That’s affirmative.
Spencer Schwellenbach worked around a Rafael Devers grand slam in the bottom of the 3rd and gave the Braves 7 otherwise good innings, and the Braves totaled 16 hits to take the series 2 games to 1.
Atlanta jumped out to an early 3 – 0 lead. Drake Baldwin, getting a rare day game after a night game start behind the plate singled in the first run. Drake went 2 – 5 to raise his batting average to .357. The Braves quickly responded to the Devers grand slam in the 4th to tie the game at 4, then added 3 more in the 5th, aided by 3 walks. Atlanta added the final 3 runs in the 8th off Sean Newcomb; Marcell Ozuna‘s 2 run homer wrapping up the day’s activity. Alex Verdugo and Austin Riley had 3 hits apiece.
The Braves take their 2nd series in a row. Like the previous series against Washington, Atlanta should have won the penultimate game of the series, but closed it out with a win. Maybe some day when a team wins all the games they should have, JonathanF’s annual prediction of 162 – 0 will come true.
The Braves conclude a 17 game stretch having played 11 one run games. To move much above the .500 level, one of three things is going to need to happen: the bullpen will need to get deeper, starters will have to go longer, or the offense will have to start scoring more runs. Two of those things happened today.
I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time.
One thing that my sons can’t comprehend is that for parts of the ’70s and ’80s there was a national speed limit of 55 miles per hour. This was reflected multiple times in the music of the day. “I Can’t Drive 55,” complained Sammy Hagar and immediately comes to mind. Both “Shakin'” by Eddie Money and “Rockin’ Into the Night” by 38 Special mention driving the outrageous speed of 80 miles per hour. (At which velocity apparently “g”s fall off of words.) Friends, I just drove 80 mph all the way from Spartanburg to Miami, and I still haven’t heard anyone sing about it.
But, the theme song for the era was probably “Convoy” by C.W. McCall, which was based on the theory of “they can’t arrest all of us.” I mention this because the song notably popularized for a short time CB radio lingo such as “10-4“.
The Braves enjoy their first off day since May 1st on Monday, and resume play Tuesday in Washington at 6:45 Eastern; TheBadAss vs. Mitchell Parker.
A big 10-4. Let’s copy that.
Thanks, Rusty. You can tell your kids I drove all the way from Knoxville to Daytona Beach at 60-62 mph in the summer of 1984, with no air conditioning or radio. The horrors. Although going through downtown Atlanta was a breeze.
I just finished watching the game, and apparently unlike the commenters who were watching it live, actually enjoyed it. 10 runs! It’s fun watching young guys like PDQ (and AJSS on his nights) pitch so well. After the grand slam, which was aided by a terrible call in Boston’s favor, Schwellenbach righted the ship and went right back to shutting the Red Sox down. The Braves never felt out of it as they so often have. I’ll take this anytime over the offensive nullities w’ve been suffering through.
When driving from Tampa to Houston in the early 80s, I realized some Floridians believed that driving 56 MPH put them in the fast lane.
There are, let’s say, a wide variety of theories on driving found in the Sunshine State.
FanGraphs playoff odds are up to 70.0% from a low of 55.8% on April 17. Even after 0-7 and 5-13, nobody has run away with the NL East.
5 games back in the division, and 4 games out of the last wild card spot on May 19th. 15 – 7 at home.
Breaker one-nine, Rusty. There have been lots of unlikely and very dumb songs that somehow reached the top of the charts. Convoy was as unlikely and dumb as any of them. But I’ll take 10-4 any day.
And I agree with Val about PDQ. Yesterday’s performance was one of his most impressive, in not letting the grand slam rattle him. He is for real.
I’m not quite as old as the old guard here but no spring chicken either. Anyhow I’m just young enough to have missed Convoy’s radio success. In fact, the first time I heard Convoy was on the 1992 Simpsons episode where Bart receives Superstar Celebrity Microphone for his birthday. I’m a gen-Xer, but Matt Groening was squarely a baby boomer. He taught me half of what I know about relevant pop culture for that generation.
“Let them truckers roll, 10-4.”
Yeah, “Convoy” was essentially an inescapable soundtrack to the CB Radio craze of the mid-’70s. It seemed like it was on the radio every 5 minutes (along w/ similar fare like “Afternoon Delight” & “Disco Duck”).
Went to Mets/Yanks last night. Quite an atmosphere. Two Mets fans next to me were discussing the NL East, the Alvarado suspension, etc., & one of them said, “I’m less worried about the Phillies than the Braves now.” To which I not-so-jokingly said (in my best Jimi Hendrix voice): “We’re comin’ to getcha…”
Of course, it was nice to see the mass orange-&-blue exodus right after the Bellinger GSHR. It was a humbling night in MetLand.
https://x.com/MLBNow/status/1924528731915526469
Brian’s an idiot. How can he say on paper the Braves won the pivot when you don’t factor in Langeliers?
