Philadelphia’s weather sucks and so does their team. The Braves will get going tomorrow and will play 19 games in 20 days. The Opening Day roster has already been set:
No real surprises here, especially after Jackson Stephens was outrighted to Gwinnett and then elected free agency. The Braves will keep David Fletcher at AAA as long as possible for 2 reasons:
- Once brought up, he’ll have to stay or be DFA’d.
- Let him cook at AAA to increase trade value.
A Braves Lineup from 10 Years Ago
I’m sure some of you will remember the reason the Braves went with this lineup in 2014, but I definitely do not:
- Justin Upton
- Andrelton Simmons
- Jason Heyward
- Dan Uggla
- Chris Johnson
- Freddie Freeman
- Julio Teheran
- Evan Gattis
- B.J. Upton
Tomorrow can’t get here fast enough….
Just a reminder to all that we are starting the regular season tomorrow and that means we will go back to last year’s format where Game threads and recaps will have their own commenting section while the rest will be channeled into the bar.
Looking forward to another great Braves Journal season!
That is a profoundly weird lineup.
Wait, that was a real lineup? Pitcher in the 7-hole, Freddie in the 6-hole, JUpton at the top of the order? Weeeeeeird.
Freddie wasn’t Freddie back then. Fredi, however. Fredi was definitely full-on Fredi. And that explains the lineup.
I guess Fredi was an ok clubhouse manager, because he sure was bad at managing a pitching staff (Venters and O’Flaherty being run into the ground with overuse) and analytic decision making.
I don’t remember him starting J-Up leadoff and hitting the pitcher 7th. Probably a good thing. That 2014 team pitched pretty well but outside of a few players couldn’t hit the broad side of the barn with a bat.
Happy opening day, everyone. The Dodgers sign another deal with deferred money. I believe on a podcast years ago DOB said the Braves have a policy against deferred money. Does anyone know why that is? It’s not smart for every player — we were paying Bruce Sutter until 2021 — but I would consider it to keep this core together.
Gotta admit, I loved the Gattis story and he could whack the cowhide when he connected.
With the way BJ, aka Melvin, Upton was hitting that year, he should have been hit for by a DH when we played an AL team. He hit .208 with an OPS of .620 (an almost 70 point improvement in ops from the previous year). Uggla hit .162 with a .472 OPS and Simmons and Johnson didn’t set the world on fire offensively either. I won’t even get into our bench, but our only bench bat that hit over .250 was Phil Gosselin.
Our pitching staff featured Julio Teheran and such immortals as Aaron Harang, Ervin Santana, Alex Wood (who had a good year) and Mike Minor (who didn’t have a good year). Our bullpen was pretty solid. We finished 2nd in the NL East with a 79-83 record. Like everyone else, I was pretty hard on Fredi, but looking back on it, I don’t think Casey Stengel in his prime could have gotten a lot more out of that lineup.
Our starting pitching was pretty good too. This was before Julio lost his velocity and Harang was a great reclamation project. Santana also pitched a lot of innings of league-average ball. (we picked him up late because that was the same year Medlen and Beachy tore up their elbows for the 2nd time in spring)
But you’re right, outside of pre-prime Freeman, Justin Upton, Gattis (who couldn’t play everyday) and to a lesser extent Heyward, that team was horrible offensively.
I’m happy to see that Jason Heyward is back to being a full-time player, at least against RHP. They definitely won’t let him hit against LHP; it what seems to be a completely healthy season, he got exactly 28 PAs against LHP. So against RHP, he had a .818 OPS, played a solid RF, and produced 2.2 fWAR for $9M. Good for him; good for the Dodgers.
Aaron Harang. That’s a name I dd not expect to read on opening day.
Opening Day-Braves at 8PM Central European Time! Can’t wait. Go Braves!
RAJ in his own words:
https://projects.theplayerstribune.com/ronald-acuna-jr-atlanta-braves-mlb-baseball/p/1
Aaron Harang may not have been an immortal but in that season he was terrific for the Braves and almost pitched a no-hitter.
I remember ridiculing the decision to pick Harang off the scrap heap, preferring instead to go with young arms. I sure was wrong about that.