I want to remind every Brave fan one thing: Charlie Morton is 40. Charlie Morton has pitched in his 37, 38, 39, and 40 year old seasons with the Braves and has carried a 3.86 ERA in 118 games. Now, let’s look at this in context. Aaron Nola, in that same time frame, has pitched to a 3.95 ERA. Aaron Nola is 31 and is considered the Phillies #2.
I continue to be impressed with Ramon Laureano. Since joining the Braves, he has been the best hitter on the team, carrying an .894 OPS in 119 PAs, averaging a HR per every 16 plate appearances.
*The Game
*A new feature I’m going to implement is to include the video game recap just in case Braves Journalers weren’t able to catch the game.
Even collecting 11 hits and 3 walks, runs were hard to come for the Braves, which seems odd considering they “only” struck out 7 times. When you have Matt Olson, Marcell Ozuna, Sean Murphy, Michael Harris II, Jorge Soler and Travis D’Arnaud all on the team, it’s odd when Orlando Arcia and Ramon Laureano are providing the power (such a weird season).
The relief core continues its brilliance, pitching 3.1 innings of O run, 2 hit, 0 BB baseball. The Braves bullpen ranks 2nd in ERA in MLB and first in the NL. They’ve also thrown the 4th least amount of innings (thank you, starters).
Braves Sunday Lineup
Jorge Soler is back in there batting 2nd and playing Right Field Reynaldo Lopez will go head to head against DJ Herz.
I have no idea why Braves fans have such impossibly high expectations for Morton.
Last year, 40 pitchers made 30 starts. Charlie was one of them. 40 pitchers out of 150 rotation spots (30 teams * 5 spots, and really it should be 6 spots).
Last year, 35 starting pitchers accumulated at least 2 fWAR. Charlie was one of them. In fact, he was 30th in all of qualified SPs in fWAR (2.7). This year, as disappointing as he has been, he still is 59th in SP fWAR, and that will probably keep going up as more pitchers fall off the qualified list because they’re out for the season.
People just do not understand how rare it is to have a guy make 30 good starts for you year-in and year-out, and considering we used 16 SPs last year, Braves fans should know this.
You make great points and Charlie has been a reliable pitcher that we have been able to count on for years. I struggle with expectations because I want him to be as good every night as he was a couple of years ago. That isn’t reasonable for a 40 year old. Charlie is fine but somewhat maddening at times.
Oh great..Harris is out of the game now…
Oy, what happened?
Rodrigo Lopez’s season is unreal.
I am guessing the hit by pitch in the first inning .
Aldo, this team hasn’t met a fastball it couldn’t swing through
I really hope Harris isn’t broken too
I swear every walk and error we have scores
Sean Murphy again showing us his value.
A Luke Jackson doing Luke Jackson things after the error started things off
Luke Jackson should never be used in a close game. He is trash at this point.
If Luke Jackson is gonna bring his trusty gasoline pail to the mound, he might as well do it on a day the offense couldn’t hit a beachball.
We’ve scored 19 runs in our last 7 games.