Comps Nostalgia
I’ve spent almost no time this year in announcer commentary. I hope this puts to rest the ugly rumors that I am an announcer malcontent, looking to find fault wherever I can. No. My antipathy for Chip Caray was absolutely genuine and based on, whenever necessary, actual quotations. Brandon Gaudin and CJ Ntkowski are fine, are Tom Glavine and Frenchy. (Well, Glavine’s “kids off my lawn” bent gets to me a bit sometimes, but its so much better than Smoltz that i cut him a lot of slack.
But when the Braves play the Mets (or Yankees) I listen to the local announcers here in NY, and what a treat it is to listen to Gary Cohen (play-by-play) Ron Darling (who isn’t in Atlanta for this series) and Keith Hernandez (who is). Almost uniquely, they combine homerism with an objectivity for bad play by the Amazins (and they have been highly critical of Mets defense in this series) and a generally entertaining foray into baseball history and speculation.
On Wednesday night, Keith Hernandez made his historic (his era) pitching comps with Sale. He said the two similar pitchers were John Candelaria and Larry McWilliams… and he said McWilliams was one of the best unsung pitchers of the 80s. Obviously, neither of these guys had the results Sale has had, but you get the point: tall skinny sidewinding “all ass and elbows” lefties. He was so complimentary of McWilliams, though, that I went and looked up his record against McWilliams. For two years in Pittsburgh, he hit McWilliams pretty good. But overall, it’s clear McWilliams was a tough opponent. Pete Rose didn’t like him much either.
Sale clearly has more tools than Candelaria or McWilliams did. But you are free to wonder how McWilliams might have fared with modern training methods.
The Game
Even when Strider was going well, the Mets seemed to hit him well. Coming into this game, 4 Mets were OPSing 0.900 or higher (though one of them, Brett Baty, is currently on the shelf.) The good news is that Strider’s velocity appears to have completely recovered. The bad news is that the Mets can still hit line drives off of it. Strider was very lucky to get through the first three innings giving up only one run , with 100+ exit velocities from Lindor (twice) Alvarez and ol’ Throw It Again Alonso.
But he settled down… he wasn’t the Spencer Strider of 2023, but he was much better than the Spencer Strider of 2023 against the Mets. He worked a solid 6, giving up only one run.
On the other side of the ball, the Mets rotation is in a bit of disarray. The Braves are lucky to be missing the law firm of Senga, Manaea, Megill and Montas, all of whom are on the IL. Tonight, they substituted former Yankee Clay Holmes, whose gaudy numbers with runners in scoring position fell somewhat, although his last run allowed came from a non-at bat: a bases-loaded walk. This was followed by another bases-loaded walk that made it 3-1. We then got to see more of the bottom half of the Mets bullpen, who aren’t very good. Soon it was 7-1, (the big blow a bases-clearing three run double from Olson) a lead big enough that you can bring in Saints’ and not worry about it.
But What Have We Accomplished?
Sure it was a sweep. Sure it was a sweep against the first place team. Sure it was a sweep against an archrival. Sure it was a sweep against a team which has no starting pitchers on the staff at the moment. But we’re still ten games behind the Mets. And we’ve got a four game series up in NYC next week, two of which I wil be attending with ububba. All we managed to do in these last three days is keep ourselves relevant, and irritate the Mets. (Both of those are worthy outcomes, by the way.)
There’s still a long way to go, but we seem to have made a start.
For me as a Braves fan who bas slipped pretty far into pessimism, this series has shown me everything I could have possibly hoped to see: offense, defense, pitching, and, frankly, focus, intensity, and heart. They rose to the challenge.
They’ve gotta keep it up, but I couldn’t have asked for anything more.
I’m glad you shared the Anthopoulos quote about Sale. The audio is much more persuasive than the transcript and he’s clearly leaving a big caveat. I believe he also said in the off-season that payroll would go up and it didn’t happen. Hopefully the team goes on an incredible run and this is all moot. But I feel better reading that because if push came to shove, Alex would do the right thing.
Strider looks more comfortable with each start and Allen is starting to draw walks. Unfortunately, Harris isn’t really improving and I wonder if the Braves will have to make a difficult decision soon.
