Preliminary Gabbing
Do any of you play Immaculate Grid every day? If you don’t know it, Immaculate Grid has two sets of three categories arranged in a 3×3 grid. The answer to every grid entry is an MLB player. Many of the categories are very easy, like when say one category is Atlanta Braves Player and the other category is Hit 40 Homers in a season. I trust there is no one reading this who can’t come up with five or six correct answers to that one, though it might be a challenge to name all 13 possibilities. (Actually, in Immaculate Grid, franchises extend back to all cities they’ve played in, so there are actually 14 when you add Eddie Mathews.)
Most of the time, though, the two categories are two different teams, and your job is to come up with a player who played for both teams. I am horrible at this. It’s not too hard when one of the categories is Atlanta, because I can usually think of a player who left the Braves for that team or came to the Braves from the other team. And a few well-travelled players like Jeff Francoeur (Braves, Mets, Rangers, Royals, Giants, Padres, Phillies, Marlins) or Edwin Jackson (Dodgers, Rays, Tigers, Diamondbacks, White Sox, Cardinals, Nationals, Cubs, Braves, Marlins, Padres, Orioles, A’s, Blue Jays) often come in handy. But for some reason when I’m asked to name someone who played for the Mariners and the Padres or Cleveland and Cincinnati, or like today’s Orioles and Angels, I just blank out. Worse, I forget those matches within a day. You don’t get any wrong guesses, so I get a perfect score less than once a week.
Anyway, since in my game thread I talked about Jeff Burroughs and Mark Teixera and Otis Nixon, I thought I’d link to the complete list of players who donned spikes in both towns, though when you come to the five players who played in both towns and in no other, it’s a really short and not particularly memorable list, with all due apologies to Adrian Devine, Tommy Boggs, Paul Casanova, Eli White and Kolby Allard.
The Game
Marcus Semien did his leadoff thing with a homer off Chris Sale to make it 1-0 Rangers. Andrew Heaney threw 35 pitches in the first inning. That rarely comes out well (see the note below). But only 1 run scored when Marcel Ozuna continued his hitting streak plating Acuña. Ozuna now stands at 30% DiMaggio.
Travis d’Arnaud homered on his 48th pitch in the second to give the Braves a 2-1 lead. He then homered again his next time up in the 5th.
The 6th inning proved to be a Fire Sale. Hits by Semien, Wyatt Langford and Adonis’ Baby Brother tied the game. In the bottom, Olson, Ozuna and Harris loaded the basis with two outs to bring Travis to the plate again. Sensibly, Bruce Bochy wouldn’t let Heaney face him again. Well, I say it was sensible, but the result was the same. Travis hit his third homer, this time a grand slam off Jacob Latz to make it 7-3. That was all she wrote. Sale went 7, giving up three runs. Matzek pitched the eighth. Michael Harris II homered in the 8th leading to the moment when Little d had a chance to make Braves history, tieing Bob Horner‘s (and Joe Adcock‘s) record. A groundout to short kept Horner alone in Atlanta history.
The End of An Announcing Era
John Sterling retired from baseball announcing this week. He is beloved up here in New York. As far as I’m concerned, they can have him. His time in Atlanta from ’81-’89 on Braves and Hawks was terrible. The last thing I would have predicted is that he would go to the Yankees as the radio announcer for the next 35 years. Ububba has pointed out many of his elementary failures as a radio announcer, like a stubborn unwillingness to tell anybody what inning it is. And his home run calls are a joke… part of his longevity comes from the fact that everyone in New York was in on the joke but John Sterling.
Statistical Note of the Day
Andrew Heaney’s 35 pitches with only one run scoring is pretty evasive, but nowhere near a record. (It should be noted that we have only been tracking pitchcount records since the ’80s.) There have been 960 pitcher-innings of 35 pitches or more that went scoreless. The record comes from the top of the fourth inning in Chicago on May 23, 2010, Scott Linebrink threw 52 pitches against the Marlins without giving up a run.
The two-team part of Immaculate Grid is so incredibly hard for me. Regarding many-player deals, though, Jonathan, aren’t you forgetting the Aaron Bummer trade?
I couldn’t believe the Braves fired Darrel Chaney for John Sterling. Not that Darrel was all that good, but the air of smug and unearned self-importance Sterling gave off had me dialing up the radio broadcast for the half of each night’s game he did on TV. In those days the radio was pretty closely synced to the TV feed, so I rarely had to hear anyone but Ernie, Pete, and Skip. The Death Star in the person of Chip was still far in the distance.
It has never been a “Braves broadcast” without at least one of Ernie, Pete, or Skip. Back before cable and living in an area without TV brodcasts, CBS radio was the thing.
I think there’s some double-counting in saying Linebrink threw 52 pitches in that inning, Jonathan. Looking at the BRef link, I get “only” 40 pitches (and he threw fewer than 52 for his 1-2/3 IP), but BRef’s play-by-play list has a separate line for how many pitches there had been in the PA at the time of a wild pitch or stolen base or other action, and then when the PA is completed all the pitches in that PA are included in the total, including the ones that were in the previous line.
I’ve never played Immaculate Grid, but at one point last year I fooled around trying to find out things like the smallest set of players who between them have played for every current team. Even though some players have played for 35-40% of teams, I think the smallest set I could find was 5 or 6. Edwin Jackson and Rickey Henderson figured prominently in most of the groups, and Jesse Chavez could contribute to some groups as well.
I thought I’d debugged the multiple count problem, but I obviously didn’t. Some more programming!
Pros:
• d’Arnaud, obviously; he literally raised his wRC+ from 56 to 121 in one night
• Sale was pretty good again; solid 7/1 K/BB, FIP and xFIP were better than his ERA
• Harris going deep was cool; would have been out in all 30 ballparks per Statcast
Cons:
– Nothing really; can’t complain when you outhomer your opponents 4-1 and your pitching is largely solid
When you give up six baserunners in seven innings, usually you end up w fewer than three earned runs even giving up a homer.
OK. Programming corrected, JamesD. How about Jaime Barria in the top of the first in this game?
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/ANA/ANA201804220.shtml
Thanks mostly to a awesome 21 pitch confrontation with Brandon Belt, 49 pitches and no runs allowed. That’s the record.
Thanks, Jonathan. I assume that like Barria, most of the pitchers with high pitch totals in a scoreless inning or a PA don’t strike out or walk too many in general, not just in that inning.
Great start for Charlie!
Gaudin uses “69” and “4/20” in the same half inning.
I like him, but sometimes his humor is cringey.
TdA. You can’t stop him; you can only hope to contain him. !!!!!!! 🙂
I have to admit that Jimenez and Minter were awfully good.
The offense tonight was the guys who have been pressed into starting roles due to injury, d’Arnaud and Guillorme, plus a three-hit night from Michael Harris II, who’s batting second for the same reasons. My goodness. And the starting pitching has been a sight for sore eyes, too. Just like I said, last time was bad Charlie – it’s nice to see good Charlie.
How bout them Braves!
Is Lowe a local guy? He has 20+ family members on the field with him after the game taking pics.
I didn’t realize till you pointed that out, but according to baseball-reference, he went to Pope High School in Marietta!
Bullpen tonight was three innings, five strikeouts, one base runner. That’ll do.