At some point, it is odd to call these things “recaps,” since they seem like a bad Groundhog Day spinoff in which:
- Stuff happens early, but the game is pretty close after a good performance from the starting pitcher,
- By the time the bullpens take over, it’s really close.
- Around the 8th inning or so (in tonight’s case, the 10th) something happens and we lose quickly.
The winning run came home on a wild pitch with two outs in the bottom of the 11th on a 1-2 count. I could say, accurately, that I screamed at my phone “Don’t use the two strikes to try and throw your best curveball… just pretend you have one strike” but that would make me sound like I could give useful advice. And of course while the game was lost there, it is more accurate to say that an out in that circumstance would have simply restored the status quo ante in which our chances of winning were still south of 50 percent.
Some things appear to be news, like the return of Craig Kimbrel, but it’s all just noise isn’t it?
We’ve gotten a little more literary around here later, which I heartily approve. So let me say that the Groundhog Day trope I used above is accurate so far as it goes, but we begin to approach the profundity of its true intellectual forebear, Samuel Beckett. (Forebears should never be confused with Snitbears.) To paraphrase only very slightly:
Estragon: And if they don’t win?
Vladimir: We’ll come back tomorrow.
Estragon: And the day after tomorrow?
Vladimir: Possibly
Estragon: And so on.
Vladimir: You’re merciless.
And this time, I’m not even paraphrasing:
“The Tuesday scowls, the Wednesday growls, the Thursday curses, the Friday howls, the Saturday snores, the Sunday yawns, the Monday morns, the Monday morns. The whacks, the moans, the cracks, the groans, the welts, the squeaks, the belts, the shrieks, the pricks, the prayers, the kicks, the tears, the skelps, and the yelps.”
If that doesn’t sound like Braves Journal this year, I’m not sure what would. Again, only a very minor paraphrase:
“Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today? That with Estragon my friend, at this place, until the fall of night on the West Coast, I waited for a win?”
And finally, for today anyway:
“Try. Fail. Fail again. Fail better.”
We Can’t Go On. Let’s Go On.
4:05 game today. Bryce Elder against Logan Webb.
The recaps will get better until morale improves.
Beautifully done, JonathanF, I’m sorry to say.
Welp. Bryce Elder will get a serious chance to prove he’s a big league pitcher this season :-/
Great recap.
Ryan is well sourced on these things, and I believe him when he writes stuff like this:
https://x.com/baldheaded1der/status/1931332244901118316
My concern is no longer this season, but what happens next. I really can’t imagine this version of the team will contend again unless ownership really commits to spending money next off season, and if attendance drops due to poor play, I worry they’ll scale back payroll even more.
Exec 1: We’re not making enough money.
Exec 2: Let’s actively make our product worse.
On pace to go 70-92, playoff odds down to 33%. The only help that’s coming is Profar and who knows what he’ll be capable of. The next man up in the rotation is Davis Daniel. Six teams ahead in the Wild Card, so you no longer control your destiny. You need to be really good and lucky the rest of the way. It seems the cake is baked.
Twisting the knife, DOB notes: “Perhaps even more damning: The #Braves are just 3 1/2 games ahead of the perpetually rebuilding Marlins, who played a home game
before an announced crowd of less than 6,000 last week (actual crowd less than half of that number).”
Losing streaks do come to an end, but what a hole to be in.
Kimbrel DFA’ed after 1 game. Wow.
DOB says his contract was pro-rated for 1 day so he won’t get the full 2 million, which explains why they were quick to DFA him but not Montero, whose money is guaranteed.
I’m just an internet rando, but I always felt like if I ever found myself in charge of a cheap-ass team, I could start by building a bullpen.
After everything that guy has done for this org what a slap in the face.
Okay. I’m about to get on the Fire Anthopoulus train. What an embarrassment.
Yeah. Even with financial constraints, nobody made you pay millions for Montero who has mostly been terrible over the course of his career. You could’ve used the same money to sign several guys with a better history including Kimbrel and Shelby Miller and have them duke it out.
Sadly ownership probably approves of his work because he has gone along and reduced payroll. He isn’t going anywhere
Not that anyone cares but I’m done watching until the product is watchable. I will just come here and read what people have to say and check the box scores
Crazy stuff on Kimbrel. On a positive note, Elder’s outing today was easily one of the best performances all year by any Braves pitcher. If he can pitch halfway as effectively as this the rest of the year, the injury to AJSS won’t be so hard to deal with.
This organization is an absolute clown show.
I hope the Rockies come in next weekend and sweep this club’s sorry behinds, and every last Braves fan in attendance boos — and makes it clear those jeers aren’t directed at the players, but the suits and decision-makers, from Snitker all the way up to the top of the tree, the people who decided that six buildings were more important than building a bullpen.
Going cheap on the bullpen — and then treating Kimbrel with shabbiness whilst protecting the useless Montero — a pox on their houses.
Shame, shame, shame.
Fire Anthopoulous, fire Snitker, but above all … SELL THE TEAM. Because they’re all culpable.
Conspiracy theory: Kimbrel thinks he’s big league caliber. Braves don’t think so. He rots in AAA for 3 weeks, which has to be part of this story. Braves say, “Fine, we’ll call you up.” Kimbrel then sits at 91-92, allows a couple baserunners, and he’s lucky to get out of the inning unscathed. The Braves quickly DFA him, saying, “Well, all 29 other teams now get a look at you, so if they don’t want you, maybe we’re right.” Kimbrel sees that, accepts the assignment to AAA to keep working on his comeback. If you leave him out there a few more outings, he might get lucky, and it makes it harder to get him to go back to AAA because another team will claim him. And this is the problem with signing Kimbrel to begin with: you need to treat him like one of the random journeymen relievers, but the second you DFA him because you’re not convinced he’s decent, everybody rushes to defend him saying, “He was great 10 years ago for us!”
