The Braves squandered some opportunities, and the Diamondbacks squandered some opportunities, and the end result was Arizona salvaging a game from the 3 game series.
Spencer Schwellenbach didn’t seem as sharp as we may have started to take for granted, but he still came away with the minimum 6 innings, 3 earned runs to be deemed a quality start. He did allow a 4th unearned run facilitated by his own throwing error, which takes some of the glory out of it. If 7 hits, 1 walk, and 6 strikeouts are a bad start, then he’s in for a pretty good season.
Alex Verdugo went 4 – 4 with a walk and 2 RBIs to lead the Braves. However, in spite of being on base 5 times the Braves could not plate their leadoff man even once. Other notables include Marcell Ozuna who went 2 for 5, and Drake Baldwin who went 2 for 4.
Earlier in the day, Jesse Chavez was designated for assignment once again, and replaced by Davis Daniel, who pitched an uneventful 9th. In other news, Ian Anderson was claimed off waivers from the Angels and is expected to join the team in Colorado. Perhaps someday the Angels will give up on trying to fix our roster crunches, although I give it about even money they sign Jesse again.
It’s on to Colorado Monday for an 8:40 Eastern start and the next 1/162nd of the season. Colorado is off to an astoundingly bad 4 – 23 start; however, they are 3 – 9 at home (not buying it eh?) Two out of 3 would make for a great road trip; a sweep would put the Braves at 15 – 15 at the end of April. To achieve that, Atlanta will need help from Bryce Elder on Tuesday, and most likely AJ Smith-Shawver on Wednesday.
Albies shouldn’t ever be hitting behind Olson. Good grief.
Agreed, especially when he is hitting left handed. His exit velo and chase rate both seem to be bad and it is crazy how much it “looks” like his skills have eroded with his offense and defense.
His Statcast profile is quite bleak — 9th percentile in bat speed and 8th percentile in average exit velocity. If his contract weren’t so cheap, this is looking like a guy whose option you’d decline.
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/ozzie-albies-645277
Ozzie was so good, so young that I wonder if there was some fibbing about his age. He set the rookie league on fire at 17. That and his present decline would make a lot more sense if he is actually 31 now.
Rockies may have the worst roster in major league history. So of course, we catch their best pitcher against our worst pitcher in game 1. Wheee!
My personal belief is Ozzie is cooked and this will be his last season in Atlanta.
If you’re looking for a positive take, he’s never had the best exit velocity, even at his peak. In 2023, his exit velocity was only 37th percentile.
It is the chase rate coupled with the low bat speed and exit velo that is troubling. He isn’t really doing anything well at the moment but we keep hitting him 5th for some reason.
Lol, Eddie Rosario is back on a major league deal. AA sure does love reuniting with former Braves. Hope we’re not benching White in favor of Rosario, but that’s probably what will happen.
Eli White may take hostages if they start Rosario over him.
Whit Merrifield, too. We’re getting the band back together guys!
Kelenic looks like a non-tender candidate. I guess he’ll stay in Gwinnett unless he’s needed. There won’t be a spot for him with Profar, Acuna, and Verdugo on the roster. That was an expensive experiment for a franchise that likes to pinch pennies.
I feel like Kelenic needs to go down and hit .400 before you consider bringing him back up. I just don’t know what he’s going to be able to show in AAA that washes off the stink of his major league tenure.
It was cheaper than the Cole Hamels experiment, and it had a better chance of success based on priors and aging curves. If Kelenic weren’t flawed, he wouldn’t have been available.
All that said, I sure wish we could just go out and sign a guy like a normal contender.
The Braves flushed $18 million on Hamels. The contorted transactions to acquire Kelenic cost the Braves at least $20MM, then add in Kelenic’s ~$3M in salary from 2024-2025, plus the luxury tax penalties on those dead money contracts they took, they’ve paid on the order of $25M-30M for a cumulative -0.1 WAR out of Kelenic. Woof. You might even blame Profar’s signing on the failure of the Kelenic gambit. These are the situations you create when you refuse to play ball with top-flight free agents. Imagine if they had just went after Teoscar Hernandez in the 2023 offseason.
The Rockies are on pace to win 24 games this year, so anything less than a sweep has to be considered a disappointment.
The Kelenic move was a convoluted waste of money, him going to the monors is the best action for all parties right now, and rosario is just fodder, he could be gone in 2 or 3 weeks.
To be honest, I was very in favor of both the Hamels and the Kelenic experiments. And the Profar contract, too – and, heck, while we’re at it, I even liked the Upton and Lowe signings!
Obviously, before making any of these moves, you need both your medical personnel and your scouting and player development personnel to tell you they think it’s a great idea. And after the fact, you should do a postmortem to figure out what you got right and what you got wrong.
