This is where all pieces live that are not Game Threads or Game Recaps! Come join in on the fun and remember to tip your bartenders because they help clean your piss off the floor.
Pieces Discussed in this Bar:
The Bar, July 17-August 15
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Paging Katy Feeney: Do we really need so many Monday offdays? Or is it a conspiracy to make sure I do as few recaps as possible?
So I’ve created a new tool I call Ronald: Put in any number of hits, singles, doubles, triples, homers, stolen bases, runs scored and rbi and it spits out the earliest date at which any player achieved that combination or better. The current comparison for Acuna (using only 23 HR, 43 SB)
Eric Davis, 1987 –> August 19th (the date of 43rd sb)
Barry Bonds, 1990 –> August 20th (sb)
Joe Morgan, 1976 –> August 24th (sb)
Rickey Henderson, 1986, –> August 29th (23rd homer)
Neither the 82 runs or 58 RBIs change it all.
That’s a pretty cool tool JonathanF. The 80’s sure had speed and power guys. That’s much more exciting than the slow plodding slugger of the 2000’s and onwards. May this be the start of a new trend.
On “Nacho:”
I got this story off of something on TV about 10 years ago. I cannot assure its accuracy. It could be total local legend.
It seems that in the immediate post World War II San Antonio, Texas, there was a good Hispanic owned restaurant in the Hispanic part of town (think Dooky Chase, lower end, different ethnicities). There were quite a few Anglos that would head over for what was perceived as great Mexican or Tex-Mex food. Supposedly on a busy Saturday night around 9 a well to do Anglo showed up at “Nacho’s place” when they had run out of a lot of food items. Nacho knew his customer and wanted to offer him something. He said something like “I’ve got a lot of chips made up and I can put a little of this and a little of that on the chips and I think it would be good. If it isn’t good, you don’t owe me anything. Well, the next week the Anglo spread the word about how you had to go try some of Nacho’s chips.
Sounds like it basically happened more or less that way:
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/639356/nachos-history
Nice link, Alex. Any article that can help explain Howard Cosell’s seminal influence on the American uptake of the nacho is a much-needed addition to the annals of cultural transmission.
That’s pretty much the same way that Buffalo wings were invented, isn’t it?
Well, the injury bug continues to bite the Braves. Allard has been placed on the 60-day IL with what’s being described as “left shoulder nerve inflammation.” We now have 5 pitchers unavailable due to shoulder injuries.
Big day for all the Forrest Wall stans out there.
He sounds like a Tekken character to me.
As I said on March 7th, he sounds like an ecoproject in Costa Rica. https://bravesjournal.com/2023/03/07/up-against-the-wall/
Welcome to the Bigs, Forrest.
New game thread is live.
Ryan, can you give some context on the Chavez news? A couple days ago, when he was moved to the 60-day IL, the reports were that he would be eligible in mid-August. Any news on why they decided he had to be shelved for the rest of the year?
Also, I totally missed that they’d signed Whitley. He’s from Clayton, NC, outside Raleigh, and I bet their crosscheckers followed him in high school and college. (Or, at least, in college; looks like he went undrafted in high school.) Whenever the Braves pick up a southerner, I figure that they’ve been watching him for years.
Yeah, I haven’t seen this news anywhere.
Some of Pierce Johnson’s surface stats look pretty rough (namely his 6.00 ERA), but his performance hasn’t really been that bad. He’s mainly been hurt by his HR/FB (16.7%) and BABIP-against (.408), both of which are unsustainably high and which should theoretically regress toward the mean over time. Granted, he’s still a reliever, so who knows? He could be great, or he could be absolutely awful. Either way, the Braves needed pitching depth, so his acquisition makes sense.
I had totally forgotten reading about this in the offseason, but: Taylor Hearn is legitimate rodeo royalty.
https://theathletic.com/4163914/2023/03/03/taylor-hearn-rangers-rodeo-cleo-hearn/
I thought the ZZ Top reference was goiñg to be to Forrest Wall, who has legs and knows how to use them. I was wondering if you thought AA ought to trade for more speed. Maybe Herb Washington is still available.
That’s pretty good!
Those track guys don’t always work out, but Charlie Finley sure was a hoot. I remember Herb Washington’s APBA card. It read:
Herb Washington (F)
Bats —
Throws —
It turned out that, even though he was a world-class sprinter, he wasn’t that great at stealing bases — 29 for 45 isn’t really what you want.
Nonetheless, ’70s baseball was pretty wild & if you dig that era, here are 2 book suggestions. Loved ’em both:
“Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging ’70s” by Dan Epstein.
“Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic: Reggie, Rollie, Catfish, and Charlie Finley’s Swingin’ A’s” by Jason Turbow.
I gotta check those out! It’s about more than baseball, but Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning is great, too.
Well, Danny Young, Eli White, and Seth Elledge are back in the Braves minor leagues, so maybe AA’s an Eagles fan – you can get waived by the Braves, but you never really leave. The newest member of the club is Rowan Wick, of whom the Cubs recently washed their hands.
I wonder if the signing of White and Young is just a way of doing right and keeping them compensated since they are out for the season. It would be a bad look if they released them from a non-guaranteed contract while they are injured.
@cliff from the previous post, I didn’t watch the game & so don’t know if the announcers mentioned it, but from a highlight I saw, it looks like the Red Sox uniforms were the colors of the Boston Marathon. I’m with you about how they look on baseball players, though.
No game thread?
I’ll get one up in a few mins.
Game thread is up.
Nice trade piece, Ryan. Who is the left fielder in Oakland these days? Do they have an outfielder to deal? How about Soto? He’s been paid, I think he’d re-work his deal to play with Acuña and be more than willing to give his percentage to the Braves fund like all the other extensions have done! 😂
Seems to me LF could be resolved from within if we could trade Ozuna for a SP. I liked the idea of swapping Ozuna and Darvish granting the Braves would have to throw in a big sweetener. I would think platoons of Hilliard/Pillar in LF and D’Arnaud/Rosario (or even Culby/Rosario) at DH would solve those problems. As long as Ozuna is around, the essential LF/DH problem cannot be resolved. AA was a genius in dumping Matt Kemp; I hope he can do the same with Ozuna. They are quite similar.
On the other hand, I just looked at Darvish’s contract. No thanks. Scratch the thought.