Try Somebody Else

On Wednesday night in the second inning, Matt Olson retired all three batters on unassisted grounders. I thought “Hmmm… a 1-2-3 inning that were all 3U. That has to be kind of rare.” So I fired up the Retrosheet database, and it is. Matt was the 51st first baseman ever to do this, and only the second Atlanta player. The first was David Justice on May 30th 1990 against the Expos.

Now this is the sort of stat with virtually no significance at all. You just kind of have to be lucky to have three balls hit to you by three consecutive batters and they have to be hit close enough that you never have to toss to the pitcher covering. I have no idea whether any of those plays by the other 50 guys were hard plays or not. None of Matt’s were, though he made a nifty play to turn a 363 double play a couple of inning later. You just need to be in the right place at the right time.

But as the Thursday game was horrible, I got to thinking about similar plays. While 51 innings now consist of 3U x 3, how many innings are 1-3 X 3? Or 4-3 x 3? Why don’t we go through the infield just to see what pops up?

First, as you might expect, 6-3 leads the way. That’s why they put the shortstop there. (Though Bill James is famously opposed to WAR, I remember him assessing some shortstop and saying “compared to what? There’d be a lot more runs scoring if they just left that space empty.) In any case, there are 1430 innings which consist entirely of grounders to the shortstop. So that’s the sort of thing that happens several times a year. And of course anyone who has witnessed hibernation mode by the Braves will be surprised to know that all 1430 haven’t come this season by the Braves. The Braves defense has 32 of those. One Brave accomplished it 5 times. No, not Andrelton Simmons (4) or Rafael Ramirez (4) or Rafael Furcal (4), but none other than Jeff Blauser. The last to do it was Dansby in 2019.

Very shortly behind shorstop is second base, with 1189 innings overall and 25 times by the Braves. And Glenn Hubbard did it 8 of those times. Ozzie Albies, the last Brave to do it, has managed once.

Trailing a bit more is third base, with 599 overall and 21 by the Braves. The Braves’ leadership is shared by Chipper Jones and Darrell Evans, both with 3. The most recent is Rio Ruiz in 2017.

There have only been 140 innings with balls hit back to the pitcher three times and three retirements at first base. The only Brave ever to do so was Jaime Garcia in 2017.

This leaves the final fact that no catcher has ever done it. In fact no catcher has ever made 3 2-3 outs in an inning. The most is 2. If I broaden the criteria to include K2-3 it has been accomplished exactly twice. In the 7th inning of this game, Carlos Santana dropped all three third strikes thrown by Esmil Rogers and made three throws to first, I feel like that shouldn’t count, since any catcher could do that in any three strikeout inning. The same thing happened in this game, when Ryan Doumit dropped three third strikes from Ross Ohlendorf that got too far away from him for a tag. Until I discovered this, I thought Ryan Doumit‘s only claim to fame was his final 100 MLB games when he played for the Braves and did nothing memorable. I stand corrected.

The Game

So the Braves travel down the coast to Anaheim. I do not care what Arte Moreno wants to call them. I think they are still the Los Angels of Anaheim, but if he wanted to call them the Snellville Smugglers of Dacula that would be fine with me as well. The Angels are famous for one thing: finishing first once despite having baseball’s best player before Shohei Ohtani showed up playing with him and a large part of the career of obvious Hall of Famer-to-be Albert Pujols (though relative to the money he was paid, he was closer to Luis Pujols. He generated 88 WAR in St. Louis and 12 in Anaheim. St. Louis paid him about $90 MM and Anaheim paid him about $250 MM.)

The decision of Ron Washington to take the managing job in Anaheim is a little puzzling to me, but I don’t know Ron Washington and I trust he is following his bliss. It’s true that he came within a hair of winning a World Series as manager in 2011 and maybe he feels he’s got another one in him, But I think of Pat Corrales, the only manager ever fired while his team was in first place (and went to the World Series that year without him) and then managed in Cleveland for a while before joining the Braves as a coach for 16 years. Maybe it’s my own lack of ambition I’m projecting here, but those 16 years must have been more enjoyable than his 10 years managing.

The Angels started Jose Soriano against Shabbos Schwellenbach who has righted his timing to return to Friday night pitching. This game also featured the MLB debut of Niko Kavadas, the only player this century who also had a number of minor roles on Kojak.

Soriano seems like a really good pitcher when he has any idea where the ball is going. He didn’t seem to have a great idea of where the ball was going tonight. He hit one guy and walked 4 others, but his real problem is that his pitches that miss are mostly uncompetitive. He ended up throwing 76 pitches in 3 1/3rd and exited trailing 2-0. It actually could have been a lot worse. But watching him reminds me of just how amazing the performance of Shabbos has been.

OK… Now that I’ve praised him, I should point out that he did not hold the lead, coughing it up in the bottom of the inning on a 2 run homer to Irish IPA producer Logan O’Hoppe. After settling down, he was lifted after walking the first two batters in the bottom of the 6th. When you walk as few as he does, two walks in a row are a pretty good sign that you’ve lost it. Pierce Johnson replaced him and got two outs but then yielded the lead. It would have been a lot worse but for two great defensive plays: a snowcone snare by Arcia and probably the best play I ever saw Austin Riley make, diving into foul ground and still delivering a two-hopper to first to get the third out and save two runs.

After the two runs in the 4th, the Braves did not go into Hibernation Mode. They had men on base all over the place. What they didn’t do is score. They left 11 men on base and they just couldn’t get a big hit. Maybe tomorrow.

Player’s Weekend

Player’s Weekend is back after a five year hiatus. On Player’s Weekend the players are allowed to express their individuality in bats and shoes and other paraphernalia. I have no real problem with any of this, despite the fact that mossbacks like me wonder whatever happened to uniforms. That’s a word with a meaning. It should now just be called stuff. And whatever happened to the players getting nicknames of their choice on their jerseys instead of their names? They cancelled it this year for no particular reason that I can see. According to MLB flack Noah Garden: “We went back and forth on it and this isn’t to say we won’t do it in the future but we kind of, like, we did it and we kind of wanted to try something different. That’s where the bats came out and things like that. I love the nicknames, players love the nicknames, maybe you’ll see it in the future.” Does that make any sense to anybody?

Checking In With the Rally Monkey

Just to show how little I follow the Angels, apparently the Rally Monkey still exists. He comes out when the Angels are down by 3 or less in the 6th inning. I am not sure that subjecting a lab animal to Jump Around passes muster tday, but what does pass muster? Do we even have a muster? Must we have a muster? I’m still trying to catch up.

Beating Up On Chip… It’s Been A While

Chip loved the idea of playing everybody every year so the “Braves fans can see Mike Trout.” I thought it was stupid then and I think it’s stupid now. But here we are in Anaheim and the closest Trout is in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

What’s In A Name?

If only Spencer Schwellenbach could have pitched in a battery with Jarrod Saltalamacchia.