It’s Max Fried day! Yay! Brandon Pfaadt will face off against Varsity. The Braves will head to San Diego for a set of 3 before the All Star Break. If you like can’t miss journalism, be sure to check out Alex’s recap.
Good Things Happening at Gwinnett
Nacho Alvarez and Drake Baldwin have been lights out at AAA since their promotions. Drake is carrying a .996 OPS through 112 PAs with 6 jacks. Nacho also has 6 jacks and is carrying a .963 OPS that comes with a .407 OBP in 113 PAs. One has to wonder if both guys get promotions at some point, Sure, the Braves already have 2 great catchers, but the end of the bench lacks hitters and carrying Drake would open up options for late inning heroics. Nacho’s OBP would be such a welcomed addition to the back end of the lineup. My guess is they’re floated to other teams at the deadline, and if they don’t get traded, they’ll get called up at some point in the 2nd half.
Braves Lineup and Max Fried
Max Fried, you’re up.
Braves look like they’re in a hurry to catch that flight to San Diego.
Every time it looks like it’s starting to come together, we get an awful offenwive performance.
I hope they don’t trade for anyone, not worth it.
So punt on the season with all these stars? Silliness. But yeah, we’re terrible on offense
To say that was a listless performance is an insulting to listless performances
It’s who this team is, offensive-wise. I’ve come to accept it. I watched about four innings of this game, thought to myself “this will be a low-scoring loss,” and turned it off. Someone on here said it best in a recent comment: this team is BORING.
Sigh.
Probably the best moment of the game, from a Braves perspective, was in the fifth inning, after Max gave up a leadoff homer, suffered multiple defensive lapses – a bobble on a potential double play by Ozzie, a boot by Arcia – then loaded the bases on a pitch clock violation. Then Fried calmly struck out Randal Grichuk to leave the bases loaded. The closest comparison I can give is to Tom Glavine: slow heartbeat, icewater in his veins.
He’s a great one. I hope we back up the money truck for him.
The Braves probably won’t back up the money truck for Fried. They’ll save it for an unproven trade from Oakland or Seattle and then lock him up until the apocalypse. He can then join the offense for nap time.
I honestly wouldn’t trade anything at this time. It’s just not our year. Don’t punt the season by any means, but the Braves do not have enough speed nor do they have patient at bats. And that’s why they get knocked out of the playoffs recently. And without Acuna’s speed that will be the case this year as well. Get em in 2025