Atlanta’s margin of error has been razor thin lately, as witnessed in the desert last night during a 1-0 loss on Pfaadt Thursday.
I’m a Brandon Pfaadt fan. I watched him pitch multiple games last season and fell in love with his moxie. He has really good stuff, seems relatively unflappable, and is someone I would love to see AA steal away from the serpents. He out-pitched Max Fried last night, earning a 1-0 victory.
I’ve never been to New Orleans, so can’t speak to Fat Tuesday. I don’t know if Max has been, either, but it has to be more fun than Pfaadt Thursday.
Fried was not bad by any stretch of the imagination. He gave up a solo shot to Eugenio Suarez in the bottom of the fifth and suffered the loss. One 3-2 changeup on the outer edge that Suarez belted 437 feet to centerfield. Fried struck out seven, allowed four additional hits, and there walks while seeing his ERA drop to 3.08 in six innings of work.
OHzuna, Riley stay hot
Unfortunately, Austin Riley and Marcell OHzuna are the only Braves doing much with the bat these days. Both had two hits, with a Riley leadoff double in the top of the seventh the only extra-base hit of the night. Matt Olson followed with a soft-liner to second that forced Austin to remain at second, OHzuna struck out, and Adam Duvall grounded out to third to end the threat.
The Braves have now been shutout. more times this season than in all of the 2023 campaign.
Arizona salvaged a split of the four-game series, and the Braves head further west for three games with the Padres beginning tonight. Spencer Schwellenbach (2-4, 5.02) is scheduled to face Randy Vasquez (2-4, 4.86) in a game that will begin at the familiar 9:40 Eastern/8:40 Central time slot.
Regarding whether AA should make trades, I just don’t feel like a batter is going to make much of a difference, the offensive problems run 4-5 batters deep.
Either we get to the playoff crapshoot and make a run, orwe don’t, but don’t use what little prospects we have left for a longshot.
Okay, let’s at least get the dessicated remains of Whit Merrifield.
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/07/phillies-release-whit-merrifield.html
Why?
Would Merrifield be better than Senzel? I just think there’s more than one way to improve upon our bench (or even OF/SS). We may need two OF platoons even after Harris comes back, but, worst case, an OF of Harris, Kelenic, Duvall/Winker would not be so bad.. Let Kelenic leadoff and Harris bat 8th. If Arcia is really the worst regular in the league then anyone would be an upgrade at SS.
It was awful sitting through a second1-0 loss in the last two weeks. I’m not sure that would happen to the league’s worst teams. Getting a leadoff double from Riley and not even moving him to 3rd in three batters is just bizarre (how is this different from scoring a Manfred Man). Two straight bunts might have gotten a run. Olson was about a foot from tying the game in the 9th.
Merrifield’s available at the minimum and would be better than Rosario and Eli White. That’s good enough for me.
I’m in favor of getting Senzel, too – a former top prospect who’s never been able to come close to realizing his promise and who, because he’s from the South, the team has probably scouted since high school. If our scouts and player development people see something they might be able to fix, they could possibly unlock something.
As fans gripe about the team’s impatient approach, I feel I must remind everyone that we basically had the league’s most patient hitter at each the catcher and first base positions and we essentially traded them for some of the freest swinging players at those same positions and managed to end up paying more combined salary and hollowing out our farm system to boot. AA has done a lot of good, but he owns the offensive transformation, largely because of those two decisions. They were stinkers–they made us a lot worse and a lot poorer.
There’s something about guys like Contreras and Freeman who are patient and selective that has an effect on the entire lineup and the opposing pitching staff. Those guys are more valuable than their WAR.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but thought it was pretty well established (as much as such a thing can be) that Freddie’s agent never presented him with the Braves’ last offer. I’m not sure the narrative that AA wasn’t serious about resigning him is fair.
Contreras, yeah. Murphy has looked absolutely helpless at the plate for the last year, when he hasn’t been injured.
It may be that trading out Freeman for Olson won’t turn out to be a good swap. The jury is still out on that one, and will be for some time. But the “patient and selective” criterion does not support your argument. Matt Olson walked 104 times last year. Freeman walked 72. For that matter, Murphy’s walk rate last year was slightly better than Contreras’s. Maybe keeping Freeman and Contreras would have been better, but not because they are more patient than their successors.
Tfloyd, you’re right. Maybe I have mischaracterized what makes Freeman and Contreras better than Murphy and Olson. They’re just worse. They’re easier outs. Maybe they aren’t less selective per se, but they are much more likely to make outs. They were career .250 hitters (or worse) and I consider both unnecessary changes. Yes, there were rumors about what happened with Freeman’s agent but we do know we could’ve signed him for something like $140/6 and we tried to squeeze an all-time great for an extra year or a couple million. I forget the specifics. It was dumb. The Murphy trade was dumber. And the pair of choices are 2 primary reasons our offense is moribund.