I assume essentially all of you recognize the name josh Gibson. Probably in all of baseball history there are 2 pantheon catchers and he is one (the other, Johnny Bench). What you may not know is that Josh Gibson was born in and grew up in Buena Vista, Georgia which is about 60 miles from me. The old joke on Gibson was that he hit a homerun in Cincinnati and the next day’s game was in Pittsburgh. The same umpiring crew was in charge. Suddenly somebody looks up and catches a fly ball. An umpire looks at Gibson and says “you’re out!1! Yesterday, in Cincinatti.”
Part of this reminiscing is that Buck Leonard‘s special baby, The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum is in Kansas City.
Well, Ronald Acuna, once again, launched a ball that might have been able to be caught in another Major League city. Spencer Strider was his typical 2025 self (which self is 2 steps below vintage Strider but 2 steps above anyone able to accurately be described as an active Braves player now). The Sussexes (disgraced Royals) walked 14 and still, the Braves only got 10. The Braves left 12 on base. So even with a win, it seems as if the spirit world is working against the 2025 Braves.
It seems ominous that the trade deadline so far has been mostly getting expensive 5th starters who formerly had upside. Those “expiring” need to be moved on down the line and something come back. It is kind of like some office party gift giving where you wonder if you are going to get something as good as what you got to give to someone else. And we, like that office party, just watch and wait.
I had no idea y’all were neighbors! One of the great miracles of my lifetime is the Seamheads database, which allows us to go to baseball-reference.com and actually look at Josh Gibson’s stats. All my life, I had been told and just assumed that stats from the Negro Leagues were lost in the hazy mists of time, but scores of volunteer historians spent decades trawling through old newspaper box scores and compile them into a searchable database.
And Gibson’s stats were worth the wait. The dude was on another planet.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/gibsojo99.shtml
Just like last year, guys like Harris and Riley seem to be breaking out of their first-half slumps a bit. So that’s nice, at least.
I like 1943, the year of the silver penny, where in 69 games he slashed a ho-hum .466/.560/.867.
I’ve a feeling that the Braves are going to get rid of several players and build for next year. Marcell Ozuna and Raisel Iglesias are as good as gone. However, I don’t think it stops there. Pierce Johnson would also be a valuable piece.
This season has sucked, but I still believe in this core for 2026.
I agree. Johnson is probably our most valuable asset that might be traded. I would like to have him next year but he is replaceable for similar dollars. My greatest wish is that someone will come calling for Bummer
I continue to think that at this deadline, getting someone to take Bummer’s $9.5 2026 contract is not crazy at all. Of all the contenders, there’s not a single one out there that doesn’t want a young lefty who really good peripherals? Plus, it’s $2.5M this year prorated, then $9.5M next year. What if the acquiring team said that they’re basically getting him for almost no money this year and to mentally spread that out across the next year and change, which is undoubtedly how Atlanta looked at it when they signed a deal for $2.5M one year and $9.5M the next year.
When the Negro League stats became known (but before they became adopted by MLB), APBA (a table baseball game similar to Strat-o-matic) put out a Negro Leagues game with all the great teams of that era.
With Josh Gibson’s card from one of the Homestead Grays teams, it almost impossible to get him out. Imagine ‘roid-era Barry Bonds-meets-Rogers Hornsby, but with way more power. His slugging percentage alone was nearly 1.000.
Of course, I loved James Earl Jones’ portrayal of a Josh Gibson-like character in the ’70s film, “The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings.”
Cliff,
Are you in Columbus or Phenix City?
Ububba,
Other direction. I am based at Cordele. That is the town where Mario Cuomo said he became angry for the only time in his life (60 minutes interview approx. 1985. It was over a fight in a minor league Class D game and he was the catcher and somebody did a Pete Rose on his Ray Fosse.)
For all, Buena Vista is an economically challenged place. They have taken an old school and set up a Josh Gibson center. It has a gym and some outdoor ballfields. I have been there a few times over the past year for family and business.
DOB did a chat on the Athletic. He said he doesn’t see them giving up on Ozzie or Harris, thinks they shouldn’t trade Murphy, and can’t see them jumping in for free agents. Fantastic! Let’s do this again next year, guys!
His main answer to the question of what has gone wrong has to do with clubhouse chemistry, which, in my opinion, is an explanation that leaves something to be desired.
I laid all this at Alex’s feet at the end of last season. Fundamentally, there were two core issues. First, due to injuries and poor performance, our team simply didn’t wasn’t very good, and Anthopoulos didn’t make any moves to address that. Second, even if you don’t consider the team responsible for the poor health of the players, the team wasn’t great at offensive things that they could control.
