When Georgia’s own President, James Earl Carter, Jr., gave a speech about high energy prices he grumbled a little about the American people expecting too much. He actually didn’t use the word, but some media outlet indicated that the President was describing a malaise. I guess malaise can be defined as having the “blahs” when there is really no reason to. I think that fits these Braves.
As of last year, I got shifted from Monday recaps to Wednesday recaps. And one thing was that, particularly in the first half of the year, it seemed as if every recap was a loss. This year, Wednesday has been Winsday over and over. If the rest of you days would do as well as Wednesday, we would run away with this thing.
The overqualified Jared Shuster faced James Kapriellian. I think the Braves had a Capellan or something like that about 10 to 15 years ago that could throw 100, but when he did, everybody needed to be wearing body armor. Shuster went through the first 5 in fairly good shape. At least no runs scored. First, don’t suck. Meanwhile the offense sucked up until the top of 5. Then, they got something going. Marcel Ozuna struck out (yeah, it’s looking like this dead cat has about come back down to earth). Then Eddie Rosario singled. then Ozzie Albies homered. Two to zero. But, they didn’t stop there. Orlando Arcia singled. Michael Harris II struck out. Ronald Acuna, Jr. hit a ground rule double. Kap intentionally walked Olson, and then hit Austin Riley. 3 runs on our side.
The wobbly Shuster wobbled a little too much in 6. With one out and first and third and one run in, Snit brought in Uncle Jesse Chavez. He let one of them their inherited runners score on a ground out, but then got out of it.
Hibernation? NO! A whole lot of offense produced one more run. Then A. J. Minter, Nick Anderson, and Raisel Iglesias each got 3 straight outs, and we can leave this town.
Braves have a day off to get from Oakland to Phoenix. Maybe by then, they will figure out what they are going to do with A. J. Smith-Shawver.
Greetings from Husavik. Two days at sea and I miss baseball. I would have made a lousy pre-internet seaman for any number of reasons.
Thanks,cliff, for keeping me informed here just north of the Arctic Circle.
Jose Capellan was hyped by the then-huge Braves prospect machine, but I think he was always doomed for trade bait and then anonymity, which is basically what happened. The worst part is that we traded him for Dan C. Kolb.
I just wanted to make sure we gave credit to the real hero here – me, for writing the Game 2 recap that obviously inspired our boys to give a slightly better effort this time around. A lot of the time, the recaps are the most important part of the ballgame!
Been meaning to thank you for that recap actually, AAR! I had never heard of the Massachusetts Game, and went down a fun rabbit hole of learning about it yesterday.
Thanks, Cliff. First, don’t suck…I’m grateful that Shuster is not sucking and that the offense figured it out (just enough) to score a few times. And I’m grateful Raisel Iglesias could feel the ball on Winsday afternoon. If for not other reason, the A’s should relocate to Las Vegas so pitchers can feel the ball as we move into June and Snit doesn’t have to wear that parka any longer.
This has been a frustrating series, but Shuster and Soroka pitching well means the world to this team. The offense had a couple fluky nights and whatever, that won’t continue. But what could easily continue is our rotation woes, and I loved what I saw from Shuster yesterday and especially Soroka.
I await Chief’s reply to my question of which team is just so gosh darn loaded that they’re sure fire to knock us out of the first round. One thing that myopic fans of any sport and any team do is they think their team’s issues are unique to them. For example, Florida football fans have been and will continue to melt down that Graham Mertz is who we took from the portal. Half of the teams in the SEC right now have crappy QB1’s, so we’re definitely not alone in our frustrations. Get better elsewhere, I say.
For baseball, no one has enough pitching. No one can lose 2/5 of their rotation and not blink an eye. We’re 1/3 of the way through the season, so healthy starters should be around 10-12 starts. Guess how many guys have made 10 starts? 70, so that’s 2.3 per team. We all need 5, sometimes 6. So this idea that we’re the only ones dealing with a lack of quality starters is based on Braves fans still thinking that it’s the days of Maddux/Glavine/Smoltz/Millwood/Neagle/etc etc. Those days have been gone for a LONG time.
