After putting up a dozen, most of which on a Rangers rookie, the Braves will send their version of Cody Bradford to the mound in hopes that Jared Shuster doesn’t suffer the same fate. The Rangers starter tonight is Dane Dunning, who’s been a bullpen guy his first 8 games and has been moved into the rotation for his last 2 games. While he’s carrying a stellar ERA, there’s a good mix of red and blue on his Statcast page and it wouldn’t surprise me if the Braves light him up or that he throws a complete game shutout.
Transaction a Day AA
This is the first time the “Oh, to be Young” phrase wasn’t a compliment. Danny Young gets the 30 minute trip to Gwinnett because he has options and Jared Shuster gets the flight to Arlington because he can throw baseballs for a longer amount of time than Danny Young. Lucas Luetge getting ramped up again and I have no idea what AA has up his sleeve when Luetge declares he’s ready to rejoin the team.
Braves MILB News
This move was shocking…before I started thinking about it, and then the OH moment happened. A.J. Smith-Shawver continues his rapid rise up the Braves MiLB chain, but it might not be for the reason that everyone thinks. The Southern League is the league that MLB chose to test out the new sticky ball, and after thinking about that, my “Top Performers for the Mississippi Braves” looks a whole lot more suspect due to the added advantage that isn’t present in any other league. While it may just be a theory, I feel that Smith-Shawver was promoted to AAA because the Braves want to see if he’s ready for the rotation and there’s no way to test that at Double-A with the sticky ball.
Braves Lineup
I like this lineup. I hope it hits dingers and catches baseballs.
Apparently AA said on the radio today that Fried is already feeling much better and that he is not a candidate for the 60 day IL. Maybe he won’t be gone as long as feared.
Oh, be still my heart. I hardly even dare to hope for that to be true.
Our old buddy Anibal Sanchez just retired. He finished fourth in the Cy Young vote in 2013, by far his best season, but he was quite a good pitcher for quite a long time. He retires with roughly 30 wins above replacement by both rWAR and fWAR. By WAR, he’s the fifth-best Venezuelan pitcher ever, behind only Johan Santana, Felix Hernandez, Carlos Zambrano, and Freddy Garcia, and he retires with the fourth-most innings pitched, retiring with more than 58 more IP than Zambrano and just 8 fewer than Santana.
His brilliance for us in 2018, after three years of mediocre performance when he looked like he might be washed, played a major role in helping the team to its first time atop the division in five years, and it extended his career by nearly half a decade.
Enjoy the sunset, Anibal, and thanks for that dream season.
I suspect we’re going to regret leaving all those baserunners in the early innings here.
The 2nd time through the order is not being as kind to Shuster.
Well, that was fun while it lasted.
Also, is it just me, or is DOB the biggest jinx imaginable?
After three, he tweets, “ Shuster looking a lot more like spring Shuster than what we saw in his first two MLB starts. He’s allowed just 2 walks through 3 scoreless innings.” And in the fourth inning … a full-throttle Episode.
Shuster is an opener. He gets hammered the second time through.
Shuster is throwing 92-93 tonight. He was topping out at 90 in his first 2 starts.
Not sure if he is a starter long term, though.
We sure hit a lot of ground balls.
Lee has nothing tonight. 4 non-competitive pitches to Garcia after 0-2 and then laser after laser.
Lee throwing straight up BP
Now these runs given up by Lee really hurt. The bullpen’s inability to keep the Braves in games lately has been very frustrating.
I can only figure Snit was trying to rest the bullpen by having Lee go two, but he wasn’t fooling anybody in the 6th, and after those Acuna & Murphy HRs, easy to wish we hadn’t waved the White Flag so early by sending him back out for the 7th.
That Acuna HR was a thing of abject majesty, though. (Incidentally, can you use ‘abject’ about something good, or is it only supposed to amplify something bad?)
EDIT: Jimenez is doing his best to save me any more time second-guessing the Lee decision.
Recap will be in the morning.
Belated recap is up.