Not sure what happened to our recap from yesterday. I saw the game thread and just assumed someone would put one up. I’ve been on vacation with 3 kids under 8 and life is wild right now. This is the first time I’ve looked at the site today due to taking a hike in a very remote part of Buncombe County. But Max Fried is on the mound tonight so let’s get our hopes up a bit.
While there’s still a long way to go in the 2024 season, the series feels pretty doggone important. The Braves are 47-38, 9 games behind the Phillies. A series sweep would narrow that gap to 6 and allow AA to start working the phones in preparation for the 2nd half. It’s a helluva pitching matchup tonight as Max Fried, aka Varsity, takes on Aaron Nola at 6:20 ET/7:20 CT.
Transaction a Day AA
There’s a lot of transactions to digest today
- The Braves optioned Forrest Wall back to AAA. This isn’t surprising. The 2 things he was supposed to be good at, getting on base and stealing bases, didn’t actually translate over to the bigs as his OBP came in at .313 and his SB success rate was an unimpressive 50%, with 3 SB and 3 CS.
- Eli White is getting the call as AA continues to gives his Minor League veterans a decent payday for a handful of games. White, like Wall, is carrying a strong OBP at AAA (.402) and is also hitting for AVG and SLG while being successful in 18 of 20 stolen base attempts. And unlike Wall, Eli is equipped with a pretty good arm. He’s starting in LF tonight. Because Eli wasn’t on the 40-man roster, the Braves had to transfer Ray Kerr to the 60-day IL. The Braves now have 6 men on the 60-day IL, but I wouldn’t worry too much about that as there’s a lot of non-competitve players on the 40-man.
- Orlando Arcia is back in the lineup tonight after dealing with an abscessed tooth. Hopefully he’s learned to hit again in his time off.
- Brian Anderson is rehabbing at Gwinnett tonight and will likely be activated quite soon, according to Braves beatwriters.
- In the most obvious of moves, Eddie Rosario was released by the Nationals and the Braves picked him up on a MiLB deal. Hopefully he can regain his 2021 magic. It makes sense to give Eddie a trial run right before the All Star Break. If he and Adam Duvall can form a strong platoon, that’s one less need at the deadline.
Max Fried and the Braves Lineup
- Jarred Kelenic
- Ozzie Albies
- Austin Riley
- Matt Olson
- Marcell Ozuna
- Travis d’Arnaud
- Adam Duvall
- Orlando Arcia
- Eli White
Reverse Jinx strategy tonight… the Braves are going to lose tonight. Max Fried will pitch 8 shutout innings, leave the 8th up 4-0 and Aaron Bummer will give up 20 runs in the 9th.
Our long national Forrest Wall nightmare is over!
Interesting that Luis Rengifo had to go to the IL; he was expected to be one of the more desired OF targets at the trade deadline. I wonder whether he’ll move at a discount, or whether he’ll stay put – either because other GMs aren’t comfortable with his health, or because the Angels won’t want to sell low.
Note the other change in the lineup as Riley moves back to third and Ozuna to 5th. This may work well. Let’s see and hope.
I did not expect Forrest Wall to, uhhh, suck as he did, so sorry about that.
I mean, let’s say MLB has legitimately messed with the balls. It seems really likely that’s true. And if the reason MLB did this was to incentivize contact and speed, then we have a loooooot of speed on this team. So if Harris, Kelenic, White, Albies, and Arcia all need to maybe make a slight tweak in their game, then we’ll be rewarded, I would think. Two months ago, I didn’t think guys should change their approach. But we’re in July now and this team is absolute dog crap at the plate. At some point, we’re going to need to do something.
Is league SLG average down? Or is this just us? We went from having one of the best lineups of all time to nobody being able to hit?
League wide SLG this year is .394, down from .414 last year and in line with the league wide SLG that we saw in 2022 when MLB had lots of deadened baseballs in circulation. The Braves have been particularly affected by the deadened ball and bad luck this year — they’re bottom-5 in the rate of barrels becoming hits, and dead last in the rate of barrels becoming homers.
Arcia doesn’t run well. Ozzie has also slowed down over the years. I noticed Ozzie has already been trying to be more of a slap hitter lately.
No Harper, Schwarber or Realmuto. We have take at least 2 of 3 at home.
Nice job by Olson to hose Merrifield at the plate. Getting thrown out at home is fun for the whole family!
What are you swinging at Marcell? That was terrible. All 3 pitches were well out of the zone.
Phillies hitting a lot of singles and stranding lots of runners.
Arcia didn’t see a single strike and struck out on 4 pitches.
Think that is a wasted challenge.
We needed Varsity tonight and we didn’t get it How sad that Pache would actually be an improvement on this team?
Phillies have outhit us 8-0.
Edit: 9-0.
Without two of their best players
The magic 3 runs we gave up so this one is over barring something we haven’t done since April.
And that’s ballgame. Drive home safely.
So, the lack of a recap last night or today is my bad. Sorry, Braves Country!
Max keeps hanging ‘em and Turner keeps banging ‘em. He is a freaking Braves killer. Homer 20 and 21 against Atlanta in his career tonight.
And let’s face it, we’ve given up more than four – bout to go 0-for-2& in our last 28 when that’s been the case.
This team is playing as bad as I can remember over the last several years. Bad offense, bad defense and shakey pitching at times. Every mistake we make gets taken advantage of.
Kill this team with fire.
Leaving Fried in after the 4th inning doesn’t make Snitker look like he wanted this game that bad.
Something has seemed off for months. It will be interesting to see if we ever find out what it is
Yeahhhhh that was not strike 3.
But we suck. So oh well.
Also, these Apple TV announcers are annoying. So for that reason, I’m glad the game is over.
Recapped from my death bed.