Marlins, Ordinally
Given the disappointments of this season, I have done very little standings-watching this season. So when we started this series nine games behind the Marlins, I thought: “The Marlins must be having a pretty good season. They must be better than I thought.” They aren’t. As I start to focus in one teams as we play them, I am hard-pressed to understand how the Braves could, coming into tonight, be 8 games behind the Marlins. Coming into tonight, the Marlins had scored 16 more runs than the Braves with a .005 higher OPS, but, even with our pitching woes, had given up an extra 38 runs, with a 0.20 worse team ERA. They have some good players, but so do we.
Whenever the Braves play someone, I rarely think the Braves are truly overmatched. Sometimes a particular pitching matchup creates a mismatch, and every onece in a while a team like the Dodgers will bludgeon us into submission, but for the most part the Braves play competitively against everybody. The Braves have famously lost a lot a lot of close games this year, and you don’t lose close games by being outclassed.
I know why the Braves are not competitive at the moment with the Phillies and Mets, but I’m honestly not sure why we aren’t closer to the Marlins. That’s one of the reasons I thought catching the Marlins for third place is a reasonable goal for the remainder of the season, even though 8 games is a substantial early August lead.
Elder, Ordinarily
Bryce Elder is not a terrible pitcher, even as he’s not a pitcher who would give you a lot of confidence in Game 7 of a playoff series, he’s ges. Yes, he ranks fairly low on just about statistical tabulation you can make of this year’s MLB starting pitchers. If you told me that Elder would be about about halfway between Walker Buehler and Sandy Alcantara, that would sound pretty good. As it is, though, when Elder fell behind 5-0 in the fifth, he’s generating ordinary. At this point, it’s what we signed up for.
Late Innings, An Ordeal
So when Elder leaves and it’s 5-0, you just hope someone can catch fire against their bullpen. But before getting to their bullpen, you have to replace their starting pitcher, Edward Cabrera. Through 8, his only blemish was a Jurickson Profar solo homer, with only one other hit surrendered. It was too late, and it was over.
Split Double header tomorrow. Go Get ’em.
Elder probably won’t be a starter for us much longer, but can we have a new term?
Elder Quality Start (EQS): 3 innings or more, 6 runs or less.
This was an EQS
To add to the previous thread’s list of trollish posters over the years, in 2021 – so he may have been a good luck charm – there was Mr. Bill (I forget his last name, but it was something generic like Edwards), who claimed to be affiliated with a Florida newspaper that apparently really did exist but may have been a supermarket weekly or something. I believe his main concern was that the players weren’t trying very hard and the manager didn’t know as much about baseball as he did. He might also have Capitalized words Randomly.
That’s Bill Edwards Editor of The Palm Coast Tribune in Boyton Beach FLORIDA.
That was a weird one….kinda like a bot before they became commonplace.
He sure acted like a bot, though I preferred to think that he was genuinely deranged.
I liked to think he was our version of this routinely apoplectic fellow who used to call up WFAN back in the day:
Oh Jerome and Steve Somers, the best. Somers on the overnight was my favorite WFAN radio.
I assumed Bill “Eadwards” was the alter ego of one of our regulars who was trying to liven things up. His posts were mini comic masterpieces with the artful typos.
Val,
😏
Right Val, it seemed to me that if a bot made typos, they’d at least be consistent.
HA! oh yeah, that was wild.
Waldrep looked absolutely filthy in the first. He hit 98, which is harder than anything he threw in Bristol. If he can hold that velocity, watch out.
I gotta say, I was not expecting that Waldrep would come up, make two emergency starts, and do this. He was struggling with free passes in Gwinnett! I don’t know if he can keep this up or anything remotely like it, but he’s painted himself back into the picture in a way I never expected. I was more or less convinced he was headed for the pen. Good for him. We needed someone to step up, and he certainly couldn’t have picked a better time.
The pressure of being in the big leagues has concentrated his mind wonderfully.
Does he have a nickname? Hursty? Waldo? What would fit?
Hurston Waldrep, HuWa? Think Al Pacino…
HW, Howitzer?
It is wild how a guy can struggle in AAA and then turn it on at the highest level. Waldrep looked great, but he’s an amazing talent, he’s insanely young and inexperienced at the professional level, and he’s made adjustments:
https://x.com/cjnitkowski/status/1954311979738321219?s=46&t=WSNPrB2JyUoeKSn2PZsXZg
As to nicknames for Waldrep, I recall last year we called him “the Millionaire” after Thurston Howell III of Gilligan’s Island. Deeper into that theme, we could go with “Lovey.” For NASCAR fans Darrell is an option, although not a very creative one. In any event, let’s hope he sticks around long enough for us to keep working on a good nickname.
Braves win 7-1…. but I only do one recap post a day. Nightcap in 3 1/2 hours.
Recapped