The Good
The Atlanta baseball club is 9.5 games ahead in the standings, with a .656 winning percentage that is comfortably the best in baseball, ahead of the Rays who have one fewer win and six more losses.
Atlanta’s position in its division is considerably aided by the fact that its four rival clubs have mightily struggled all year to score more runs than they have yielded: the second-place Phillies, who currently occupy the third wild-card spot, have a narrowly positive run differential of +13 and a slender 0.5 game margin over the third-place Marlins (losers of five straight), who have a differential of -15, nearly identical to the -11 differential of the fourth-place Mets, who despite their offseason spending spree are 17.5 games out of the division lead and 8.0 games out of the Wild Card.
The Bad
The Braves are not playing their best ball at the moment, to put it mildly. In their micro-skid over the past 10 days, the team is 1-4 with 40 runs allowed and 32 runs scored. And of those 40 runs allowed, 14 were coughed up by Bryce Elder in six innings of work, and 6 were yielded by Kolby Allard in just 2 2/3. Speaking as a medical layman, I think I found your problem right there.
Nothing much to complain about on the offensive side of the ball, really –Austin Riley hit two homers and had seven RBI last night; Ronald Acuña hit two homers in the 6-5 loss to the White Sox on Saturday – but the pitching has left somewhat to be desired. (Not for nothing, but the disarray in the pitching staff coincides exactly with A.J. Minter being on the shelf. We’ve been missing Uncle Jesse, too.)
Oh Well Whatever Nevermind
As to the immediate questions raised by last night’s loss: some guys are hurt and we know about it. Some guys may be hurt and we’re about to find out about it. And some guys who have been hurt, hopefully, will be coming back soon. We’ve got enough cushion to be able to weather these kinds of rough patches, just like we did with Michael Harris’s injury and extended slump.
Keeping Travis For Good
Meanwhile, Alex Anthopoulos did something lovely that has nothing to do with the pitching staff: he re-signed Travis d’Arnaud. Travis gets an $8 million contract for 2024 and a club option for another $8 million in 2025. As Peanut points out, the dynamics of their relationship with d’Arnaud shifted a bit after his lengthly recovery from his most recent concussion, raising questions of how much longer Travis will don the tools of ignorance. But it’s hard to argue with the general plan of keeping him around for as long as possible. Every single person in the clubhouse loves him, and his performance is pretty extraordinary. Since 2000, his first year in an Atlanta uniform, here are the fWAR totals for MLB catchers, minimum of 500 PA:
- Sean Murphy, 13.8
- J.T. Realmuto, 13.8
- Will Smith, 12.9
- Willson Contreras, 8.5
- Adley Rutschman, 7.6
- Jonah Heim, 7.1
- Travis d’Arnaud, 7.1
(William Contreras is 12th, at 5.2.)
I wouldn’t mind if the Braves just kept him around forever and eventually hired him to work alongside Sal Fasano and Eddie Perez as a permanent coach.
I can see TDA managing the Braves someday…glad AA locked him up. Now it is time to lock up some arms!
I didn’t get to see much of the game, but it sounds like we gave away 6-7 free runs in this one. Let’s shore up the defense tonight and hope Charlie is focused all night. When he doesn’t lose interest, he has been awesome lately.
And, man oh man, it was good to see Austin Riley square up a few balls! Go Braves!
AA is so good at locking up guys to long term deals, I wouldn’t be surprised if next year he hires TDA to manage the Braves from 2030 thru 2040 🙂
Thanks, AAR! Yeah, whatever, these bad runs happen during a season. Back to winning tonight.
Still, expecting AA to get some pitching help.
We need some pitching and I’m still not happy with left field. Let’s trade for Ohtani. I’d be okay with giving up Hilliard, Pillar, and McHugh.
That’s the spirit.
I guess I understand why some people who rosterbate in public are turned on (so to speak…?) by the gritty realism of plausible-sounding trade scenarios.
Not me, though. I don’t know who’s really available and at what price, and despite how much time you might spend consuming online rumors or whatever, neither do you. Realism is an illusion. Why not dream big?
Well, the Braves just put Hilliard on the IL and outright released Danny Young. So much for that idea.
I think you could add Culberson, Eli White and Ben Heller if AA needed to sweeten the pot
Maybe even Forrest Wall
HA, AAR, your overpaying!
I think what can we get for Grissom is the big question, he is gone. One solid reliever, 2 mediocre ones?
There is no such thing as a solid reliever, sadly. I think we’ve learned that from the Raisel Iglesias experience. Lights-out last year, decidedly iffy this year. TINSTAASR.
yeah, we just need a few more live arms, some work, some don’t, we just need reinforcements.
Check this out… I just caught wind of something interesting from a source in the Braves organization. I know a guy who’s best friends with Kelly Crull’s dad. Well, I don’t actually know this guy, but I do know someone who does. Anyway, I understand that this guy says that Kelly Crull’s dad bumped into the wife of one of the Braves’ medical staff while he was visiting the park the other day. And Kelly Crull’s dad apparently said that the wife of the Braves medical staff person said that this medical staff person overhead some of the Braves’ TV crew whispering about something a few of them heard while they happened to be up in the front office filming some post-draft “look behind the scenes” stuff, fortuitously right when trade deadline plans were also being laid in an adjacent office. To hear this guy I know who knows someone who’s best friends with Kelly Crull’s dad who spoke with the wife of the Braves medical staff person who overheard some of the Braves TV crew who were up in that office tell it, the back-and-forth between front office personnel was all in hushed tones, the kind that you know means something important, sensitive and confidential was being discussed. While the TV crew all had to school themselves to complete stillness and even then strain to hear, they all agreed they could each definitively make out one clear, crucial front office utterance that is of overriding interest to any Braves fan anywhere in the world. And that utterance was: “This trade deadline and every trade deadline, take every baseball trade rumor you read on the internet with a huge grain of salt, at the very least.”
Then how do we know you really do know Kelly Crull’s dad’s friend’s friend?
HAHAHAHA…Fun Police, that paragraph was gold!
LOL. Best trade rumor so far this year. You’re my inside source of choice, Fun Police.
Grissom, Shuster and Nacho for Giolito. Get it done, Wren.
Yessir!
Game thread:
Lest I forget, thank you, Alex. Your consistent excellence is, well, consistently excellent. It’s time to sign you to an extension. Twice your current salary enough?