[Reporter’s Note: I came home drunk and forgot it was Friday, so my attention to this game was not what it should have been. Unlike the Braves, though, I am willing to apologize when I’ve made a sorry effort.]
Some Perspective
The Braves, as currently constituted, are obviously inferior to the Milwaukee Brewers. On the other hand (damning with faint praise) they are clearly superior to the Rockies and White Sox. How do I know this? I just do. The results of this weekend’s will not change my mind about this.
The Case of The Curious Guy With A List of Every Player in MLB History
The Braves started Grant Holmes and the Rockies’ best player is Brenton Doyle. In the third inning, Doyle hit a homer off Holmes. I have taken everyone in major league history named Doyle, Holmes, Watson and Moriarty. (Surnames only — Doyle Alexander doesn’t count.) This list consists of 44 players, including Grant Holmes (who debuted this year) and Johnny Holmes and Johnie Watson from the Negro Leagues who do not yet have Retrosheet IDs. This leaves us with 41 players.
In the Retrosheet database, there are 20 at-bats in which one of these players pitched to the other. 19 of these were confrontations in the early 20th century between Milt Watson and Larry Doyle. The other was a single at bat in 1970 by Bob Watson against Paul Doyle. Overall, the hitters are 5 for 20 with four singles and a triple and no strikeouts.
So tonight’s game not only marked the first at-bat of a Doyle against a Holmes, the home run and the strikeout were MLB firsts for the Baker Street Irregulars. Elementary.
The Game
Including the two run homer given up to Doyle, Holmes gave up 5 runs in 5 innings of work. My trusty calculator skills suggest that that corresponds to an ERA of 9.000000, which is high even by the lofty standards of Coors Field. That said, five runs here aren’t like 5 runs elsewhere. Former Braves farmhand Tanner Gordon gave up 2 himself in 5 innings, one on Marcell Ozuna‘s 34th homer and another on a Whit Merrifield single. The next run came on a Ramon Laureano oppo. The next two came on Jorge Soler‘s first 2023 dinger for the Braves. So it’s tied up at 5-5 going to the bottom on the seventh. I am briefly optimistic because we’d already used Jesse Chavez.
My optimism lasted all of two batters. Back-to-back doubles by Doyle and Ryan McMahon off A.J. Minter broke the tie. Minter actually buckled down to hold them to a single run. An uneventful 8th inning followed.
In the 9th, Victor Vodnik, the other player the Braves traded to get Pierce Johnson came on and promptly gave up a single to Kelenic. Merrifield bunted him to second. This is generally a bad play on the road, but it’s a lot better than the double plays we’ve been hitting into. A ground out by Soler advanced Kelenic to third with two outs. But Riley strikes out and the losing streak continues.
Opportunity Watch
Sean Murphy tripled with one out in the second and neither Laureano nor Jarred Kelenic could bring him in. We could have used that run.
MVP
MLB is heavily invested in seeing Shohei Ohtani get the NL MVP. Well, they’re not fully committed… I’m sure they’d be perfectly happy with Bryce Harper or even Elly de la Cruz if they could squint correctly and justify it. But of the top 10 players in OPS, eight play in the AL and the other two are Ohtani and Ozuna. Ozuna tied Ohtani tonight with the NL lead in homers, has 7 more RBIs and is 0.004 points behind him in batting average. They both are exclusively DHs. They are dead even now and it may be more clear-cut 40 games from now.
Where Are They Now? Colorado
If I remember correctly, former Braves Journaler blazon was quite enamored with Kelsey Wingert and suspected something untoward when she was let go by Bally. (If I’m wrong about that, go ahead and cut my pay.) Well, blazon, if you’re still reading Braves Journal, she’s now the on-field reporter in Colorado. She looks the same and I think the altitude agrees with her.
The speculation on Wingert is that Braves brass did not like how she blurred the line between employee and friend of the players. I recall her giving Freddie Freeman a hug on the field after clinching the division one of those years. I thought it was unusual.
