St. Louis doesn’t have a football team any more, so I can’t make that joke in the title, unfortunately.
Well, there’s one good thing about last night’s game: it can’t count as more than one in the loss column. I don’t have a lot more to say about a bullpen game that we lost by a touchdown. If you can believe it, both teams had the same number of men left on base, so, while we certainly failed to convert numerous opportunities, so did the other guys. We just sucked last night.
Getaway game at noon today. Please don’t push Bryce Elder past the fourth, Snit.
You may now return to your regularly scheduled abuse and recriminations.
I mostly just want to rant on the idiotic intentional walks. Walking Nootbaar to face Contreras was moronic and probably cost us the game. I hate the intentional walk anyway, but Nootbaar was a sure thing to steal second and you just gave that to them. Make them earn their way on base.
Snit goes with Kelenic over Verdugo in today’s lineup. Guess Alex’s locks aren’t aflame like Jarred’s, since that’s the stated standard.
The continued starts for Kelenic are baffling. Nothing to do with the lack of hustle, just the lack of ability. He’s not a good defender and can’t hit at all.
Glad Eli White gets a look, but Verdugo should start over Kelenic 100 times out of 100.
I guess they’re in a lefty-lefty platoon, huh?
Someone needs to tell Snit that he doesn’t have to continue putting Ozzie 5th in the batting order, especially when there’s a righty on the mound. Drake Baldwin, unlike Ozzie, has been swinging the bat hard and absolutely stinging the baseball. Bat him 5th and drop Ozzie down a spot or two.
My favorite Mac player review: https://bravesjournal.com/2009/02/08/jeff-francoeur-4/
I don’t understand the appeal Jeff has to this fanbase because I’m not from Georgia. He just wasn’t a very good player, and I’d honestly rather hear Mike Hampton’s opinions. What’s Howard Battle up to?
The best possible version of the case for liking Jeff Francoeur, because he seems like a relatively genial and fun guy, is from Jon Bois: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VtKxqbwpm0
But that clip shows a really ugly side of him, to me, one where he decides to embody all the worst aspects of the mean “back in my day” gatekeeper player who thinks modern players are horrible even though he has no business talking about the right way to play the game because he couldn’t play.
Mac had a bunch of game threads where he pointed out that Jeff “is an enormous whiny baby,” because he kicked and screamed any time his playing time was threatened, and he had a whole category of posts entitled Francoeur sucks.
For my money, my favorite Mac writeup of him is here: https://bravesjournal.com/2008/10/02/good-riddance-a-postmortem-for-the-2008-atlanta-braves-part-iv-the-ugly/
Francouer sure looked like he would be a franchise player. When he was drafted in the mid-first out of Parkview, I seem to recall JS saying “we would’ve taken him with the #1 pick”. He was the local boy with dashing good looks. He burst onto the scene and had a star sophomore season, winning a spurious gold glove on the strength of his throwing arm. And then he turned into a pumpkin at the ripe old age of 24. I could deal with the fact that Frenchy swung at everything as long as he was pretty good, but when he was bad, he was awful, and the total lack of plate discipline would’ve made Albies blush. I find his commentary grating, and I don’t see what appeal he has as an announcer.
I’d like one of those pieces that gets quotes from “rival execs” to see what they think about what’s going on in Atlanta. They’re in a World Series window but Anthopolous constructed a team for 2025 that looks more like a one that is 2-3 years out from contention.
Once again, if you believe the reports, AA wanted to spend up to the luxury tax of $241M. We’re at $214M. They have no reason to say that their budget is higher than it actually is, so I believe the $241M figure. And AA was in on several players but got outbid. I would assume we can still spend the $27M we didn’t, and if we did/do, we would have been/will be the 6th highest paying team in MLB. So to say we aren’t serious because LAD became the Deferral Kings on the exact guys we want is not completely accurate.
Running out Scott Blewitt, Nathan Wiles, and a cast of other flotsam and jetsam are surely signs that this organization are trying to win vis a vis expanding their real estate portfolio.
Reminds me of 2015. Maybe we can sign Kelly Johnson and flip him for somebody’s 18th best prospect at the deadline
How much more of this dude? He walks a lot of people for a “control specialist.” We are effectively punting every game he starts.
The good news is he threw 27 pitches so that puts us closer to his removal from the game.
Still baffling they chose him over AJSS.
Choosing Elder over AJSS is an unserious move from an organization that appears more unserious with each passing week.
Elder doesn’t know where the ball is going in addition to his stuff not being very good. Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?
In regards to Elder…
giphy
It must be in Ozzie’s contract that he must swing at the first pitch, no matter the situation or location, every single time.
Maybe being the SS in Atlanta causes players to just tune out mentally upon arrival.
Hard to ask much more of Elder. But even Cy Young would lose if you don’t score.
For sure. Elder has held his own thus far, I just hope we don’t try to squeeze too much out of him and it ends up 4-0 instead of 1-0.
Cannot articulate how much I hate seeing Bryce Elder even toeing the rubber in the sixth inning.
Not too bad, Elder. Now some offense, please
As most of the pundits and people on this blog predicted, Elder’s start today showed Atlanta was justified in not sending him down. I will not complain about 8 total baserunners, 1 run and 5 hits over 6 innings. I know most everyone here was expecting similar results (-:
is .053 Fairchild really a better option that .163 Kelenic?
Good for you, Nick Allen. Outplaying Arcia ain’t saying a lot, but you’re doing it.
MONEY MICHAEL! It’ll look like a line drive in the box score. Tie game!
Montero just as effective today as yesterday.
Montero isn’t a good pitcher. Like a lot of players, he has made a long, lucrative career out of being fringe, but there is a reason he was available for loose change. The Astros basically paid us to take him. It is only through executive malpractice that we are relying on him as a back end guy.
Can’t watch right now. Why are we PH Murphy for Baldwin when Kelenic and White are up next?
obv bc white was gonna 3 run HR
ELI!
I’m sure the answer to the Murph question is platoon advantage. Romero’s a lefty and Baldwin bats lefty.
Eli White!!!
Eli White is making a good case to take Kelenic’s spot in the lineup.
Can you hit .200 and field your position? OK, you got the spot
if Eli had not homered, I think Verdugo would have replaced Fairchild
Great homestand.
Jo Jo Romero on Monday and Wednesday
1 inning pitched, 14 pitches, 3 hits, 3 earned runs, 3 inherited runners scored
Ouch
Reminds me of another JoJo R. who used to pitch here
Apparently Jo-Jo had a decadelong in the bigs and was pitching in the Mexican League as recently as 2017… good for him, honestly.
Don’t look now but the Braves are .588 since the Dodgers/Padres series. Will only get better once Ronald is back.
Not according to Frenchy!
Frenchy is incorrect!
If you’re interested in aviation, the Braves are using Delta 8877 as their call sign this season.
https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/DAL8877
Supposedly teams have been experimenting with flipping LF/RF from batter to batter based on the hitter’s spray chart, and that would be helpful with Baldwin
On the From The Braves Booth podcast, Joe Simpson co-signed 100% to Frenchy’s comments on Acuña. Didn’t really even have a critical word for Kelenic or Snitker. Not really surprising.
What Acuna did was arguably worse in the sense that JK and Snit made in-the-moment lapses while Acuna had time to think it out and then post a nasty criticism of his manager on social media. He knows it, which is why it was deleted.
I would feel the exact same way Acuna felt but I wouldn’t dream of publicly excoriating my boss.
Frenchy and Joe certainly see it that way and they have somewhat predictable replies to the whole thing. So they throw gasoline on a fire that would otherwise be smoldering embers.
Recapped