For a guy that is fast, Harris sure gets thrown out a lot on plays fast guys should best out.
Always good to see we left any part of our offense in Atlanta through three innings. Nick Allen should be prohibited from swinging at the first pitch, even if it is underhand. He can’t hit well enough to ambush anything.
IWOTM
Now sweep the Marlins.
I think we should consider we are 12 or so games under .500 to the NL West and we are almost done with them for the year. That means we are +7 against the rest of baseball who we will see a lot of the rest of the year. We may get better quickly.
Also (and I know you guys are tired of hearing this from me), the only game we lost was with Riley batting 2nd and was the gawdawful loss to the Rockies when we scored 1 run. Against the Mets, we scored 5, 5, 7 which is about average for Riley not hitting 2nd. Now if they would listen to me and bat Harris 9th, the lineup would perform even better.
You can say all you want about lineup order not being very important, but there is a synergistic effect to lengthening the lineup (and splitting up the bad hitters). Having Verdugo/White bat 2nd may not conform to statistic ideal but it will eventually be Profar batting 2nd and the offense just works better (Riley has avg and power but strikes out a lot which is a negative for him batting 2nd).
I think who we beat is pretty irrelevant at this point. Winning the East is a big ask from where we are, so we just need to win enough to get a Wild Card.
Once we get into a Wild Card, though, we can look up and see what else is possible. But right now, I just want them to win every game they can.
Was the big Money Mike extension as much of a mistake as it seems? Or is this a 1 year outlier?
Personally I’m not paying much attention to the standings until we get to .500.
According to BR Harris’ career OPS is 200 points higher in the 2nd half than the 1st half.
Olson and Riley are also historically better 2nd half players.
And with the addition of Profar (cue Chip Caray “It’s like making a trade without making a trade!”) our offense should have more of a pulse soon.
It’s true… I do the same thing with the NY announcers when they play the Braves, mostly b/c I wanna hear the other team’s perspective, esp. the Mets’ woe-is-us/self-flagellation routine, which really speaks to their audience — and, of course, it speaks to me (endlessly). As they say, it’s the small pleasures.
Indeed, the Mets TV & radio announcers are terrific. (I’m more of a radio guy, so… Howie Rose.) It can be the Subway Series or the 17th time they play the Marlins, those guys are smart, entertaining & truthful… a rare combo.
Seeing Didier Fuentes in his big league debut prompts memories of the 1969 Braves season. That year is special to JonathanF and me and a handful of others here. (You’ve got to be pretty damn old to recall that season.) The year is special because it was one of the only two years that the Braves made the playoffs between 1966 and 1991.
They tell us that Fuentes is the youngest Braves pitcher since Mike McQueen debuted at age 19 in October ’69. I barely remember that guy, but I vividly recall the guy whose surname is the same as Fuentes’ given name. Bob Didier, the Braves rookie catcher in 1969, made the all rookie team and finished fourth in the ROY voting. Didier could not hit a lick, (OPS+ of 77 in 1969, career OPS+ of 55) but was an excellent defensive catcher. Most importantly, he is given some credit for Phil Niekro’s great ’69 season in which he won 23 games.
Just going to say it. I have the same reaction to Didier Fuentes as the first time I saw Sandy Alcantara pitch. Similar repertoire and velocity. What I said at the time was once this guy realizes how good he is, nobody will be able to hit him.
Do not trade him.
Agree–I really like what I’ve seen from him. I remember Steve Avery’s MLB debut in 1990 as a 20 year old. That debut was highly anticipated as Avery had been the #3 overall pick just two years before. He went 2 and a third and gave up 8 runs on 8 hits. They stuck with him and by the next year he was one of the best pitchers in the league. And Tommy Hanson’s MLB debut in 2009. I was excited to see him; my son had seen Hanson in the AZ Fall League and raved about his stuff. Hanson gave up seven runs in six innings. Despite that inauspicious start, he went 11-4 with a 2.89 ERA and was third in ROY voting.
Please stop pretending Ozzie Albies is a serious hitter
It seems the Braves sweep of NY may have had more to do with the Mets slumping than the Braves surging.
Sigh.
Recapped