All happy teams resemble one another; every unhappy team is unhappy in its own way.
All was confusion in the house of the Hammers. The general manager had discovered that his third base coach was having trouble waving runners home from third, and he declared that he could not share the same clubhouse with him. This condition of things had lasted now two days, and was causing deep discomfort, not only to the general manager and manager, but also to all the members of the team and the fanbase.
All the members of the team and the fanbase felt that there was no sense in their actually watching the games, and that in any sports bar people meeting casually had more mutual interests than they, the members of the team and the fanbase of the Atlanta Braves.
The manager did not come out for the media press conference; the general manager had not given an interview for two days. The hitters were swinging at everything as if they were crazy; the first-base coach was angry with the new third-base coach and nearly wrote an Instagram post to a friend begging him to find him a new place. The former starting shortstop had departed a few nights before; the color commentators demanded their wages.
— pause —
That’s about as far as I can stretch that gimmick, anyway. What a revoltin’ development this has been! Whether or not this team rounds into something worth watching, they can hardly be said to be such today. In the meantime, hug your families, eat some snack food, change the channel, pick up a 1000-page Russian novel. Enjoy your evenings!
Having said that, it’s Chris Sale vs. Merrill Kelly tonight, so in theory this could be a pitcher’s duel. For the optimists and masochists among you who watch, I hope it’s a good one!
Now that we are a 1/3+ into the season, I am ready to speak:
This team isn’t good. They haven’t been in 18 months. Little has been done to address massive holes. They aren’t “unlucky” just not good.
They are soft. Someone is ALWAYS hurt. Why aren’t we firing the medical staff?
They have no fight. Acuna, Ozuna, Olsen and Baldwin are they only ones who look interested.
It is all really sad. The front office/Liberty is letting this window close. They are going to try and milk out that 2021 run as long as they can. Like they did with the ’95 team for 20 years.
I can’t lump last year into this year. Those are 2 completely different seasons with 2 completely different sets of problems. Last year, we couldn’t stay healthy. This year, we just suck. Bottom line.
But that can easily change. Take Harris, for instance. Sure, if you think Harris is lost forever, then yeah, that’s a huge problem, and I don’t know what to do about that.. But consider this: on June 10th, 2023, Harris went 0-3 and was hitting .188/.266/.297 in 146 PAs (he lost 2 weeks in April). Straight dog shit. But then he went 3-4 on June 12th, 4-4 on June 14th, 5-5 on June 18th, and for the next 2 months and 190 PAs, he hit .379/.407/.605. He wasn’t walking, but he was raking. He ends the year with a .808 OPS and a 3.5 WAR season. Seriously, make that make sense for me. I’ll make sense of it for you: that’s baseball.
The easy one to remember is Ozuna. Ozuna’s out there driving drunk, fighting with his wife, and hitting .151/.263/.372 through 99 PAs in 2023. And that was after having a .687 OPS in 2022. Everyone wanted him released. But after those 99 PAs, Ozuna decides he knows how to hit again, and he has a .958 OPS for the rest of the season. Make that make sense. How do you go from one day being terrible to turning it on literally the next day and never looking back?
At some point, these guys will do the same. Or they won’t. Or they will. Who the hell knows? And that’s the problem with baseball: the season is so long that it can feel hopeless for multiple months and they it just… doesn’t. They… figure something out. They make a change. And one person’s change leads to another person’s change. Then another person’s change. It’s like they’re human beings or something. And unfortunately, if you want to find out if and when it happens, you just keep tuning in tomorrow.
I think this year is just the follow up from last. Still don’t have a shortstop. Still need a corner bat. Still need a starter. Still need pen guys. They dumped the hitting coaches over the performance.
What did they do to address the issues from last year? Profar? They knew Strider wouldn’t be Strider for most of the year and did nothing.
Now they are diverting the attention from the performance on the field to these Fredi Gonzalez puff pieces. “Oh he cried with Paul Bird! He loves the Braves so much! Bobby Cox adopted him!”