Ideally you’d get about, say, 1 fWAR from a reliever, right? 98 guys in all of baseball are on pace for that, so that’s 3 per team. Bullpen’s got 8 guys. We’re not the only ones who need a little more out of the pen.
Every team in our division has a position player who qualifies for the batting title that’s below replacement level, per fWAR… except us.
We’ll be fine.
Well, I guess Ozuna’s surge amounted to something, didn’t it?
NICE! Thanks for putting it into perspective. Great post, Rob.
I was curious and looked back at the leaderboard (FanGraphs WAR) for Braves Left Fielders this CENTURY. The results were… not inspiring. I would never have guessed who comes in at #1. I’ll post top 5 below in case you want to guess for yourself.
I would guess Klesko and Gant, but not sure if they played long enough to accumulate top-5 fWAR. Both also get hurt by defensive metrics (booo!). It’s probably an old-timer player or two at the top?
Not just 2 out of 5 starters … 2 out of the top 3. There’s reason for some concern here. And reason for optimism. We just don’t know enough yet. One thing I know for sure is that our chase-rate is bottom-of-the-barrel lately. Might’ve just been trying to minimize time spent in Oakland though. Can’t blame ’em.
And the top Braves LF (by fWAR) since 2000 are….
#1 – Martin Prado(!) 12.7 fWAR
#2 – Justin Upton 7.2 WAR
#3 – Matt Diaz 5.0 WAR
#4 – Evan Gattis 4.2 WAR
#5 – Adam Duval 3.4 WAR
Extra weird that 2 of the top 4 are a catcher and an infielder.
The top LF in all MLB during that same span has been Barry Bonds. And he stopped playing after 2007!
Let’s see the worst Braves LFs because why not:
5th worst – Emilio Bonafacio (-1.0 fWAR)
Three tied for 2nd worst –
ACHE, or Garret Anderson (-1.1 fWAR)
Matt Kemp (-1.1 fWAR)
Bobby Bonilla (-1.1 fWAR)
…
…
…
A tuna salad sandwich left on the hot Georgia asphalt
…
THE worst – Melky Cabrera (-1.5 fWAR)
Unfortunately, that’s actually not right. Prado largely amassed his WAR at second base. (His exact same 12.7 WAR show up on the second base leaderboards, where he’s in third place, behind Ozzie Albies and Marcus Giles.) That’s why you’ve got a catcher and an infielder on your list – a lot of their WAR were amassed at their “home” positions, where they got a nice positional replacement bonus.
So you have to actually filter by the position in the “Split” dropdown, I believe. And it looks like these positional splits are only available since 2002, to obtain their performance while playing a particular position.
The actual best Braves left fielder since 2002 was, of course… drumroll, please (and here’s the list if you want to peruse)… Chipper Jones. Second is Juston Upton. Prado’s third, and Ronald Acuña is in fourth, in just under a season’s worth of at-bats.
Sorting it another way…
By the baseball-reference Stathead tool, I looked at all players who played at least 50% of their games in left field, since the team came to Atlanta in 1966. There were just four players who amassed at least 10 WAR: Lonnie “Skates” Smith (17.3), “Beeg Boy” Rico Carty (16.1), Ralph “Roadrunner” Garr (12.7), and Ryan Klesko (10.7).
The Braves have been punting on left field for a long, long time. Hard to argue with the results.
Oh man, thanks for setting that straight, Alex. Your list does make a lot more sense. How could I forget the Chipper LF seasons!?
Melky still sucks.
Yup, this team just completed a 15-14 month vs. most of MLB’s good clubs. Not exactly wonderful, but call it surviving the month. Against a less-daunting June sked, just keep grinding, win the upcoming home series vs. NYM, and I suspect we’ll still be on top by month’s end.
JonF, I had a work colleague who liked his Iceland vacation so much that he made it a regular visit (especially after its economy tanked). I hear the spas are terrific & the bars are Viking-worthy.
Enter the Graham Mertz Era. In Vegas, Florida’s win-total over/under was 5.5. No, I didn’t make that bet, but it was tempting.
Man, my family and I loved Iceland. The Spas, ahhh, the spas, so relaxing.
My understanding is, if anyone offers you the “traditional” rotten shark’s head, just say no.
Speaking of malaise… no posts on this site in two days.
Does anyone have game thread duties today?