A minor skid which fazed few outside the scarred denizens of this comment board came and went like the dew. One evening hence, and all was as it ought.
- Spencer Strider did the two things he does a lot of: struck out nearly everybody, and gave up a three-run-homer the one time he didn’t punch somebody out.
- The Braves lineup did the two things it does a lot of: Ronald Acuña Jr. led off the game with a solo homer, and the offense just kept pouring it on. (Acuña hit another one in the sixth, and somewhat astonishingly, those were the only two taters the team tallied.)
- The Braves bullpen did the one thing we’ve been a little bit leery of: retired all six men they faced in the 8th and 9th, half by strikeout, without a single baserunner allowed.
To paraphrase Dennis Green, when it comes to these Braves, I think we can safely say: they were who we thought they were.
Hard as it may be for the team to have found their motivation to continue playing at full intensity when the regular season has already been won and the only achievements left to pursue are statistical records – most home runs by a team, most stolen bases in a 40-homer season, most strikeouts by a starting pitcher in team history. If the team goes 10-1 over its next 11 games, they’ll set a franchise record for wins, too.
But what matters most is what happens next. The Braves are three games ahead of the Dodgers in the loss column, which is a healthy margin though not an unsurmountable one. The Phillies are two and a half games up on the Diamondbacks for the first wild card slot, so while they’re virtually assured a ticket to the playoffs they’ve still got to angle for positioning just like we did last year.
We’ve seen them enough to know their strengths and weaknesses: their outfield defense is no longer the pitiful liability it once was, with Rojas and Marsh out there. Their offense is deep and respectable. Their bullpen actually has the fourth-most WAR in baseball. However, their starting pitching is relatively thin. After the Braves’ first-round bye, there’s a pretty reasonable likelihood that we’ll see them again, and if we want to beat them, we’ll need to outslug them.
Today’s early game between Aaron Nola and Bryce Elder will be a good chance for the bats to shake the sleep out of their eyes and greet Aaron Nola rudely. In his career, he’s basically pitched a season’s worth of innings against us: 32 starts, 200 2/3 IP, 3.41 ERA, 3.42 K/BB. We’ve also hit 28 homers against him, and that’s no surprise; he’s got a career HR/9 of 1.1, and this year it’s 1.5, which is a big part of why his ERA is an unsightly 4.62. Not the walk year performance he was hoping for. So while his team is doing all they can to make a deep playoff run, Aaron personally needs to finish the year strong, as it could make tens of millions of dollars of difference.
Will this be the afternoon that Ronald hits 40? He certainly couldn’t pick a better time to do it!
Let’s make some more history.
Thanks for breaking the losing streak. I alone am focusing on the 104 RBI leadoff record. 5 to go to break it. And 70 steals to go with the 100 RBIS is, as I said, Ty Cobb territory.
Not to police your fun, as that is not my jurisdiction, but to be fair to Cobb here (I kind of cannot believe I’m saying that), getting 100 RBIs as a leadoff man is a lot different when you play AL baseball, as now we all must, and you have Michael Harris II in the nine-hole instead of Mike Foltynewicz or Christy Mathewson or whoever. (Maybe the first and last time those two are put in a sentence together.)
Though to be fair to Ronald, too, looking up just Cobb’s 1911 season (248 hits, 127 RBI, 83 SB), Detroit’s two most productive pitchers that year did have OPSes of .750 & .760 apiece, so I guess they weren’t all Foltys behind him. And Cobb, I also suppose, was not facing 100mph.
Who said Ty Cobb was a leadoff man? He hit 3rd in 1911. https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/DET/DET191105130.shtml
Better still: https://stathead.com/baseball/split_finder.cgi?request=1&order_by_asc=0&order_by=HR&player_id=cobbty01&split_1=lineu%3Alineu&class=player&type=b
RBI records are highly team-dependent, so, yes, RAJ is helped greatly by having Orlando Arcia and Michael Harris II hitting ahead of him, though their home runs actually hurt his RBI totals! And it is no surprise that leadoff RBI records are all set by DH teams. If you want to say that Cobb had a better 1911 than Acuna’s season this year (completely ignoring the homers, which you really can’t do) I might agree if I’d seen any of his games.
Acuña’s second HR last night was just crazy. How on earth did he hit an 88 mph slider that was low and away 416 feet on a line to dead center? Wild stuff.
I’ll be genuinely interested to see if the Braves can set a new single season HR record. They’d need 17 more to do so, and there are 11 games left. If any team could do it, it’s this one. Heck, they smashed five HRs in just two innings against the Twins back in June. All it might take is a couple of big games like that.
I swear, the ball starts running away screaming a split second before he even hits it. What the ball does when he hits it is unreal. It’s like Andrelton and Andruw – I’ve never seen a guy hit the ball that damn hard every damn time before.
Right now, Acuna is just scalding the ball. Even his outs look like they’re gonna put a hole in the fielder’s glove.
BTW, today’s home-plate umpire is remarkably bad. I think he’s trying to catch a 4 pm flight.
Without looking it up, I assume 150 runs in a season (he has 138, not sure if that includes today’s run) would be pretty unusual in recent times as well. Seems like the sort of total Ruth might have had a few times with Gehrig batting behind him.
Manny had 165 RBI in 1999, which I think is the most in modern years by a whole lot. That team scored 1009 runs; Jim Thome had 108 RBI and was fourth on the team behind Manny Ramirez, Richie Sexson, and Robbie Alomar (!) who had 120 of his own.
Scoring 150 runs would be very unusual.
Since 1949, only one guy has scored 150 runs in a season — Craig Biggio had 152 runs in 2000.
Only been 46 guys since the beginning of baseball have done it. And, other than Ted Williams in 1949, everybody else who did it was from the ’20s, ’30s or late-19th century.
We are in a funk, and I’m not sure we can hold of the Dodgers who will obviously never lose again. Now I’m trying to tell myself that you actually want the #2 seed so you don’t have to play the Phillies in round 2 (they will almost surely be 4th). On the other hand, we play the Nationals 7 times in the remaining 10 games, and winning those 7 plus 1 more against the Cubs is enough to clinch the best record.
It’s a day game after a night game. The same team was excellent last night, and tonight our back-end starter went against their ace.
Lol, Francoueur thought they were off the air:
On Arcia’s AB:
“Why the hell was he backing up there?”
Damn if Ozuna didn’t almost hit it outta there… missed by a foot or 2…
OK, let’s win this thing…
EDIT: Now that’s what I call a pinch-runner.
Aw, dagnabbit.
Bad jump from third on the sac fly attempt.
I have an irrational hatred for Alec Bohm and I hope he doesn’t get a huge hit to win it.
Well, phew I guess
Edit: Come to think of it, I hate all these Phillies players
Stop walking people, A.J.
Argh.
Recapped:
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