As for these Braves, FanGraphs has their playoff odds down to 59.4%. Still pretty good odds, but they were at 98.3% on Opening Day.
From a source regarding Kelsey, apparently the lines were ahem really blurred.
Also, to Alex’s thoughts on Holmes on the game thread. I’m taking him over Morton at this point and I feel like his first game at Coors shouldn’t be judged too harshly. IMO, he’s the best 5th starter that the Braves have sent out this year, but that could change soon with Ian and Ynoa almost ready.
Yeah, it seems Kelsey was a little too much of a fangirl.
We suck right now and we’re probably not done sucking. But I don’t care. I’m maintaining the same position I’ve now held for a couple years now that the regular season is boring, too long, and completely inconsequential. We’re 5 games above .500 right now, I think we’ll tread water until mid-September, and then I think a switch could easily flip and these guys could get hot. You can see the narrative: injured, battered and bruised team weathered the storm for months, and once Harris, Ozzie, and Ian returned, the team considered it a galvanizing situation and they got hot. And if you don’t find that to be logical, then explain to me how the team that set the ML record in HRs and SLG and won 104 games couldn’t hit anything in the playoffs last year. I’ll wait on your logic.
Regardless, I do want to make an observation: Ozuna, Soler, and Olson are under contract for next season. That’s also my order of importance for keeping them. I’d give Ozuna a 1B mitt and Soler the DH spot and trade Olson. He’s had 1900 PAs in a Braves uniform and 7 full seasons in the big leagues total. He has a .851 OPS in a Braves uniform and a .855 OPS for his career. Guess what, he’s a .850 OPS player with mediocre 1B defense. We need more out of the 1B position, and I think Ozuna is a .850 OPS player with mediocre 1B defense.
Rob, i’m with you on Olson, I would lose Murphy too.
And Kelenic.
I haven’t given up on Kelenic. He’s a very streaky, young player who, in the right lineup, can be extremely valuable while he makes no money.
I think people just need to accept that Murphy is probably a really streaky .775-800 OPS catcher who can probably play 120 games a year. After his age-27 season, he had a .755 career OPS with Oakland. With Atlanta, he’s averaged a streaky but acceptable .802 OPS. So as of age 29, he’s had a career .770 OPS. The worst thing that could have happened for him was that he came out of the gate so strong for Atlanta, but there’s nothing in his career numbers to suggest he was going to continue to be a .900 OPS catcher who played 140+ games per year. So if the upside is that he’s a .775 OPS catcher and he’s got a sub-650 OPS 4 months into the year, he’s going to get replaced here and there by d’Arnaud. Therefore, I also don’t understand this narrative that if we just simply played Murphy more, he’d be this .900 OPS guy when he clearly proved he wasn’t in the second half of last year even with plenty of playing time. Couple that with the durability issues, there are plenty of reasons to just consider him a .775 OPS, 120 game a year catcher and position your roster accordingly.
Olson is just a different story. He’s a .850 OPS 1B who doesn’t exactly pick it. Wash the salary, get back what you can, and move on. No sense in committing to that for the next 5 years or however much is left on his deal. It sucks because I love the guy and he’s native to Georgia, but it just hasn’t worked and we’re almost 3 years into this.
Maybe irrational, but Olson gives me big Chris Davis vibes. First baseman, big contract, hit a ton of homers, and then just disappeared. Obviously, that comparison doesn’t fit quite yet. I really doubt they trade him this off-season, but I think next year is really important for him to bounce back.
The Braves messed up throwing all the big money at a bunch of promising but ultimately unproven players. Biggest miscalculation was the Olson for Freeman wager, which proved to be a disaster. Freddie would have been an effective leader on a team which seems kind of leaderless.
I didn’t like the Freeman/Olson gamble. But I also didn’t like the Sale/Grissom trade. No one bats 1.000. (that’s the point I was trying to make a couple days ago about the dudes AA traded away that didn’t do anything after getting traded)
Small sample size, but Whit Merrifield hasn’t been bad. His OBP is one of the best ones in the lineup in a lineup full of black holes.