The Game
Charlie Morton returned to Atlanta, and you know who he reminded me of? Charlie Morton. Everything I loved about him and everything I hated about him was on full display: great curveball, a lot of strikeouts, and runners on base all over the place, just awaiting that one bad pitch with men on. Oh, and outings that require 3-4 bullpen arms.
Of course, when your ability to get hits with RISP is nonexistent, that’s not a huge problem. Charlie held the Braves scoreless despite lots of opportunities until a Drake Baldwin 2 run home drew the Braves to within 1.
Strider was fine except for two pitches that left the yard for three runs. I’m ot going to blame Spencer Strider for giving up 3 runs in 6+ innings.
We got to the 9th down 1. We left the 9th down 1. Another one run loss. Just one more win for Charlie at Truist.
Annals of Broadcasting
CJ, bottom of the first: “It is impressive to see 97 mph with 41-year-old arm that has over 2000 innings under its belt.” That is one fine mixed metaphor CJ. And honestly, I’m not criticizing…. If I had to speak as much as you do, I’m sure I’d do stuff like that all the time. But it made me laugh thinking about arm belts, which then made me think of Charlie Morton as a heroin addict, which then made me think… “Stop it! Get back to baseball!”
Frozen Pizza
This is of course Brandon’s name for a called third strike. Nobody knows why. Just to be clear… everybody understands “frozen.” Nobody understands “pizza.”
Happy July 4th to Everyone
Even you, Timo, and especially our British readers, if there be any.
Bullpen game tomorrow, apparently. Anybody think it makes much of a difference?
I don’t have much to say about the 2025 team anymore. I’m looking forward to the draft and the trade deadline.
The goal of the next several weeks should be to shed Aaron Bummer’s $9 million dollar 2026 salary.
Pierce Johnson will have real trade value, but I actually wouldn’t move him if the goal is to contend in 2026. Johnson, Jiménez, Lee, Dodd and Lara will probably be the core of the bullpen; all of them are under contract, which allows resources to be used on the rotation and offense.
Hoping some team LOVES Bummer’s peripherals.
Think of it this way: Shedding Bummer saves you the equivalent of MHII’s contract value for 2026 But then there’s $41 million from 2027-30.
Hope those six new buildings can make some cash, fast.
Speaking of Bummer, he’s your opener tomorrow.
This team could make a sod farmer bored. I think some of those 2015-2017 teams had more fire than this one.
You’re not wrong about those mid-2010s teams.
The 2015 and 2017 editions were enjoyable watches up to roughly early-to-mid July of each year. In 2015, the team fell apart somewhere around July 4 or so after unexpectedly lingering around .500. (Amazingly, the 2016 team was three games above .500 from June 15 onward, somehow avoiding 100 losses in a season in which it appeared destined to exceed 1988’s defeat tally.) In 2017, the lads were 45-45 before coming apart; Jim Johnson was a spectacularly awful closer, and none of the regular rotation members had a sub-4.00 ERA. Good times.
(The 2017 late-season fade was a reason why the retention of Snitker was a surprise, only happening due to the chaos that emerged out of the Coppy punishment and the organization seemingly having nary a clue what to do other than say, “Just keep the the warm body another year,” thus extending Snit’s contract by a season. Subsequently, Acuña was promoted in mid-April and voila, NL Manager of the Year. It’s part of the reason why the whole RAJr kerfuffle of mid-April was so nutty because one can argue that Snit owes his legacy as a MLB manager entirely to Acuña. And Snit’s tactical nous — or lack thereof — has never allowed him to shed “accidental manager” status in my estimation, sorry.)
Thank you, JonathanF. Hope you all celebrated a fine day despite the Braves game. One thing I like about 4th of July – hardly any overnight work e-mails from the US when waking up in Europe on the 5th…
Bummer starting today? He’ll do well for two innings at least. Go Braves!
I work for a European company, and I enjoy hardly any overnight work e-mails from Europe the rest of the summer.
Alright, I’m officially in rosterbation mode. Who says no:
Bryan Reynolds for Michael Harris II, Didier Fuentes, and Blake Burkhalter?
More broadly, has anyone noticed that almost every prospect list has 8 or 9 pitchers in our top 10? Nacho is in the top 10, maybe Perdomo is too, but the rest is pitching, pitching, pitching. If AA does a 3-4 for 1 trade where we send mostly pitching, then this makes sense.
So help me, if AA goes pitcher in R1 …
The system needs lumber.
They should go pitching because they’ll need it after they should trade a lot right now. They need bats who can help now, and pitching can get that for them.
What’s crazy is that, yes, they should sell. They’re f*cked. But they have very little to sell. So why not trade what you do have (tons of young pitching) for position player bats with control?
Reynolds, though? His hard-hit rate is still there, but otherwise it looks like his decline has begun. The team has enough guys with slipping OBPs, so it’d be the Braves who said no, IMO.
The deals that would intrigue me are a bit unconventional — say, top-10 pitching prospects for top-10 hitters. Shake up the system a bit, get some more balance, work with organizations that could use some pitchers. Get creative.
What’s going on with Nacho? No report I can find of injury, but he hasn’t played since 6/26.
That’s another frustrating thing: you have all this pitching you won’t trade, and you have one decent position player prospect, and he’s MIA with a debated ceiling. Fun.
Word on the street is that he strained his oblique.
You’d like to think this team can win anytime it scores 6 runs.
Of course, a one-run loss seems possible no matter how many runs we score.
Continuing to give Ozuna at-bats every day is malpractice.
Also, Laureano getting a double in the 10th? LOL … that was predictable.
Anytime Montero pitches in high leverage he craps the bed.
The Braves always lose bullpen games. Whether it’s their own or their opponents’.
Recapped. Everyone go out and have fun tonight. Wang Chung tonight.