The Rant
We Braves fans are spoiled. And it seems like every time the team loses, it’s a self-inflicted loss. Case in point, Matt Olson, who’s start is more Casey Kotchman than Matt Olson, just seems like his body has been taken over by a city league softball player and every facet of his game is suffering. While he wasn’t charged with errors, he made 2 bewildering moves last night that impacted the outcome of the game while also going 0-4. And let’s be fair, it isn’t just Olson:
- Ronald Acuña Jr. went 0-5, and OPS is down to .730
- Austin Riley went 0-5 and OPS is down to .677
- Jarred Kelenic is carrying a .435 OPS in his last 13 games with 17Ks and the dead eyes have returned
Thank the light that Acuña has been getting on base and the middle/back end of the order in Marcell Ozuna, Michael Harris II, Orlando Arcia, and Travis D’Arnaud are picking up the slack.
The Recap
Charlie Morton just doesn’t get enough credit across the Braves blogosphere. The dude is 40, just went up against the current best team in the AL, and put up zeroes through 7 innings, giving up 4 hits, 1 walk and striking out 6. Unfortunately for Charle, Joe Jimenez wasn’t good, giving up 2 in the 8th. Raisel Iglesias was fine and got the Braves to extras tied 2-2. Dylan Lee relieved Iglesias and looked great and ended up throwing 2 innings and was charged with the loss, of no real fault of his own.
Edit: Assumptions in journalism are lazy and as the head honcho here, I’ve got to be better. During Joe Jimenez’s inning, I was on kid duty, reading books to my kids and didn’t catch the inning. I’m going to leave my poor assumptions up as a reminder to myself to never assume in baseball.
After reading the recap thread, I did some research and found this quite fascinating:
Sorry Joe, I’ll do better.
There were a lot of frustrating parts to last night’s game, but the most frustrating was the 10th inning. Lee was brilliant, allowed no runs, and it seemed like victory was near:
- Matt Olson starts at 2B
- Intentional BB to Ozuna
- Orlando Arcia singles
If the Braves had anyone else on 2B (outside of the 2 already on base), the game would’ve been over, instead bases juiced and no outs with Michael Harris II up. Harris, smelling blood and victory, was not so patient and swung at the first pitch. Because he was frustrated with himself, he was almost doubled up but beat it out with a 1/2 step. Chadwick Tromp then K’d and Kelenic popped out. The Guardians scored 2 in the 11th and the Braves went 1, 2, and 3, went 1-2-3 in the bottom to seal the victory for the enemy.
As far as Olson getting thrown out getting back to first, the lead runner is supposed to stay in a rundown long enough for the trail runner to advance. Either Ozzie couldn’t be bothered, or Cleveland executed it perfectly; I lean toward the latter.
Can’t agree with Joe Jimenez not being good, he had three bunt hits to Riley, with a combined exit velo of about 80 mph total, a double play ball that wasn’t due to Ozzie’s arm, and a double steal with TDA messing up.
The ball literally did not get out of the infield and they got two runs out of it. I felt bad for Jimenez, honestly.
A lot of blame can be spread around, from Williams not getting a good jump off 2nd in the eight inning, to Tromp swing at balls 2-4 with the bases loaded, to Acuna and Olson being black holes for weeks now. (Riley too, but he at least hit the ball hard yesterday, twas just unlucky).
Lazy journalism on my behalf. I watched most of the game, but admittedly was reading books to my kids during that inning. I’ve left my lazy journalism up to remind me to not make assumptions but added notes to clear Joe Jimenez of any wrongdoing.
I thought Williams got a pretty decent jump considering the ball was almost caught. Got to feel bad for Jimenez, though.
With 1 out, it was a poor send by Tui. Luke was just getting to 3B when the throw started.
No worries, Ryan C.
Jimenez has been better than I expected so far this year, I just wanted to detail why I don’t blame him for whatever the heck terrible luck happened to him last night.
Edit: oh wow, just saw that tweet you posted, Ryan. First time it has happened with three hits in a GAME, and it just so happened with three in an inning…that’s crazy.
Rusty, as for Williams, I was thinking about how many people mention that Cleveland had no fielders near second base, so he wouldn’t have been doubled off easily even if was caught. I do realize that it was a tough situation to be in.
Out of the seven losses, I swear we should’ve/could’ve won about 5 of those. The 16-4 spanking by the Mets being the big outlier. It’s been a great start to the season especially considering the offensive struggles of the usually steady contributors.
Good catch on nobody covering 2nd base Carl. I didn’t notice that. Agreeing with Ryan it was an optimistic send.
Matt is going to come around but Acuna is not hitting either? Tromp needs to be sent back to AAA and bring someone else up that can help the team.
The only answer to that is Drake Baldwin, but they are not going To start his clock yet.
I think we’re treating Tromp too much like d’Arnaud to d’Arnaud’s Sean Murphy, if that made any sense. He’s getting entirely too much playing time. If you need to give him a start one out of every five with Travis waiting in the wings for any important late at-bats, that’s fine. But it’s currently more like two out of every five, and Snit doesn’t have any problem removing Travis from the game for a speculative pinch-running situation.
When both Murphy and Travis are healthy, we essentially have two starting catchers. I know that Travis is nominally the backup, but he’s not a true backup catcher. Tromp is a true backup/AAA catcher. We should stop playing him like a borderline starter. We need him on the roster right now and there’s really no other choice (per Ryan’s point above), but we don’t have to feature him.
TDA is 35 and really wore down in the 2nd half last year. I think that giving him an easier workload isn’t a bad idea.
Elder can’t afford walks and wild pitches. For a control artist he certainly is pretty wild. 4 walks, a HBP and 2 wild pitches in 5 innings isn’t going to help his cause.
It doesn’t matter when our offense is stuck in neutral though
2 runs, 3 runs… it doesn’t matter. Aaron Bummer is the human white flag. Giving up 2 hits to lefties doesn’t do much to enhance his reputation as a lefty specialist
Bummer continues living down to his surname. WHIP dangerously close to 2.000.
Gaudin is having a Chip-like day judging deep fly balls with the wind blowing in.
Defense and baserunning won (and lost!) that game.
Stole that one. As good as we are we haven’t even started playing good ball yet looking forward to that happening
Guardians ran themselves out of the inning and it may have cost them the game
Well, we had our moments of unhappiness last night and for much of this afternoon,, but it looks like we will remain the boring happy family that JonathanF bemoaned in his recap of Friday’s game.