He’s B-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ck
If I have to tell you who he is, or what he did tonight, start reading some other blog and come back here. I’m not even going to look it up, because I’m very sure this was the longest elapsed time between the 165th and 166th home run in any player’s career.
He’s Put B-a-a-a-a-a-ck on the Mound in a Tied Game
By this, I mean, of course, Raisel Iglesias, who entered a game tied 1-1 in the 9th and promptly allowed Manny Machado to untie the game. If we’re going to be a 0.500 team or thereabouts, we can have a closer who sucks and address this question in the offseason. If we want to win 95 games this season, we need to either fix him pronto or go some other way.
Wrong Way Eli
I’m not completely certain that this game was lost on a baserunning blunder — Michael Harris II‘s next at bat might well have been a game-ending double play, just like we got last night. But that was a bad baserunning play… and this time I’m pretty sure Snitker saw it. We know what Eli saw and heard, neither of which would tell him to run from third to second, but we are not privy to the inner workings of his brain.
Annals of Broadcasting
I don’t know how much longer Elias Díaz will play baseball: he’s definitely at the tail end of a pretty long career. But I will never again think of him without remembering C.J. Nitkowski‘s imprecation when he was thrown out trying to to stretch a single to a double against the strong right arm of Ronald Acuña Jr: “C’mon you big dummy!” Just as Hideki Irabu will alwys be “that fat pussy toad,” Díaz will always, to me, be “you big dummy.” Whatever you do CJ, never apologize for this.
Michael King against Sherlocks tomorrow night.
Legit the worst thing I’ve ever seen in pro baseball. Everything should be fired. And then fire them again.
I didn’t watch. Anyone have the stomach to give a brief overview? What’d Eli do?
Eli was on second with one out in the ninth, Braves trailing by 1. Ozzie hit a single to center and Eli ran to within 3 feet of third base with Tuiasosopo throwing up a stop sign which somehow Eli interpreted as the ball being caught and he tried to return to second base and was thrown out for the second out. Harris then bounced out to end the game.
White at 2B, base hit to CF. Tui threw up the stop sign at 3B. Mysteriously, White seemed to receive it as a “Go back! It was caught!” and he got thrown out… retreating to second base… on a base hit.
I was five feet away from it and I still have no idea wtf happened. This is not a serious baseball organization. A six year old girls t ball team might make that mistake. Not players making 7 figures or coaches making any amount of money. I’m serious. The worst thing I’ve seen in 50+ years of playing and watching ball. Un fucking believable.
They have played most of the season like their heads aren’t t in it and now with Ronnie and Strider back, the excuses are gone. I don’t think the hitting coach has been good and Snit looks disinterested much of the time. To beat the dead horse of this week, the team seems to lack leadership. They need a red ass in the clubhouse to stir things up because this isn’t working.
Thursday against the Nationals Eli White let a fly ball go over his head in right, and at the plate was 0 for 5 with 2 strikeouts and a GIDP. Then tonight, this. He’s a one-man wrecking machine!
DOB says that Iglesias has given up 7 homers in his last 21 appearances, mostly on his slider, after giving up only 4 in 66 appearances last year. He (Iglesias, not DOB) is now sporting a 5.85 ERA.
Will Smith, from 8/7/21-9/17/21 gave up 6 homers and sported an ERA of 5.19 and a FIP of 7.38. We stuck with him because we had no alternatives, and it worked out. I am not a pitching coach and I don’t know if Iglesias’ problem is mechanical or mental or the world’s worst luck. You pay Kranitz to figure out the answer to that question, report it to Snit and AA and then tell them to do whatever it is that needs to be done. Or you just give up on this year and cheerfully admit that you’re a team without a reliable closer, which ought to cost you 10-15 games or so for the rest of the season all by itself.
I don’t know if Kranny is any good. I think this organization hires buddy types. Call them good old boys or what have you. From Fredi to Tui to Kranny to Snit. They want likable guys. That goes a long way but it’s not the same as competence.
I played minor league baseball and coached high school baseball for 25 years and all blame should not be on Eli. The third base coach should not be signaling that early for a full stop at 3rd base. There are two many variables that can occur before the play stops. His early stop sign was probably due to the poor judgement he made on the go ahead run being thrown out in the 9th in 8-7 loss to Washington. Most coaches at 3rd would not signal in this manner until the runner was closer to third and verbal commands would be included.
Thanks Rex, but let me follow up with a few questions:
1) Snitker said after the game that had the ball been caught there was no way White gets back anyway — so why even try?
2) We have been told 100,000 times how helpful home fans are. They were not telling Eli to turn around.
3) Fine. Give Tuiasosopo some blame. 5%? 6.3%? Are you saying this wasn’t overwhelmingly Eli’s fault?
Yeah, obviously that’s on White. I do think Tui could have just been pointing at the bag with one hand with a stop sign in the other hand. But whatever. Who even know if the next 2 hitters could get White home, so that’s just the kinda thing that sucks in a one-run game but shouldn’t loom that large if the offense got the job done.
