After a poor to middling weekend, the Braves came back on Monday and surged to VICTORY (as stated so simply and eloquently last night by Mr. Remington). As many one run games as I have recapped, this time one got used not just once, but twice. Such is the peculiarity of “base 10” that every ten 1’s creates another 1.
The primary theme of the game was “we do lots of offense and we score lots of runs.” EVERY player in the lineup got at least one hit. Matt Olson went 4 for 5 with two 2B and one HR. Single game OPS of 2.400 (that is fairly good, as I understand it). Drake Baldwin restarted his offensive profile with 3 hits including an HR (come on Drake, get us a pick). Ronald Acuna, Jr. got 2 hits and one of those was an HR. And, absolutely NO hibernation period. After already being up 8 to 3 going to 9, the Braves scored 3 more.
Washington used 4 pitchers and one got through his stint with no runs allowed. Everybody else gave up 2 or more. The one that gave up none was also the only one who ended up the night with an ERA below 5. So, we might not have faced the best of the bunch.
Meanwhile, Spencer Strider continues to stride forward (I know, dumb easy word usage). 7 IP, 96 pitches, 61 for strikes, 6 K’s, 2 BB’s, 4 hits. Someone known as Daylen Lile homered in the second and as Boz Skaggs says, “that was all she wrote.” When you are up 8 to 1 you hope you have Seabold room, but apparently, we didn’t as Dylan Lee had to come in and stop the bleeding in inning 8 getting a bid double play that nevertheless scored a run which followed one Seabold gave up directly.
Today we make up for bad weather with a “day / night double header” with the first game starting at 1:05. Who knows what pitching combinations Snitker and Kranitz come up with for this one, but at least Strider didn’t put us in a hole last night.
Rob on Olson’s HOF case last night was fascinating. I doubt many of us were thinking of him in that regard, though he’s the same age Freddie was when I wrote this piece: https://bravesjournal.com/2020/09/17/is-freddie-freeman-a-hall-of-famer/ And, to be fair to him, his numbers are rather comparable to Freddie’s, other than batting average.
The key question in that piece was whether Freddie had another gear, which he had displayed in the 2020 season. As it turned out, he did: his OPS+ from 2021-2025 was actually better than his OPS+ from 2015-2019, even though he was older.
I think part of the reason that Freddie has always “felt” a little closer to being a potential Hall of Famer is his batting average, but he’s also had many more years of high performance. Olson has only made three All-Star teams, while Freddie had made five and won an MVP by the same age.
Matt’s got to find that next gear.
It is concerning that his bat speed has declined each year from 2023 when he was MVP level to 2025. On the other hand, that may indicate he has changed his approach to trade off power for average in a declining homerun environment. His batting average is certainly on the rise. Since mid-May, he is a .300 hitter (.302/.386/.522). That line is certainly more on par with Freddie, and if he puts that up for an entire season, it would feel like another gear for a guy who has lived in the .240s for much of his career. I do think Chipper Jones figured out how to be better even as his bat speed declined. Bo Bichette is a really, really good hitter with pretty bad bat speed.
And at least as far as baseball-savant is concerned, Freddie’s bat speed percentile is terrible! I do wonder whether his unusual swing – short bat path to the ball, very abbreviated back swing – throws off the metrics somehow.
But “bat speed isn’t everything” has been a major finding by the analytics writers the last few years, and just playing around with the numbers, I found anther good hitter whose bat speed appears to have declined this year: Juan Soto. I think it’s quite possibly a choice several of these guys have made.
Conceptually there must be a trade off between bat speed and squared up percentage. And then Freddie has had a perfect launch angle that is probably helped by his short to the ball swing.
Olson is some kind of locked in.
Brujan still practicing his witchery
At one point we weren’t going to have a 30 homer guy but Matty O is at least making this interesting.
I’ll be honest, I had no idea we employed a Jose Suarez of any kind, much less one who could come out of nowhere to throw 7 decent innings. One of the pleasures of a long (and lost) season.
I think we traded somebody for him. Was it Ian Anderson?
I thought the game started at 635 so boy was I surprised when I tuned in at 730 and it was the 8th inning! And once again you guys gave up 10 runs when I was away. I really can’t trust you guys. And then I realized that game happened 4 weeks ago and it didn’t even involve the Nationals. And despite giving up 10 runs, we won!!
The fact that I’m still watching Braves baseball at 11:21 shows that there’s something severely wrong with me — but you all knew that.
That said, the RAJ catch in the bottom of the 9th and the Olson triple in the 10th are why I watch.
Recapped.