If you want to be granular about it, you can make a case that in dollars per WAR returned we seem to be coming out ahead and are likely to come out ahead over 8 years of Olson’s deal. Freeman comes with intangibles that are hard to quantify. Maybe that makes me an anti-analytical fuddy duddy, but that’s what I believe. Guys who fight every at bat like the game is on the line instead of getting themselves out early in the count have positive effects on the rest of the team. It also wears the pitcher out and increases the likelihood of mistakes being made later.
Agree that you need to factor in Langeliers. Even so, whether the Freeman/Olson pivot is a win or loss for the Braves could still go either way. Freeman has aged better than we could have expected so far. It really turns on how well or poorly Olson ages over the next four years. The results so far, while in favor of Freeman, are fairly close (thanks to Olson’s monster 2023–but Freeman is certainly more consistent).
I’m agnostic on the intangibles question. There is value in seeing a lot of pitches. I haven’t looked up pitch per AB stats, but Olson’s walk rate is at least as high as Freeman’s.
I looked it up for you. Matt Olson is way ahead, not just this season (4.49 vs. 3.72), but every season of his career. For some reason, I just have some overvalued memories of Freddie fouling off 11 pitches to stay alive. Olson also swings less at pitches outside the zone (roughly 22% vs 28% this season).
stampton, yes, I would also factor in Freddie’s leadership to push the debate even more to the Freddie said. I don’t see how anyone couldn’t.
And yes, you are right that Freddie’s $4.1M per WAR is more than Olson’s $3.8M per WAR. But like I said, Langeliers has produced 3.2 WAR to date, and he’s only cost about $2M. So if you add Langeliers in, Freddie is down to $3.6M. And if Langeliers keeps putting up 3+ WAR seasons at pre-arb prices, the Freddie side is going to keep going down. So I just don’t know even the cost per WAR ever works out for the Braves, but Freddie does have 2 more years on the deal this year, and I suppose he could decline.
Ultimately, AA gambled Freddie would have a conventional decline, and that didn’t occur. So, I guess we’ll see, but even from a strict cost per WAR, I don’t see how Atlanta came out ahead.
Rob already made this point a few weeks ago I think, but it’s important to note the trade capital used for Olson could have been used for something else. We don’t know what AA would have turned Langeliers into, but that always has to be factored into evaluating this trade.
The Langeliers trade may have contributed to the Murphy trade since it looked like we didn’t have a long-term answer at the position defensively (not to me but to smarter baseball people). The pair of trades was just poor asset management, setting aside my personal attachment to Freddie Freeman.
I’m a skeptic about the value of Freddie’s leadership. And I doubt that any of us have enough inside information to judge that. He’s obviously more vocal and outgoing than Olson, but the effect he has on his teammates is difficult to know. I’m influenced by Bill James on the general subject of intangibles. It’s not that they aren’t important but drawing conclusions from outside the clubhouse is not as helpful as we think it is.
It was a few years earlier than “Convoy,” but “The Streak” was another memorably dumb/fun song from the 1970s. From later in the decade, “Ain’t Gonna Bump No More With No Big Fat Woman,” which featured the line, “She done broke my hip,” probably wouldn’t fly today.
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/45231582/mets-mendoza-talk-juan-soto-hustling-box
Heh
Speaking of intangibles…
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/45232220/brewers-c-contreras-fights-fractured-finger-plate
Maybe it’s all in my head. I have no empirical data but there seem to be players who are fighters. When we lost our play-in game to the Cardinals, Yadier Molina said “we played to win. They played to not lose.” Was he right? It sure felt like it.
Maybe Shawn Murphy had resting anxious face (RAF) but he had often looked bewildered and lost. Contreras always had a swagger and the moment never seemed too big. He is exactly the type of guy who goes 4-4 with a broken finger.
I generally tend to be leery of trying to get into the guys’ heads. Sean had a fantastic year for us in 2023, and he’s having a good year this year, under extremely high-pressure circumstances – after an injury-plagued year from hell, the entire fanbase turned on him and was ready to jettison him in favor of the young hotshot prospect who ripped through the minors and who has spent the whole year killing the ball and all but daring the Braves to make a move. In the midst of all that, Murphy has kept his focus and played effectively, and I think he deserves credit for that.
That said, I completely agree that the clubhouse doesn’t seem to have a rah-rah guy or a redass, and I’m not exactly sure who the leader of the team really is. None of these guys is Thurman Munson. That said, when we get Spencer Strider back tonight, I think things could feel a little bit different around the team.
Sure–who can say? None of it can ever be proven one way or the other, because it’s not empirical, but I think there’s a reason why this team has lost the first playoff series in 12 out of 15 playoff trips this century including losing 10 consecutive series (an all-time record!). Without looking, I would say most of those came as the team with the better regular season, so we weren’t just overmatched.
Meekly folding in the first round of the playoffs became the personality of Braves baseball and many of us weren’t satisfied by chalking it up to “crapshoot”. It sure doesn’t seem like a crapshoot when it happens 10 times in a row. Try flipping 10 consecutive heads. Something was different about the 2020-21 teams, and some of it seemed to be due to Freddie, Dansby, Fried, and others.
New Game Thread