Chris Sale, the reigning Cy Young award winner, started for the Braves. Naturally, he started off by allowing a home run to the first batter he faced. Joe Boyle made his first start of the season, coming off of a 2024 season with Oakland where he posted a 6.42 ERA, 1.72 WHIP, along with 56 strikeouts and 40 walks in 47 2/3 innings. Naturally, he started off with 4 perfect innings, 5 hitless.
After Yandy Diaz led off the bottom of the 1st with a home run, the Rays tacked on 3 more runs off Sale (1 unearned,) who finished with 4 1/3 innings, 6 hits allowed, 3 walks and 7 strikeouts. Boyle could not record an out in the 6th, however, and after hitting Nick Allen and walking Eli White was pulled without allowing a hit. The Braves went on to score all their runs that inning. Allen scored when Michael Harris II hit into a force out. Marcell Ozuna reached on an error, then Matt Olson missed tying the game by an inch, hitting the top of the left field fence for the Braves first hit. Harris scored on Olson’s single, and Ozzie Albies drove Ozuna home from 3rd with a single to center.
The hoooope! was short lived as Tampa Bay blew it open in the bottom of the sixth. The Rays sandwiched a single and a walk between 2 Pierce Johnson strikeouts before he gave way to Enyel De Los Santos. Jonathan Aranda singled, and a 3 run homer by Junior Caminero was effectively the ballgame.
1982
I know at least some of us remember the 1982 Braves who (spoiler alert) won the old NL West that season. That Braves team famously started the season 13 – 0. However, that same team almost as famously lost 19 out of 21 in August. That included 11 losses in a row, starting with 2 at home to San Francisco, then 4 games in Los Angeles, 3 more in San Francisco, and 2 more in San Diego (sound familiar?) So, perhaps this Braves team will reverse that 1982 season and run off 13 straight wins in August. Possibly even led by Ronald Acuna Jr., Spencer Strider, Sean Murphy, Jurickson Profar, and some trade deadline starter.
On the other hand, if you’re old enough to remember 1982, you’re old enough to remember 1988 (click if you dare.)
It’s a long way to October
The Braves move another 1/162 of the way closer to October on Monday in Toronto; Grant Holmes and Easton Lucas scheduled at 7:07 Eastern.
Thanks, Rusty. The link to 1988 leads to 1982, btw.
I did remember Chuck Tanner being fired in 1988, but I was wrong about Johnnie LeMaster being on that team. Small mercies! It could have been even worse.
Thanks for noticing Val, I’ve fixed the link.
That team had Glavine, Smoltz, Blauser, Lemke. And Snitker overseeing the pen.
Interesting.
There’s always hoooope!
Our biggest problem the last two seasons has been regularly starting some of the worst position players in the league. DOB mentions that Verdugo is coming soon in his article today. That’s where we are—needing a below average player to come in and offer a significant upgrade over one of the worst regulars in the league (JK or BDLC).
Schedule’s been tough and we don’t have our full team, but this team is on a 43 win pace right now. We’ll be better, but not 2 times+ better. If we’re 10 games under at the end of May, then I think I will start cheering for the following:
-Snitker’s retirement
-All but announce DeRosa’s hiring
-Trade Ozuna
-Trade Ozzie
-Let Murphy/Baldwin split DH
-Stop yo-yo’ing the kids in the rotation and just keep them there.
-Let Kelenic man LF for his last 2 months and non-tender if he sucks.
See if you can win 80 games and go into next season with optimism.
For the record, I’m not giving up on the season. They’re a great week at home away from being right there. I’m just saying that if we’re buried, I want to tank and clear the deck. That’s all I’m saying.
Since their home opener on April 4th, the Braves have actually posted the fourth best hard-hit rate (45.1%), the second best barrel rate (11.2%), the best average exit velocity (91.2 mph) and the second best wRC+ (130). It seems like they abandoned the approach they employed during the first week of the season (be extremely passive especially early in the count, be short to the ball, etc.) and are now trying to do what they’ve done the last few years (swing hard and try to crush/elevate the ball). If they keep that up and get some sequencing to go their way and some more barrels to go over the wall (see Olson’s near-homer yesterday), they’ll be in much better shape moving forward.
Interesting. There has been an element of bad luck, perhaps, so far, despite all the very real holes in the lineup.
Cot’s has payroll obligations for 2026 at $156.75M (vs. $219.803M for 2025). That leaves a lot of room to spend.
And just because these guys are locked up doesn’t mean you can’t trade one of them to free up even more payroll. Ozzie is a “good deal” at $7M for 1.5 WAR of production, but it doesn’t mean you have to settle for 1.5 WAR at 2B if you have the money to upgrade. And Ozzie might be a good trade target because a team might still feel like he has some upside.
Didn’t AA do a huge multi-player trade in Toronto, or at least got really close on one? Why not just blow the damn thing up? Trade Ozuna, Ozzie, Nacho, and Waldrep for a truly cornerstone up-the-middle player with control and rotate Baldwin/Murphy at DH. That helps the other team now and in the future, and it helps us now and in the future. There’s nothing wrong with saying that the strategy of locking these guys up worked because you got surplus value but then the needs of your team changed. Yay, you’re paying Ozzie only $7M. You’re also only getting 1.5 WAR of production on a team that needs more production up the middle.
