Rubber game. Shabbos against Jesus, which reminds me of a joke… nah, better not. Maybe later in the season.
Schwellenbach was his PDQ self. Unfortunately, Luzardo walks on water. Each gave up one run through six efficient innings of work. Luzardo’s work was made more efficient by the Braves’ proclivity to make outs on the bases. De La Cruz was thrown out at second on a sacrifice bunt attempt from Fairchild. Ozzie was picked off first. And this comes from Snit saying that the Braves were going to play more “small ball.”
This game is a nice example of deciding you’re going to play “Small Ball” when you don’t have a “Small Ball” team. The Sabermetric knock on small ball is that you gain one run innings but lose 3 and 4 run innnings, so that on net it’s a losing strategy. But teams can make small ball work if they have the players for it and if they’ve done the right training for it. Small Ball is not a solution to a team that can’t hit. It may win you some games, but it will lose you more. And the gigantic, overwhelming bias for small ball runs (which are obviously “cleverer” than mashing baseballs at 106 mph) from pundits who you’d think grew up in the 1920’s for their nostalgia for the bunt ensures that the games lost from small ball are never highlighted. (This is made even more difficult from the fact that those games are impossible to spot, because what would have happened in the absence of small ball strategies is unseen.)
Now you might make an argument that having Stuart Fairchild bunt is better than having him try to mash the ball, and that may be true, but it is also true that the presence of Stuart Fairchild in your lineup is a sign of capitulation to the notion that you’re going to lose a lot of ballgames. I have nothing against Stuart, but he substitutes for Ronald Acuña Jr. in the same way that I can substitute ketchup for Frank’s Hot Sauce — it’s what you do when you forgot to go the store and ran out of Frank’s. (More accurately here, it’s when you don’t think you have enough money to buy a new bottle of Frank’s.) We all know that Stuart is here only because Ronald isn’t, and no amount of stalwart defense and bunting is going to let me forget that. Stuart even stole second (barely) after he bunted De La Cruz off the bases. Big whoop.
So after six innings, Mother Nature tired of seeing so few runs scored and intervened to get both pitchers out of the game. Her methodology here is a little crude, involving a cascade of water from the sky, along with a few electrical discharges, but it’s effective. Once again, the superior bullpen was going to win the game, which has been true of 6 of the previous 11 games, including all three against the Phillies.
The game restarted around 11:30, a mere 2 hours and 45 minutes later. Schwellenbach was out. Bummer. Literally and figuratively. Bummer had a perfect seventh, but walked Harper to start the 8th, and De Los Santos rushed in to replace the Bum. The Saints preserved the tie. Luzardo was replaced by Hernandez. More small ball. Kelenic walked and Nick Allen bunted him to second with two outs! Successfully! But then Ozzie struck out. This is why small ball requires everyone to be able to get on base. Jordan Romano (which is apparently pronounced with a short “a” in his home Canada — this is how I learn things) who has gotten nobody out this season, mowed down Riley, Ozuna and Olson in order.
We’re now past midnight, so I guess I was going to recap this one even if Ryan hadn’t bowed out.
Iggy got the 9th for his third straight appearance, uneventfully. Strahm retired the next three. Extra innings. 12:24. The Atlanta debut of Rafael Montero, who did a great job stranding the Manfred Man at third, by striking out Trea Turner and Nick Castellanos around a Bryce Harper walk. (People were bitching yesterday about giving Bryce Harper a chance to beat the Braves. Snit may have listened.)
In the bottom of the 10th came the obvious winning moment for small ball. Harris moved the Manfred Man successfully!!!!! with a bunt. Nick Allen hit an excellent shot but right at Bohm. So now it takes a hit from Ozzie — not to be. Small ball fails again, but this time the strategy was undoubtedly correct.
11th inning. José Suarez takes the bump, but he walks in the Manfred Man and now has to face Kyle Schwarber with the bases loaded and two outs, who hit a one-handed swing to the base of the wall. Whew.
12:50. Need a run. Austin Riley immediately delivers a double off Joe Ross to tie the game. Marcell Ozuna doesn’t do small ball. Home run to end the game.
Schwing!!
This was the third game in which Kyle Schwarber faced Spencer Schwellenbach (Schwarber’s homer was the only blemish on Schwellenbach’s line). At no other time in MLB history have two players with last name beginning “Schw” faced one another, but on September12th, 1962, in the top of the 6th of the second game of a doubleheader,Don Schwall batted against Ron Nischwitz and grounded out to 3rd. If they’d used DH’s in 1962, even this wouldn’t have happened.
Braves Journal Contest!!!
Once again I have been called to do a writeup in emergency duty, and I’m also scheduled to do Friday and Saturday. But for Saturday we’re going to try something completely different. If you go to braves-journal-contest.anvil.app, you will see a Mad Libs template. Simply put your Braves Journal name (or a valid email address) in the first box (or any other name for that matter) and follow the parts-of-speech request in the other nine boxes and hit the SUBMIT button. If you have put something in all ten boxes you will be entered into the contest. I have already (mostly) written the Saturday recap, and the most amusing when the blanks are filled will win either (a) the commemorative 1993 Fred McGriff baseball pictured above; or (b) my thanks; your choice. (Note: if you don’t use your Braves Journal name or a valid email address, you can still win, but can’t win the prize.) I will be the sole judge of the contest.
Enter as many times as you like, but since I’m going to have to judge this, if I get too many entrants from one person (say, more than 50) I’m going to stop reading your entries. Winning answer will be the Saturday recap.
