I Did Some Stuff
In honor of yesterday’s win, I did a little study, but it’s sufficiently complicated that I’m not going to talk about until the offday on Monday.
Full Disclosure
I only watched the bottom of the 9th live, and I use the word “live” under protest. Even in the dead ball era, you had to score a run to win. We have eight losses, and in three of them we failed to score. Seven hits, 0-8 with runners in scoring position.
AJSS pitched well enough to win if he were pitching for a team that scored runs. He wasn’t great, but he’s not a great pitcher yet.
Imagine
Imagine if you will, that instead of sending Ozuna, Riley, Albies et. al out there tonight, they had sent out a team of bright but somewhat clumsy third graders from Harper Lee Elementary, along with an asthmatic astigmatic fourth grader who needed a few more PE credits to get to fifth grade. How many runs would they have scored tonight? This is not a trick question. The answer is zero, which is exactly what the Braves did. Sure, they’d have given up 42,874 runs, especially if the Marlins hit it to the little four-eyed wheezer in right. But that’s not the point, is it? They weren’t hired to play better defense than a bunch of third graders. They were hired to outscore them. And right now, they only have done so on 5 out of 8 occasions. In two other games they scored one run, which passes the Harper Lee Elementary test by one friggin’ run. Please score some runs.
Tomorrow
With any luck, Sandy Alcantara has forgotten how to pitch,
I can’t find the DOB tweet, but apparently we weren’t shut out for about a year and a half from 2023 to mid-2024. And we have now been shut out like 10 times since mid-2024. How do you go from being able to at least squeak a run out once per game for a year and a half to then having tons of times where you can’t even do that?
Taking the power out of the balls in 2024 obviously lingers. But that’s not the full explanation.
OPS+ of our regulars through 9 games:
25
135
53
85
32
22
84
17
160
Now, I understand that you’re going to have wild individual numbers in short sample. I get that. But as a team, 5 of our 9 lineup regulars are hitting less than .200. 5 of 9. That is a complete, system-wide failure.
I know it’s early and yada yada. “If this were a NFL season, we’re basically at the first half of game 1.” I get that. But if this were a Fredi Gonzalez-managed team, we’d be calling for his head. And I totally understand that Snitker has a ring. But that was 4 years ago, and he looks tired as hell, he’s lost his staff, he’s backfilled none of the staff departures with anybody decent, and he honestly looks like the Mack Brown of MLB. He did some really nice things in the past, he’s won championships, he’s still beloved by some, but he’s old and tired and needs to go.
So my question: how long does this have to continue before there starts to be a retirement discussion for Snitker? We’re not going to let him have some retirement tour. When we’re done with him, he’s going to be offered an immediate voluntary retirement or a pink slip. How long does this have to go before you start having those discussions?
One thing that throws a wrench into things: the All Star Game. I would imagine Dave Roberts would invite Snitker to be on his coaching staff for the ASG in his home ballpark. Very hard to fire him before that.
He’s not under contract for 2026, so I would imagine if this season flops, it’ll be easy to part ways. I really can’t envision an outright firing.
Shutouts:
2022 – 5
2023 – 4
2024 – 10
2025 – 3 (out of 9 games played)
I have been wondering the same thing Rob. Snit seems deflated and tired like you said. I sometimes envy the teams like the Marlins with an obvious high degree of “try.” They might not be good, but they play hard. It doesn’t feel like we have played hard like that in a minute. Not that we don’t give effort, but there is no edge and the losses of Dansby and Freddie haven’t helped.
Were this a team not expected to contend, realistically the Brian Snitker dismissal conversation wouldn’t be had until Mother’s Day. But should the Braves drop 10 games below .500, management should start thinking about it immediately … so, get swept by the Phillies, and you’re there at 1-11.
At this point, Snitker is like a box of baking soda in the refrigerator. It sits there, useful at tamping down odors until the expiration date. Thereafter, it doesn’t cause any real problems, but then it’s no longer useful for its intended purpose. It causes no harm, but doesn’t help, either.
And right now, the fridge stinks. So, get a new brand of baking soda and perhaps it can absorb the odor and make the scent a tad less funky for a while. Maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t; but the old reliable Arm and Hammer that’s sitting in there now is past its prime.
The All-Star Game should have no consideration on any decision. If they keep him on staff just so he can coach in the game, they’re putting one person ahead of the organization, and that would be asinine and a middle finger to everyone else involved who gives a damn about this team — players, fans, staff, etc.
Also, I am not as pessimistic as my posts here make me appear. This venue is where I choose to vent my fatalism.
I apologize. For every post.
(That said, I can’t say I won’t be fatalistic in the future. I need an outlet.)
But it is rare when the performance of this lot somehow exceeds the worst fears in the cockles of my heart, “maybe in the sub-cockle area,” as Denis Leary put it. Somehow, the 2025 Braves are worse than I expected. Not as bad as my investment portfolio over the last week, but in the ballpark.
ONIO, you have nothing to apologize for. I don’t just say that because I’m a Negative Nancy. How boring would the world be if everyone were a Positive Polly? This site needs more regular contributors, especially those who have an unpopular opinion. So you’re a Pessimistic Patsy. Embrace it. We love the Braves, but they’ve let us down. They’ve meekly folded to underdogs in the playoffs. They’ve made inexplicable trades to replace some of our favorite players with Mediocre Marys.