That huge deal is interesting in retrospect. Basically, he moved a decent number of prospects for a bunch of guys the Marlins had signed and immediately decided to trade away after finishing last despite the free agents.
Toronto received:
• Mark Buehrle, Jose Reyes, Josh Johnson, John Buck, and Emilio Bonifacio.
They immediately included Buck in the R.A. Dickey deal, in which they traded Travis d’Arnaud (whom they’d gotten in the Halladay megatrade) and Noah Syndergaard.
Miami received:
• Henderson Alvarez, Anthony DeSclefani, Yunel Escobar, Adeiny Hechavarria, Jake Marisnick, and Jeff Mathis.
They immediately traded Yunel to the Rays for Derek Dietrich, a platoon infielder who was a butcher in the field but swung a pretty good stick.
On the Toronto side, Buehrle and Reyes continued to play reasonably well, but Johnson turned into a pumpkin.
As for the prospects Miami received, we know all too well, Marisnick, Mathis and Hechavarria never learned how to hit, and DeSclefani didn’t really become an effective pitcher till after he left Miami. Henderson Alvarez had one really good year in Miami, but then his shoulder blew up and his career pretty much ended.
Overall, Toronto spent a fair amount of prospect capital on guys who had reasonably sizable contracts, and they received decent but unspectacular performances from them. Miami got what it always got: prospects who never played a single game in the playoffs for them.
I liked it at the time because it was a clear case of Anthopoulos making a win-now move.
Looking forward to seeing how Schwellenbach and Strider do against Toronto. Winning a road series would be a good start.
We’re going from playing a bunch of teams with an average .600 winning percentage to a bunch of teams averaging a .500 winning percentage.
I’m going to the game tomorrow. Hopefully they do better than they did when I saw Strider vs the Jays.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/TOR/TOR202305120.shtml
To be fair, by next week those .500 teams might be .600 teams too.
The only real bright spot for me on the position player side has been Ozzie. Second basemen age really, really badly and I’ve long been concerned Ozzie will be unplayable once his physical skills diminish even slightly. Thankfully, Ozzie’s range looks much better in Statcast and his offense is trending upward.
I’m with Rob on the pitching prospects. I thought we were past the yo-yo’ing of high-level prospects when Kyle Wright was finally left alone in the minors long enough to fully develop, but they’re doing it again with AJSS.
And the catching position. I keep leaving them out. Murphy looks healthy and Drake really has a good approach at the plate.
Don’t look at tonight’s lineup. WOOF.
So Snit says Ozuna was sent back to Atlanta due to his lower leg injury…so that is how we get Fairchild, Allen and White 7-9. This is absolute roster malpractice yet again. This is a AAA lineup 7-9 and it is tough to grasp hope when this is what we get. I agree with Rob… package some dudes for a “soft” reset and see what happens because this isn’t working over the last 160+ games.
As long as Murphy homers 4 times per week we will be fine
I don’t know how you have a $230M payroll and this is the lineup they’re trotting out.
Ozuna had an MRI on his hip which was negative, so I guess he isn’t hip. One look at Snitbear ought to make that clear.
Takes me back to college:
If you are going to start Fairchlld, Allen and White, you kinda have to play small ball. I am not a fan of bunting, but those dudes can’t mash so why not bunt there?
Nice start… can we have a blowout for a change?
Riley catching fire along with Murphy is nice.
A red hot Austin Riley is something to behold
That one was launched.
Alright, fellas… let’s keep it on Easy Street.
BDLC needs to go away. At least Fairchild and White can run and play defense.
In his defense he should’ve been out of the league 3 years ago. Not his fault people keep giving him a job.
We’ve found the solution to our problems: Canadians.
Wiley got that girl’s number but she lives in Canada.
Hard to believe Bummer allowed inherited runners to score. That never happens smh
My second music reference of the night (warning for the NSFW lyrics)
Grant Holmes doesn’t want to be a reliever.
Neither does Aaron Bummer it appears
Well played.
How long before Toronto regrets the $500MM Guerrero deal? Yikes.
Heck, they’re the only team in the country and they’re owned by a huge weathy corporation; if they could manage to put a good team on the field they could print money. They should’ve locked him up years ago and they’re paying the price, but the consequences of not paying him his money were greater than the consequences of paying him, IMO.
Instead they’ve been signing second-tier guys like Berrios and Santander and paying them a premium to come north. This deal is their equivalent of Jayson Werth to the Nationals or Pedro to the Mets.
My “Aaron Bummer’s in midseason form” jokes are ready for the Dominican Winter League.
As I said about Bummer…
Haven’t we waited long enough for his performance to catch up with his “underlying metrics,” for the luck to even out?
Bummer’s just trash. No better options, but he is what he is.
Don’t look now, but we could catch the Nationals tomorrow.
The good thing about your highest paid player bringing in 5 RBI’s is you can wait to figure out your Aaron Bummer bummers another day.
In Bummer’s defense, he was just off the bereavement list and hadn’t pitched in almost five days.
recapped.