight, Olson doubled him home, Austin Riley legged out an infield single, and Travis d’Arnaud laced a single through the four-hole to score Olson and set the stage for Arcia’s heroics with two outs in the bottom of the ninth.
Arcia was 3-for-4 with a walk, 2 RBI, and 2 runs scored, while Olson and Sean Murphy each had two hits. A.J. Minter pitched around a lead-off walk in the ninth to earn the win.
Notice of extremely long comment:
The Braves have, in many instances, proven that they’re willing to go with a hot hand strategy when a top prospect is failing to produce at the big league level; rather than letting the kid fail in place for months at a time, they’ll let someone else play their way into the lineup. Sometimes that prospect doesn’t get many more chances – Christian Bethancourt, Cristian Pache, Brandon Jones (a semi-prospect, really), and a lot of our pitching prospects have all struggled to get off the Gwinnett shuttle and park their cleats in Atlanta for good. Sometimes, though, they finally figure it out – Max Fried, Kyle Wright, A.J. Minter, Austin Riley.
The most egregious example of hot-handism, by far – if it’s even an example at all – was when Fredi Gonzalez benched Jason Heyward for Jose Constanza. At the time, I didn’t like it, but I tried to justify the logic of it, saying:
Vaughn Grissom obviously isn’t Jason Heyward, but it’s healthy for him to know that he won’t get anything handed to him on a silver platter, and it’s healthy for Orlando Arcia and every other man in the clubhouse to know that if they perform, they’ll be recognized, no matter whether they were perceived going into the year as a backup as a starter.
I don’t think any of us seriously believes that Orlando Arcia has suddenly transformed himself into a 3-4 win player, but he was a top-10 prospect back in 2016, and it’s entirely plausible that he’s capable of playing league-average defense with below-average (but playable) offense, and a coin flip’s worth of luck has given him perhaps the best week of baseball that he’s had since being called up. For a man who was signed as a Venezuelan 16-year old back in 2010, whose brother was signed three years before that – a man who, despite being only 31, has been out of baseball since 2017 – Orlando Arcia has had a long, long road. I’m happy as hell that he’s playing out of his mind and getting to be a starting shortstop for a first-place team and I hope it puts even more fire in the ass of Vaughn Grissom to know that if he wants to be a starting shortstop for a first-place team, all he’s gotta do is produce.
This team has not performed like a juggernaut, to go by the advanced stats. Our wRC+ is 7th in baseball, which is pretty good, and matches last year’s mark; however, our xFIP is 21st in baseball, and last year we were 3rd. By fielding, our rank is 14th in baseball, almost exactly neutral. Yet our +19 run differential is third-best in the league and fourth-best in baseball (behind only the Dodgers, the Rays, and the surprisingly strong Brewers). If anything, I think that suggests that we’re not playing over our heads, and that perhaps when the dust settles, we’ll be capable of playing at least this well while many other teams in baseball will take a step back.
We went into the year thinking of Arcia as a key piece in our surprisingly strong lineup depth. Now he’s got a multiyear contract, and he’s still just 28 years old. He’s only making a couple million bucks a year, so there’s nothing stopping Vaughn Grissom from coming back up and grabbing the brass ring. But he’s going to have to earn it. I think that’s a good way to set up the incentive structure for every single player in the organization.
Preach, Alex! The advanced metrics do tell a story, or paint a picture, that says the Braves aren’t necessarily playing like a juggernaut – at least not yet – and I’d agree that as those numbers begin to shift (as I imagine they will), this Braves team is going to win a lot of games.
Arcia is a great story, and I’m no foolish enough to believe he is going to maintain this pace – the good news is we don’t really need him to. And I couldn’t agree more on the incentive for young Grissom…work, get better, and force leadership’s hand!
My guess is if Grissom hits well in AAA, we’ll see him come up as the super sub and Ozuna will mercifully, for us, be released.
It’s possible, TD, but I wonder if that’s a good idea, or if they should just let him continue raking AAA pitching while getting all the game reps he can defensively? Thoughts?
I love the idea of utilizing the young athletic guy as the super-sub and it would alleviate a whole lot of Snitker’s “regular lineup” problems should Grissom be able to play 6 positions (I truly think he could do it: 1B, 2B, SS, 3B, LF, RF).
By the way, we have a new post by Cade.
And a reminder to all:
Game Threads and Recaps will have comments turned on. All other pieces will channel to the bar. I LOVED the energy on the game thread last night and feel like we are headed in the right direction. Just takes time…
Man, I remember pulling for Brandon Jones so we could have A. Jones, B. Jones, and C. Jones.
We have a game thread.