With regards to Strider —and I don’t think you make this move yet considering this might be a lost season anyway — but I think you watch him start the rest of the season to see if he can regain any of his velocity or figure something new out. If not, you have to consider making him a reliever or closer next season. He was successful in 2023 as a starter basically as a 2 pitch pitcher because those 2 pitches were so dominant. But if he doesn’t have elite velocity anymore, then that’s not really going to work. I will say that his curveball looked decent last night, and that’s not a big pitch that he has had in the past. But the changeup is not good enough. It might be better off asking him to be a reliever and go all out in short bursts with his 4 seamer and slider.
Also, I think Reynaldo Lopez has to be a reliever when he returns. So these 2 guys may factor into the bullpen mix next season.
Stats like this make me think our offensive issues are mostly due to the coaching staff:
https://x.com/reach_baseball/status/1930322703312973976
How is that even possible? I haven’t verified the stat, but it certainly passes the eye test.
The team has been trying to implement a very specific approach that is presumably being driven by the front office and then relayed to the players via the coaching staff. Specifically, it seems they are being instructed to be more selective at the plate in an attempt to draw more walks. You can see this in the drop in Zone Swing %, Chase %, and even Meatball Swing % (the latter being the most concerning; they’ve stared at quite a few crushable pitches this year).
At the same time, they’ve actually increased their Zone Contact %. That sounds like a good thing, but trading power for contact can result in…well, a lot of piddly contact, hence the decrease in barrels per PA.
The problem with all of this is that they deliberately developed, acquired, and/or extended these guys because they could do one thing: hit the ball really hard and do major damage on contact (even if contact didn’t occur all that often). Now, they’re telling these same guys to completely change their approach and try to do things they aren’t really all that skilled at doing, and it’s backfiring.
It seems to me that they really overreacted to the offensive results not being there in 2024 (even though the inputs were still first-rate) and abandoned an approach that’s generally way more effective than the one we’re seeing now.
The problem might be that you can’t teach some players to be more selective because they can’t really tell which pitches are going to be meatballs and which are going to be 3 inches off the plate. If it’s a foot outside, yeah but I think some guys cannot tell when the swing decision happens.
When a team has an historical offensive season, it seems to me almost inevitable that most, if not all of the hitters are going to regress the next season. I hope it’s not true we weren’t expecting that. Maybe JonathanF finds that interesting.
It kinda looks like we are trying to do what Joe Simpson used to say Andruw Jones should do on the air. Stop trying to hit home runs and try to hit more singles to the opposite field. Well, we’ve stopped hitting many home runs.
Another night that opens with three innings of the crappiest at-bats imaginable.
Alex Verdugo has a -0.3 fWAR which grades out as bad as Orlando Arcia and almost as bad as BDLC and Jarred Kelenic. He doesn’t even play defense well anymore. Can he go away?
Fredi Gonzalez has got this guys.
What happened to Daysbel that he had to leave with a full count?
He looked down at his hand and shook his hand. Ozzie motioned to the coaches and trainer that Daysbel was hurt. He threw a warm up pitch and they didn’t like it and pulled him.
MHII’s contract may be like B.J. Upton’s. It may be attached to that of a superior player to get it off the books. His at-bats are beyond hopeless.
Also, fire Tim Hyers into the sun. Put Snitker on the same rocket, of course.
This team sucks.
Runners and 2nd and 3rd, 0 outs, and of course we can’t score.
At least Iglesias being washed won’t blow a save this time.
No one’s going to want Iglesias. He’s hot-dog water.
After tonight’s loss, this team is on pace to lose 89 games. Unfathomable.
Harris is so bad right now. I said the other day he swings at anything between the dugouts, and that might not be hyperbole at this point.
Martinez can’t find the strike zone with a map, a compass and a flashlight. For the love of all that is holy, KEEP THE BAT ON YOUR SHOULDER, MICHAEL. It is the best thing you can do there. This is why he has a terrible on-base percentage. This is why his OPS is below .600.
At this point, he’s useless. Like nearly all of this pathetic, waste-of-space team.
Recapped, if you can stand it.