Juan

So I turned on the pregame show and the first thing I see on my screen is this:

Who is that guy pitching in the upper left corner? I am reminded that Juan Eichelberger ended his career with the Braves. and Skip Caray was amused that people tried to speak Spanish to a guy with no Hispanic heritage at all.

The Game

The first inning was… interesting. Aaron Nola, who seems to be not quite ready to pitch on his return from the IL, faced 7 batters, three of whom scored. That would have been dandy, but for the fact that Juan gave up 3 massive homers in the bottom of the inning which made it 5-3 Philles. He then gave up a fourth homer in the third to make it 6-3. In his 37 innings of work for the Braves in 1988, Juan Eichelberger gave up 3 homers.

At this point, Juan stopped giving up homers, but he didn’t stop giving up runs, Two more came in the 4th before Austin Cox came in to replace him. Austin promptly gave up a homer, which also Grybo’d Juan’s 9th run allowed. Then he (briefly) stopped giving up homers and started giving up traditional runs. At the end of the 4th it was 12-3.

Meanwhile, Nola suddenly remembered how to pitch, getting 13 guys in a row.

As Ryan pointed out in a comment today, he had promised to recap Thursdays, which would have left me to do Friday and Saturday, His promise, as he said, was a lie, and I’ve been doing three of these things a week. I’ll cover Whitman tomorrow and the return of Chris Sale on Saturday, but I’m going on strike for the remainder of this one.

The final was 19-4, once again putting our run differential closer in line with our record.. I am reliably informed that someone named Kyle Schwarber hit 4 homers in this game. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t play for the Braves, but I note that he’s a free agent and we probably have a spot available for a DH next year. He probably won’t cost any more than couple of hotels and a small amusement park.

Statistical Oddities

The Marlins’ Maximo Acosta hit a couple of homers against the Braves this week. In his career, he has three hits — all of them homers. For those who are interested, there are 315 players who hit a homer as their first hit and 38 who had homers for their first two hits. Acosta joins Yasmani Grandal, Kyle Higashioka and Darick Hall as players whose first three hits were homers. If he gets a homer for his next hit, he will join Trevor Story. But the record, 5 homers in his first 5 hits, is held by Rodolfo Castro.

In the Braves 9 run outburst in the 9th inning against the Marlins, Eli White was inserted as a pinch runner for Marcell Ozuna and later came to the plate and got a double. I had thought that a pinch runner getting a hit in the same inning he was inserted into the game would be very rare, but it is only modestly rare. It has happened over 100 times, so it happens around once a year.