Game 1: 7-1

Game 1 of this doubleheader saw Hurston Waldrep recalled to pitch his major league starting debut after replacing Austin Cox in the first inning on the restart in the Bristol Battle. He was excellent last week and excellent again today. He is now 2-0 with a 1.64 ERA. Ay this point, he has earned a nickname, but I prefer to let these things grow organically. I called him Darrell Waltrip last week, but that was a special occasion. His name is a fruitful source of anagram-based stuff like “Uplands Thrower,” or “Whaled Rust Porn,” or “Nuts Heard Prowl” but none of them really sing for me. But if he keeps pitching like Sandy Koufax he can have whatever nickname he wants on his Hall of Fame plaque. (Note to Freddy: I’m kidding.)

In any case, I don’t see how they can send Waldrep back down — there is no argument that he hasn’t earned his way into this rotation, though it can be argued that mere respiration ought to be sufficient to join in good standing.

Offensively, Michael Harris II and Drake Baldwin are carrying the team — they combined for 5 RBIs in Game 1, which was plenty.

Defensively, Jurickson Profar, who has not really shown me a lot of defense out there (not to mention that he didn’t have any defense at all to PED charges) made a very nice HR-saving catch which you ought to click on and watch if you haven’t already seen it.

Altogether, exactly the Braves-Marlin game you expected to see when you thought about one in March. By now, a pleasant surprise.

Game 2: 8-6

Where you come down on Erick Fedde is almost entirely determined by whether you think something clicked for him in Korea and whether the beginning of this year was just unlucky. The 2024 Erick Fedde is a guy the Braves could never have acquired this year, and the pre-2024 Erick Fedde is a guy anyone could acquire for a random pack of Topps cards. Thus far, he looks a lot more like the guy who went to Korea than the guy who came back. But as Freddy will tell you, I am not a professional evaluator of baseball talent. My value-add is explaining how much of all this is luck, not trying to figure out which part is luck and which part is skill (or lack of it.)

In any case, Fedde had given up four runs (all in the 4th inning) and thrown 102 pitches before being removed after the fifth inning. I like Stamton’s idea of the EQS — the Elder Quality Start: three innings or more pitched and 6 runs or less yielded. My take is that Elder and Fedde will be fighting for the fifth spot on next year’s rotation, at least until four of the five currently on the IL are available. I know some of you feel that they’d rather just forfeit those games than allow a contest between Fedde and Elder for fifth starter.

But look. It’s one thing to admit that deciding between Erick Fedde and Bryce Elder is like choosing between meningitis and sepsis. Imagine you’re the Marlins trying to figure out what to do about Sandy Alcantara. You bought out Sandy’s arb years and owe him $17.3 million next year. (You also have a $21 MM option for 2027.) Sandy Alcantara was an elite MLB pitcher until his Tommy John surgery. It is common wisdom now that coming back from Tommy John surgery is now just a matter of time with modern techniques. Sandy is the poster child for the proposition that that might not be universally true. He is the worst starting pitcher in MLB. No one… not Elder or Fedde, for example, is particularly close. And he presents to Marlins management the Erick Fedde problem above multiplied by three: is Alcantara the Cy Young Winner of 2022 or a guy who is no good to anybody?

So tonight, after Erick Fedde gives up 4, Alcantara promptly gives up 5, four of them on two homers by Marcell Ozuna, who came to the Cardinals in the trade that sent Alcantara to the Marlins lo these many years ago. I think the Braves have now settled on having Marcell and Baldwin share the DH position and rest Murphy on his non-catching days. As long as Marcell is healthy, I think that is exactly right. Baldwin needs to hit every day, Ozuna and Murphy do not. (That is a knock on neither of them… they just don’t have much to prove that can’t be shown in intermittent duty.)

Alcantara was replaced by Bellozo who gave up three more in the sixth to make it 8-4.

Bummer and Hernandez combined in the 7th to draw it back to 8-6, but Daysbel got the out needed to maintain the lead.

Iggy had another perfect 9th. The person who figures out relievers will be very wealthy.

Other Stuff

Newest Brave Vidal Bruján (or as I call him: Gore — I’m not waiting for Braves Journal to come up with a nickname here) made his debut. He was picked up off waivers, a perfect AAAA player — good numbers at AAA and nothing in the bigs. He can sub in both right field and at third, though, so he’ll probably get some at bats.

Jen Pawol made her MLB umpiring debut today. She’ll be behind the plate tomorrow, and I am willing to bet $10,000 that she’s better at it than Angel Hernandez and CB Bucknor put together. Someday, she will have a call challenged, and someday, the call will be overturned and a bunch of stupid people will make stupid jokes. Try not to participate. It is considerably harder and much less lucrative to be an MLB umpire than an MLB player, although your expected career is much longer if your evaluations are good. There isthe somewhat interesting sociological point that women will be entering umpiring at exactly the time in which umpiring is being outsourced to technology. I’m trying to ramp down the pretension level atound here, but think about it.