And speaking more generally, you know what would make us not really care about whether Kimbrel, realistically the 4th or 5th best option in a good pen, remains on the roster? Half our lineup not been flaming hot garbage. Yeah, sure, we blew that one lead where we scored 10 runs. What about the other games? What about guys signed for the next 5-6 seasons who can’t stay healthy or productive? That’s your huge problem. If you have no offense at SS, 2B, CF, and LF, it doesn’t really matter who you run out there in middle relief.
I’m stuck on my couch, laptop in lap, with potentially a torn hamstring while on my 4th or 5th hour of television, so I guess I will watch this team this afternoon. Maybe I’ve also had some bourbon this afternoon. So I might be gracing you fine folks with more unsolicited thoughts.
Ok, how did you ruin your hamstring? And I will keep watching, always do, BUT it becomes more background noise/video while I play a game of Stat of vacuum or something.
Man, I’ve just been lifting a ton, doing weird leg days, and not stretching enough. Then I played softball last night, hit a ball hard, sprinted out of the box, and POP. I knew I needed to up my yoga if I was going to lift more, especially if I was sprinting too, and I didn’t do it. It was dumb. But when it popped, I thought it was a torn ACL, and I literally crawled to first base so I didn’t get thrown out. So if it’s just a little tear or whatever, I’ll consider myself lucky and hopefully not have huge problems.
Even including luck and low velocity, Kimbrel is better than Montero. At least Cox has potential but Jose Ruiz??? This is beginning to look more like 2016/2017 where we’re waiting for some minor leaguer to save us.
Ryan is connecting the dots on Twitter that there must be some financial crunch for the Braves, which has to explain the infatuation with Montero. Montero is owed a measly $2M, and they just won’t drop him. His 4.14 FIP is a lot better than his 5.14 ERA, but he still sucks. And he’s sucked since 2022. We’re just not being serious. But nothing is gonna change between now and the deadline except Profar. Everybody has to play better, and we can bitch about Snit all we want, but no one knows this more than Snit: these guys need to play better.
https://x.com/baldheaded1der/status/1931332244901118316
Webb’s gonna pitch a CG SO with this massive strike out. We already suck; he doesn’t need any help.
Ozuna is out there arguing with the umpire, and he has to, because the slug in the dugout won’t; he’ll just sit there and be as useful as a tree stump.
From a management level, from the top down, this club bellows, “We don’t care about anything but real-estate acquisitions; why should you?” A thoroughly unserious operation.
Late to the party here, but what a brilliant recap, JF. Beckett is an even better writer for this Braves team than the Russian greats. They are all about big themes of love, hate, life, and death. Existential meaninglessness fits this team better.
I saw Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart perform Godot in NY a few years ago. That’s a couple of guys with veteran presents.
The manager actually shows a pulse and Harris immediately hits a home run.
There are no coincidences.
Verdugo is complete trash. We can have all the conversations we want about Kimbrel and all the other guys in the back of the pen, but no serious franchise employs Alex Verdugo as their starting LF.
Or has Luke Williams batting in a high-leverage situation. Or claims José Ruiz. Or considered Héctor Neris as a viable seventh-inning option to hold a one-run lead coming out of spring training. Or looks at the available bullpen options when Blewitt was struggling Thursday and says, “Raisel, get up.”
Anyone wanna tell me how Bryce Elder got 11 strikeouts in one game?
12! And a late addition to my fantasy roster yesterday. Thank you, Bryce, you and your weird looking head.
Oh, for the love of Pete.
Location, location, location.
Bryce Elder… hexbreaker?
What an amazing start by Elder. We really need to win this game and not waste this start.
All right armchair managers. Who do you want to pitch the 9th?
Either Mariano Rivera or Bugs Bunny
Rivera was good, but Bugs could get a strikeout with one changeup.
In honor of Pride Month, we had a little Johnson on Johnson action.
I’m sorry, I’ll go home now.
Just keep taking that hamstring medicine.
Believe I’ll have a little hamstring medicine myself.
Yes, the offense could have done more, but Logan Webb is pretty good.
This one’s on AA and Liberty, Braves Holdings, whatever.
You get what you pay for. Cheap-ass bullpen.
Is this thing cursed?
Well… I dunno… this has gotten plainly ridiculous.
That ought to be the dagger…
This stretch has become unbelievable. I know there is plenty of blame to go around, but I don’t remember ever seeing this level of gut wrenching losses for this long a period.
EDIT—you can look for rational explanations all day long (cheap FO, sleepy field manager, etc.) but this is supernatural
Saw that coming from a mile away. Not enough offense and a bullpen that is mediocre on its best day.
In June of 2006 (a year pretty much everybody got hurt), we lost 20 of 22 games, including a 4-game sweep at home by Arizona.
But I don’t remember them all being quite like these.
Make mine a double, sir…
One of the few silver linings to this awful season has been Bryce Elder who has more than earned himself an extended look. Just disgusting to waste that kind of start. I didn’t watch the game, of course, and, well, I’m glad I didn’t.
Take it over to the recap thread.