Bryce Elder is a prototypical 5th starter. In all likelihood, he’ll keep his team ahead when facing the bottom of the barrel teams. However, Bryce should never, and I mean ever, face elite hitting teams. Unfortunately, he did face an elite team last night and got demolished, giving up 7 runs on 7 hits, 4 walks, 4 Ks, and 3 round trippers. Bryce was removed in the 4th inning and Dylan Lee did his best Jesse Chavez impersonation, throwing 2.2 innings, striking out 3, and keeping the game at 7-1. Unfortunately for Lee, the offense had nothing, collecting 6 hits, only 2 of the extra base variety, and looked deflated. Tyler Matzek came in for Lee and continued to look like a shell of himself since coming back from Tommy John. His ERA sits at 9.90 and his FB is in the category of lackluster.
Max Muncy went full beast mode, hitting 3 dingers off 3 different pitchers and the Dodgers collected 16 hits, including 5 homers and the rare Freddie Freeman triple.
The Braves will try to avoid being swept for the series today, game time at 4:10ET/3:10CT.
Braves Transactions
There were 3 transactions made by the Braves that were linked together.
- First, Pierce Johnson went to the IL with shoulder inflammation
- Second, Jackson Stephens, who’s on a split contract, had his contract selected, and joined the MLB team
- Third, because Jackson Stephens needed an active roster and 40-man spot, the Braves had to put Angel Perdomo on the 60-day IL, removing him from the 40-man, but he also receives service time which was something at Alex Anthopoulos was trying to avoid.
Speculating the Next Move
My guess is Jackson Stephens isn’t long for this roster and could be moved today. Ken Giles has been pitching really well at Gwinnett and the Braves could choose to bring him up sooner than later to fill Pierce Johnson’s spot.
There’s also a chance that Jimmy Herget, who was just acquired from the Angels for cash, could be the move as he’s already on the 40-man.
Completely agreed, Ryan. Elder is the perfect 5th starter: eats innings against the bad teams in the regular season so you can rack up wins, but you don’t want him facing elite lineups in either the regular season or playoffs. And that’s really not a knock against him. In the ideal world, he can pitch 180 innings a year with a 4 ERA and have a long career making $15M a year.
I still think the same thing about Elder until he consistently beats good lineups: if he’s pitching in a playoff game to the other team’s best hitter with the game on the line like last year, you’re doing it wrong. I don’t care if it was the 3rd inning like it was last year. Don’t do it! Burn your bullpen.
Looks like Fried may not make it out of the first inning again……
No hope today. It’s not 2023 anymore. This team got exposed on this trip.
And again 2 runs is probably enough since our offense makes every starting pitcher look like Cy Young. I am old enough to remember when our good players used to show up and hit in big series too.
The fly balls are not even getting to the warning track.
This lineup is a complete shell of what we thought it was. And aside from some early season one or two inning eruptions it hasn’t been consistently very good with a lot of just terrible at bats. It’s like they have no plan at the plate and just flail away.
Down 2 runs, 4 runs or 11 runs it’s all the same.
Thanks for costing us a run, Matt.
What does he do here, exactly? He’s useless this year.
At least we keep he and his .198 average at cleanup.
Their best players showed up in this series and ours didn’t… plain and simple
8 HRs in two games for the Dodgers. Where is this Braves lineup??? 4 of 5 hits by Ohtani, though
LA’s power stroke is why I’m not buying the baseballs argument for the power outage to everyone but Ozuna.
Whoever is supposed to recap this should follow the lead of the team and take the day off.
That has to be the worst west coast road trip in years. Even including that three of five losses were by one run. Reasonably decent pitching and gawdawful hitting.
We challenged DOOOOM. Never challenge DOOOOM.