There are a lot of holes in this team but lots of time left. The discussions about selling in the last thread are pretty irrelevant because there’s no way this team is going to sell. And if they sell because AA didn’t upgrade the team enough in the offseason, then I think you have to start taking a hard look at AA. But regardless, we’ll be in it at the deadline and we’ll be one of many buyers.
Every day we run four guys out there with an OPS that starts with a 6. This team sucks. Wasting a pretty nice starting pitching year so far.
It’s 100% White’s fault, 100% Snitker’s fault, and 100% Tui’s fault. The only logical explanation is the Braves aren’t coached well, don’t practice correctly, and didn’t take spring training seriously. I assume White was terrified he’d be DFA’d yesterday, began overthinking everything, and panicked on the base path. I assume they haven’t practiced any of this at all. Seeing Harris II get thrown out a few days ago going from 2nd to 3rd on a hit to the SS was cringe, too. These are professionals. But this is typical of the Braves, just hope to get by on luck and raw talent. If that doesn’t work just say, “aww shucks” and do it again the next season. In-game management and basic fundamentals have not been a forte of this organization for 30+ years. What would it take to get Baldwin some at bats?! Snitker is the only manager in MLB history who thinks you need to rest hot hitters.
Trading Ozuna is what it would take. That is actually an interesting idea. You could potentially get some useful bullpen arms for him, if not straight up in a 3-way deal.
You’re obviously 3 times as good at allocating blame as anyone else.
It’s White’s fault for behaving so nonsensical in the moment, and it is Tui’s fault for not practicing some baserunning before the games to ensure his players and him are on the same page. Snitker also takes blame for that.
I didn’t see the Harris play, but I think (and I think Bill James suggested this 40 years ago) that in general, the percentages might show that players on second with no outs should try to take third on grounders to short more often than they do. If you’re thrown out at third, there’s a runner on first with one out rather than one on second, which is somewhat costly because he won’t score on a single (though he might on a single & a productive out). If the SS throws to third and you make it, though, there are runners on first and third with no outs, which is far better than a runner on second with one out. And if the SS ignores you and throws to first, you’re on third with one out rather than on second, and you can score on a grounder or fly out. Without thinking about it too much, my guess would be that if you think you can beat a throw 40% or maybe even 30% of the time, it’s a good gamble.
Quotes from DOB’s article in The Athletic this morning:
“I thought I got a good read on it, turned my head and started running before the ball hit the ground, obviously, and just got confused for whatever reason when I saw Tui throw his hands up,” White said. “It was just a terrible mistake in a big situation.”
Snitker said, “(Tuiasosopo) is down the line, and if a third-base coach is down the line, that’s a sign that the runner needs to come around the bag and pick him up. … You can’t make mistakes in games like that. When they’re close games against good teams. We (also) did it to ourselves the other day. We’ve just got to get to where when we’re not scoring, we can’t make outs on the bases.”
White thought the ball was caught and that Tuiasosopo was telling him to get back to second.
“I got an early jump. I saw it go over the second baseman’s head, and I thought it was low, which ended up being a good read,” White said. “I just didn’t trust it. And for whatever reason, I just got confused. And I mean, I’ve had that play happen a thousand times in my career and never, never done that. It’s just a terrible, costly mistake right there.”
I was discussing your math accuracy, not your blame accuracy.
He’s using the legal concept of joint and several liability, in which a plaintiff can hold several different actors fully responsible for harm without allocation based on percentage of fault.
I think Eli made the most boneheaded play of the year, but game-killing mental mistakes happen from time to time, as we saw with Kelenic.
From what I can see by looking at the box score, the reason the Braves lost is the 2-9 spots in the lineup. Austin drew two walks, Verdugo got two singles, and the other guys got on base once each (another walk for Ozuna, and singles from Harris and Albies). Olson and Murphy both went 0-4. Harris’s OPS is now .599, which is nearly unplayable, and that’s identical to Nick Allen’s mark and just barely lower than Ozzie at .618.
Just for comparison, Orlando Arcia’s OPS last year was .625, and it cost him his job.
I’m at the game this afternoon on. In the Braves’ last half inning we were joking about the “productive outs” that Ozzie and MHII made on infield rollers. But sure enough, they turned out to be productive of a run when Allen hit the even slower roller down the third base line to score the runner from third. Given how poorly Ozzie and michael have been hitting, I guess we’ll take what we can get.
EDIT. Now Ozzie gets an rbi on a slow roller. Hitting it slowly may be the key.
Looks like #13 hasn’t missed a beat.
Good thing, ’cause we really need him.
https://x.com/mlbtraderumors/status/1926402165871951883?s=46&t=WSNPrB2JyUoeKSn2PZsXZg
Alright, Kranitz, make him big shit out of the pen.
That’s a surprise because Newcomb has been pretty decent as a swing man for them. I wonder if there were clubhouse issues.
Recap later tonight….
As I said earlier, I was at the game, and it was just a delightful experience from start to finish. What a contrast to the sickening end to last night’s game. And just what the team and the fans needed. You know what we really needed? Ronald!
Recapped