And part of what we got wrong may not have been the player – it may have been the system put around the player to help them maximize their gifts. William Contreras reached his full potential in another organization; so did Gausman.
So: the medical team, the scouts, the data analysts, and the coaches all need to weigh in on a potential player acquisition, and they all need to contribute to helping that player achieve. We’ve had some pretty extraordinary wins, but we’ve also had some very striking misses. I hope they are working to address those. It can’t just all be Kevin Seitzer’s fault.
Its sure isn’t Seitzers fault, and how many FA signings by other teams also fail? Look at the Mets over the last 20 years.
Kelenic was odd because for the money you easily could have has a solid player.
Ozzie is still batting 5th behind Olson for some reason.
For the love of all things holy please stop the Elder experience. Batting practice fastballs won’t work at Coors Field.
It really is malpractice that we didn’t have any depth options other than him.
Coming into this start his FIP was 6.15 and his ERA is now 6.55. Got to try someone else.
That wasn’t a batting practice fastball! that was a batting practice slider.
Bryce Elder has a variety of pitches, but he is below-average at everything: command of his pitches, max velocity, and even velocity separation – basically everything he throws is between 82-91.
There’s nothing he does well, a lot of things he does terribly, and everything else is mediocre. Each start this team gives him is an indictment of the front office.
Yeah, Alex… it was the glove.
Edit: Exit velo is overrated
Eli White and Nick Allen coming up clutch… we will take it!
Ok Bryce…good work
We can’t let Elder go through the lineup a third time right? mean, that never blows up.
I just wanted everyone to know that Angel Chivilli is an anagram of Vegan Chili? Ill!
You can go back to the game now.
Credit to Elder. After that craptastic 1st inning he’s gotten through 5 without any further damage.
Yeah, I gotta give him that.
I wouldn’t give Elder too much credit. Trejo was inches from a homer in the 4th and White made an incredible catch to probably save a run in the 6th.
It’s bad enough Elder is on the roster, but it’s even worse how Snitker uses him. Letting him start the 6th was madness.
I wouldn’t give Elder too much credit. Trejo was inches from a homer in the 4th and White made an incredible catch to probably save a run in the 6th.
It’s bad enough Elder is on the roster, but it’s even worse how Snitker uses him. Letting him start the 6th was madness.
It looks like you have more faith in our bullpen than Snit does. Not disputing using Elder that way is suboptimal, but this is what he has to work with. And he’s got to manage that bullpen through both Elder’s start Monday and AJSS’s Tuesday.
Gotta say, I sure like the version of Sean who can hit.
And now it’s actually possible that we can leave Denver as a .500 club.
Every lineup regular now has positive WAR. It’s just all these little things too. Stealing bases, hitting runners in, hitting behind runners, playing good defense.
Nick Allen is tied for 4th on the team among position players in fWAR. Just like we all predicted.
I don’t know how I missed this, but I didn’t know Kelenic turned down a 6 year deal with 7th and 8th year options early in his career. Man, that kid has shit for brains.
Everyone should take these deals if offered. It is cynical efforts of agents that cause some to turn them down. I know you realize that what’s best for an agent isn’t always what’s best for the individual player. They prefer players to take risks to maximize large paydays to the detriment of the players who suffer injury or early decline. Agents do best in the aggregate that way but the individual player has only his own fortunes to depend on, not the average of a large group.
I know I’m in the minority here, but I’m not as negative about Elder as some are. His stuff is average and he requires pinpoint accuracy to be effective, but I think if he has command, he has enough talent and is smart enough to be an effective 4th or 5th starter. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not expecting a breakout season and I would prefer someone else on the roster, but I would not be surprised to see some semblance of usefulness if given a few more opportunities. It’s not saying much, but I think I like his chances better than Grant Holmes.
Grant Holmes will make a perfectly wonderful Tomlin-like middle reliever (even Tomlin had a couple of good years as a starter). Our rotation should be Sale, Lopez, Strider, Schwellenbach, and 5th (AJSS?). It would be nice if one or two of our prospects could replace Sale and Lopez eventually. There are so many and even if we could get a couple to be good, it would help.
To Stampton’s point, look at Ozzie for instance. A deal that was once viewed as taking advantage of a player has turned into a deal that certainly isn’t favoring the team over the last few years of it. This knife can and does cut both ways when signing extensions early.
as frustrating as Ozzie has been, he’s still a positive war player so his deal is still a win for Atlanta even before you factor in the insane excess value they’ve received over the course of the deal, 35 million for 20+ war is just highway robbery.
Agreed that Ozzie is an example of early decline but also agree that we came out way ahead. It’s hard to imagine Ozzie’s agent was very helpful in his particular case. Surely he could’ve gotten something closer to what Harris got