Used up a whole month’s worth of poor-mouthing on that pathetic beautiful win. Hopefully it’ll be worth it.
Great write-up in the middle of your night, JonathanF. YOu are the Marcel Ozuna of Braves Journal.
Woke up to watch the last couple of innings. Walk-off and off to work for me. Awesome!
Small sample size, but De Los Santos has quietly been very good so far.
I’ll be honest, when I went to bed I never expected I’d wake up to a win.
This team’s got a little fight yet.
They just took 2 of 3 from the division leaders. If they win 2 of 3 going forward they will finish with 103 wins. I don’t think they will, but I’m also confident they won’t have a .250 percentage the rest of the year.
They have won 3 of 5 since the dreadful opening 0-7 week. If they win at a .600 pace the rest of the way they will win 93 games. They could do that. Of course they need to score more than 3 runs per game to do so.
Samples are still too small to draw any conclusions that are too positive or negative. Plus we need to see what we get from Strider and Ronald before we have much of an idea what this team can do.
It’s interesting, and striking, that our walk rate is significantly higher in the early going this year than it was last year – 10% to 8%. That was clearly something the new hitting coach was going to try to work on with the team, all under the heading of swing decisions.
Some other interesting things to note in the realm of swing decisions. In a bunch of areas, we’ve improved over last year, and crossed the threshold from being below-average to above average.
All obviously extremely small sample sizes, but all of these are extremely heartening to see. We’re swinging at fewer pitches out of the strike zone, swinging and missing less, walking more, and making more contact both inside and outside the zone, all of which points to better decisions being made in the box. The extreme power outage is frustrating, but I tend to believe the power will come a lot more easily if the guys are swinging at better pitches.
What’s interesting, AAR, is the question of whether the swing rate and the power rate are too highly correlated for one to recover without the other rising as well. If the delay to recognize a pitch causes the swing to delay past the point of maximum power, then you have to sacrifice power to become more selective, on average. (That’s certainly not to say that there aren’t individual players who can become more selective and gain power.)
The comes the cool part: if players stop swinging at pitches outside the zone, pitchers have to counter by throwing more in the zone to stop walks. At that point, the players can adjust by becoming less selective (since more pitches are strikes) and power returns. Yin and Yang. (They played for the Shanghai Kidnappers.)
Fair points! However, JonathanF, the way I actually think about it is that a lot of what you’re describing is cheating — a player with below-average power or swing speed (like Albies) compensates by swinging earlier than is optimal, inefficiently sacrificing OBP for SLG. The ideal would be a hitter whose plate recognition about bat speed are both good enough to let the ball travel, so they can still drive the ball to the opposite field. Riley’s oppo RBI double on a low and away fastball was, for me, the single best swing he’s had all year.
Obviously it’s possible to be too patient, and Mac often used to talk about the flip side of hitters who take too many walks; there’s a reason it’s one of the “old player skills,” as it goes hand in hand with diminished bat speed. But you also generally can’t drive pitches that aren’t even in the strike zone. So I tend to see this is a pretty unalloyed good.
That is fair as well. And I agree that being more selective would be much worse (in terms of power) for Albies than for Riley or Olson. Which tells me that you need not to look at team selectivity and more at individual selectivity Ideally, of course, a hitting coach would configure his advice for each individual player. And maybe Hyers has done so. But that would require a nuanced advance from the Lau/Hriniak era when a hitting coach was judged on team metrics and on an underlying universally appled philosophy of hitting.
On a purely personal note, I just finished an intensive two day golf camp. When the instructor (a guy with a lot of teaching credentials) got to bunker play, he gave me some tips. I tried valiantly to implement them, but it was horrible. I said to him that I was having trouble adjusting to one part of the instruction and he said “Show me what you usually do.” I hit four consecutive perfect (amateur level perfect) bunker shots. He looked at me and said “Ignore me on bunker shots. What oyou’re doing is highly unorthodox, but it’s obviously working for you.”
I wish our guys could hit as well as you!
I thought Mad Libs was a right wing Tik Tok account
For the moment, let’s just fight our way to back .500 as fast as we can.
Winning consecutive series would be a solid start.
Tonight might be the last Elder start for awhile. Let’s hope.
Well, that sucks. Two straight Ks with the bases loaded. They gotta at least put the ball in play.
De la Cruz is brutal. I’m surprised we haven’t seen White; we’ve barely seen Fairchild. As a guy who was supposed to be feast or famine but is really just the latter, he’s worse than Juan Francisco.
We just need a simple sac fly. Hard to believe that’s asking so much, Rays got one.
Agree. White and Fairchild should be cutting into BDLC’s PAs. And those guys are good defenders.
This might be a better facility than Tropicana Field anyway other than the smaller capacity.
Except when it rains…
But yeah, the A’s & Rays are playing in minor-league stadiums this year.
It doesn’t help when the ump calls the balls as strikes.
Is Eric Gregg’s son behind the plate?
Elder sucks.
Bryce Elder ladies and gentlemen. He should be DFA’d when Strider gets activated but this franchise is more apt to dfa Sale than Elder. Dude has the Lockhart pictures.
I’m very concerned that Ozzie is no longer good.
In his defense, he’s probably 34
Elder is a straight up punt when he pitches. No hope.
Recapped https://bravesjournal.com/2025/04/11/elder-abuse-rays-6-braves-3/