The third issue, which I didn’t get into in that piece but which I’ve complained about plenty elsewhere, is the poor results from the draft.
Fundamentally, the front office and coaching staff are not doing a good job of putting the players in a position to succeed. It will take more than chemistry to turn these guys into winners: it will take a coaching and training staff that can help them to stay healthy and maximize their ability, and it will take a front office that surrounds them with depth capable of filling in when Plan A doesn’t work.
Cliff,
And I’ll always think of Cordele as the town that gave us Wayne “Tree” Rollins.
Also, I’m assuming they pronounce the town “byoona-vista,” like we did in Columbus.
This is where I wish this club had an actual owner, instead of shareholders (of which I am one, to be fair, just for the novelty of the thing, not that it does any good) instead of its current structure. Because an actual owner — not one who meddled, but one who demanded accountability and was informed enough to ask questions would be ideal here. And such an owner might hear answers about “clubhouse chemistry” — if, indeed, that is the actual asinine response AA would give — and the notion of running it back and think, “If these are your solutions, maybe I have the wrong person in charge of my baseball operations.”
But then again, I remain singularly unimpressed with AA. He is more than happy to put himself out there when times are good, but has shown he’ll hide when things don’t go well. He made a point of saying he expected payroll to go up last year, and, of course, it didn’t. He comes across to me as a peddler of b.s. whose reputation is better than his record, when viewed in its actual totality. I don’t trust the guy any farther than I can throw him, in the words of Ed Rooney.
Chemistry is this nebulous thing to which it’s easy to attribute all manner of baseball failure. The problem as I and AAR have said repeatedly isn’t that the talent didn’t mesh. It’s that there wasn’t enough talent. You cannot win with 4 black holes in the lineup. If your pitching is lights out, as ours was for a time, you can scratch out a .500 season. Chemistry didn’t make Verdugo, Allen, Albies, and Harris hit .200. Ironically chemistry did make Profar miss half the season but that’s a different meaning of the word, and too much in his case, not too little.
We were pretty darn good at run prevention and abysmal at run production. Now we’re good at neither so we will end up as one of the worst handful of teams in the league. I have to say Olson, Acuna, Murphy, Baldwin, Sale, Schwelly, Sherlocks, and some bullpen parts played their asses off. They didn’t seem checked out. Riley, well, I dunno. I hope he’s not in early decline.
The problem was not enough talent, and as AAR says, that is due to a failure to draft anything resembling major league talent consistently, even a reliever or a 4th outfielder for god’s sake. That is what needs to be addressed. The other problem is unwillingness to spend money to keep key players but oh well. That isn’t fixable until the team is sold.
Just tuning in to see that Fedde is not pitching a no-hitter. How disappointing! I guess it will take Kranitz more than 1 game to get him pitching like a Cy Young candidate.
I know we’re not supposed to talk about politics but I’m very excited about what Pappy O’Daniel can do in his next term as governor of Mississippi
How do you not score a leadoff triple???
De Los Meatballs, indeed.
Also worth noting that this side is about to drop to 7-17 since Schwellenbach’s last start. That’s a .292 win rate, on pace for a robust 16-40 mark the rest of the way — and that pace was with Grant Holmes available. Indeed, that would result in a 61-101 finish.
So, is Harris simply a second half player, or is this just all part of the journey of him figuring out his swing mechanics?
Recap is up.
I have a buddy who used to work in the analytics department for the Rays. We both go to the same dog park/bar (seriously, what an amazing concept), and our dogs play and we drink and talk about baseball. He said that the Rays definitely think that whether a guy is “ready” for “high leverage” is pixie dust. That if they have a guy in high leverage, they’re more than happy to trade that value and let another guy have an opportunity to pitch in high leverage to increase his value as well. They’re probably the organization most known for making non-elite pitchers essentially interchangeable. So if Atlanta decides to ship off Iglesias, Bummer, and Johnson, I have no problems with whoever they decide to plug into those spots. Lee becomes the closer, that’s easy, Dodd gets called back up, and then if they want to plug Lara or Cox or Suero into a spot and let them have an opportunity, that is by far the best way to build a cheap bullpen for 2026. And of all the stuff that has happened to the Braves in the last 2 years, their inability to build a cheap bullpen while simultaneously not being willing to convert a failed SP into a RP is the single biggest millstone around their neck.