Vent away. None of that says we don’t still hope that the tide will turn. But we don’t have to pretend that micturition is an April shower.
ONIO, I may have referred to you as a “pessimist” but the truth is, for this season so far, you are more of a prophet! I tend to focus on the positive and guard against overreacting to the negative. That is how I cope emotionally with hard times. But that’s just my way of coping–and it can also be boring.
A healthy blog needs all approaches. What I appreciate so much about this blog is that the comments are generally so much smarter than the average sports blog. And your comments very much contribute to the intelligence of the conversation.
I’ll also confess that being positive is becoming more difficult for all the time. Last fall I chose to retire effective this June. Now the state of my retirement investments is indeed even worse than the Braves’ abysmal start. I’m feeling more and more like Alfred E. Neuman: “What, me worry?”
We might get rained out of having to face Alcantara today.
Banged. Split double-header on 8/9.
And Elder will get skipped. With an off day tomorrow, the scheduled starters for the Phillies are Sale, Holmes, and Schwellenbach.
So a good day for rain.
Another bonus… At least by the time the make up game is played Sandy will have already been traded so we won’t face him.
Been wondering the same thing, Rob. If the Braves are still not playing well by mid May, I think they may have to do something.
Murphy activated is the first step. We still need Strider, Acuna, Verdugo, Kimbrel. That could be a big improvement. I think the pitching has been OK and Acuna will bring fire back to the team. I’m still holding my breath. If we get hot at the end of the year and become one of those unstoppable wild cards, it may all be worth it.
And we’ll get Profar back 78 games from now.
Last year we were by far and away first with anemic hitting until May. Oh, and we lost series’ to the Padres and the Dodgers badly (3/4 from the Pads and 3/3 from the Dodgers so 1-6). Maybe this year we can be last now and first in September/October. I recall the 70s and 80s and stood by the team then. I even thought we had a chance with Niekro, Murphy, and Horner in the early 80s.
Way better to have all the bad stuff early.
I was an Orioles fan when they started 1-22 (the one win was 9-0, sound familiar?). We’re still better than that. That was not long after they won a WS (1988 vs. 1983).
Phillies take two of three from the Dodgers. Get ready for an interesting series.
Let’s hope it is interesting. Unless you mean interesting euphemistically as in “this meatloaf is….interesting”.
Keep it vague and you are never wrong.
Keep it nondescriptive and no one can’t say they don’t disagree.
RE: Negative Nancy talk
When the team is winning 90-100 games, has a decent farm, is spending in the top 8-10 in payroll, winning the division almost every year, has won a recent World Series, and people are still bitching, then yeah, that’s ridiculous. And there are people who come to this blog to complain that this team is not the best team in baseball year-in, year-out, which is impossible. Those people can screw off and I pity them in their personal lives.
And I’m more positive than most, but yeah, I don’t see how anyone can be positive right now. We might very well get swept at home by the Phillies to fall to 1-11. That’s pretty much a realization of the worst case scenario. So I don’t see how anyone can be positive or mad at others for being positive. If I had a shred of confidence that there was solid player leadership, I would think the ship could turn on a dime. But there’s no Freddie, no Dansby, no Markakis, etc.
I also looked at Fangraph’s numbers, and it looks like Atlanta could have spent $14M before they hit the luxury tax. But the Bean Counter Extraordinaire AA continues to think that he knows better than to go out and pay for proven talent. I always thought Coppy deserved more credit and AA deserved less, and I think it’s this year where the foundational cracks of some of AA’s thought processes are starting to show. 2021 is becoming farther and farther in the rearview mirror, and his errors/things that have yet to work out are starting to pile up:
-Letting Freddie walk over $5M per and a 6th year only to get an inferior player while giving up 4 prospects including a catcher who has more positive WAR right now than almost our entire team (Langeliers).
-Replacing Dansby’s on-field leadership with a complete clown at SS, and then not replacing said clown when he was sub-replacement level. I’m not saying he should have given Dansby what Chicago gave him, but he once again disregarded a player’s tangible impact.
-Contreras/Murphy has yet to work out while Contreras and Langeliers are thriving elsewhere.
-The musical chairs of Wright/Kowar/Kelenic has led to us being stuck with a sub-replacement level OF who we paid $20M in David Fletcher’s salaries to receive.
This all could get better:
-Nick Allen might be just as good as Arcia while providing some intangibles that Arcia never will, thus softening the blow of losing Dansby.
-Olson might put up another monster season while Freddie battles yet another injury this year and maybe starts finally showing his age.
-Murphy might stay healthy and have another productive season and people stop caring about Contreras and Langeliers.
-With no pressure looming over him, Kelenic may become a 4th OF extraordinaire giving us 1.5-2 WAR as a spot starter, pinch hitter, and late inning replacement.
But as it sits, I have completely soured on AA until things get better.
I don’t think anyone is mad at others for being positive. You have always seemed mad at other people for being negative (present expletives further evidence). The irony, of course is you have basically repeated a list in this very post of the critiques I had of the roster and AA several months ago. And of course such critiques drew your ire and got me blasted as a “Negative Nancy”. Of course now it’s not controversial to say any of this. The Overton window of allowable Braves critique has subsumed all of my positions, so now you can freely espouse them as your own while continuing to shake your fist at Negative Nancy with no sense of irony at all.
Stick to the issues, gentlemen, rather than characterizing each other personally….