Please forgive the shameless ripoff of an Onion article I always liked. Yeah, the Red Sox won by the score of a forfeit, 9-0. Bravda put up a postgame story where Brian Snitker expressed his support for Schwellenbach. “Lot of strikes, kid is learning,” Snit told MLB.com. “Probably got too much of the plate. But he competes really well, stuff is good, and there’s a lot of upside there.”
But, honestly, who the hell cares if your rookie fifth starter throws up a stinker when you get one-hit? When you get one-hit in Fenway Park, for heaven’s sake?
Just for comparison: this was the first one-hitter the Red Sox have been involved with all year, on either side of the ball. It was the first one-hitter at Fenway since Rick Porcello one-hit the Yankees on August 3, 2018. The Braves offense is in rare company.
One piece of good news is that Jarred Kelenic seems to be okay. He came out of the game after jamming his wrist on a diving catch, but X-rays were negative. So the Braves leave Boston, their ancestral home, after splitting a two-game set, and now head to Washington, where there are enough expat Georgians like me that it practically sounds like a home game.
Smitty, I hope your barber hears some news soon. We’ll definitely turn our season around after AA trades Ray Kerr for Mookie Betts.
Bueller?
Not much for anyone to say after that debacle.
Yeah, I had just suggested in yesterday’s recap that the offensive performance in June is bound to be better than in May. Then yesterday happened. So I don’t have anything to say
Except great recap, Alex, under trying circumstances.
I guess I have a hard time understanding why we haven’t made a lot of “obvious” adjustments to our approach when the ball has not been flying out of the park for us like last year. We don’t make a lot of productive outs by moving runners over, we don’t seem to change our swings with two strikes, stuff like that. We just keep doing what we do hoping we won’t continue to be unlucky. Whether the dead ball theory is real or not, the bottom line is that we are not hitting as many homeruns or scoring as many runs.
That’s the one area I wholeheartedly agree. I’d like to see more contact (including cutting down swings after two strikes). Seems like there are an awful lot of Texas leaguers and seeing eye singles and stolen bases. That would indicate to me that contact is more important this year than barrel rate or hard hit balls. I’m wondering if that’s the strategy of MLB with rules changes to increase SBs and restrict shifts. Maybe that explains the deader ball, too.
The Braves were built around the idea of capitalizing on three true outcomes. If MLB limits that capability then the Braves will suffer more than most.
I think the Braves have players that can benefit from this trend if they encourage them to do so – Harris, Albies, Kelenic (and Acuna when healthy) could all benefit. Guys like Duvall and Olson will suffer. I think we’re seeing that in TdA’s success.
I am SO tired of watching guys strike out with RISP and less than two outs…..
Many many years ago, Mac got really annoyed about why sluggers who faced overshifts wouldn’t just bunt the ball towards the abandoned side of the infield.
The problem is, when you’ve been taught to focus on launch angle since you were twelve, it really is hard to learn a totally new skill (like directional bunting) or completely rebuild your swing on the fly, so situational hitting / smallball isn’t as pushbutton as we’d wish.
The biggest issue this year, I think, is that our strikeouts are way up from where they were last year. Could be that the team got broadly lucky last year and overperformed relative to their true talent in terms of making contact, and they’re all regressing to the mean this year. I’m not sure. The team’s approach is clearly, obviously, worse than it was last year, but I’m not sure how much of that can be fixed by any method other than just keeping an even keel and waiting for things to get better.
Yeah, most hitters cannot make massive adjustments to their approach in the middle of the season. That’s something you work on in the offseason and/or in Spring Training. Plus, let’s say you do attempt to change and then they bring the balls back to life. So then you just risked ruining your career by completely changing your approach only for your approach to once again be the best approach. If I were the hitters, I would just keep plugging away and not structurally change their approach to their professional life because Manfred and his goons decided to jack with the balls again.
I also think that they change the balls back sooner rather than later. The cat’s out of the bag and they’ve been caught.
I specifically don’t want Matt Olson to turn into Chris Davis.
In 2023, Braves were 18th in BB%, 5th best in K%, 1st in HRs, 10th in SB, 7th in doubles, 15th in triples. That doesn’t seem like 3 true outcomes.