After his game-winning grand slam on March 28th, Dominic Smith shared the news of his mother’s recent passing and the support he’d gotten from his teammates and the organization during that difficult time. A gentle reminder that the game is played by human people. Given enough data, we can make certain assertions about the sport with varying degrees of confidence. It is not, however, just a dice game.
in 2025, the Braves opened with a 7-game West Coast road trip against the Padres and Dodgers and came home 0 – 7. In 2026, the Braves started at home against the Royals and Athletics and started 4 – 2. There are many other variables to consider other than the locations of the games and the quality of the opponents, not the least of which is that the Braves don’t have exactly the same players as they had this time last year. Still, I wonder how much effect those different kinds of starts have on a set of humans, relative to the same results in June or August?
The Braves first road series of this season ended in a split and left them with a record of 6 – 4. Drake continued to rake, going 3 – 5 with his 4th homer of the season, and drove in 4 runs while scoring a 5th one. Jorge Mateo got the start at short with Mauricio Dubon moving to 3rd in place of Austin Riley for the day. Mateo went 2 – 3 and scored 3 runs, the 3rd one coming in the top of the 9th on a Baldwin single which tied the game at 5. Corbin Carroll went 3 for 4 for the Diamondbacks and scored a couple of runs and drove in another.
Martin Perez got the start for the Braves, and gave up 4 runs in 5 innings, 5+ innings (edit: forgot he gave up a leadoff single to Carroll in the 6th, who later scored) with a walk and a strikeout. Robert Suarez struck out the side in the 8th, and Raisel Iglesias threw a perfect 9th. Joel Payamps threw a pitch.
The Braves take on the Angels in Los Angeles on Monday, 9:38 Eastern. Chris Sale and Jose Soriano scheduled.
“Joel Payamps threw a pitch”
I lol’ed.
Sometimes less is more.
As long as the Braves strikeout with men on and less than two outs, it’s gonna be a long season and the Braves are gonna lose a lot of one run games.
I watched again as a Brave hit a sac fly with two outs instead of one.
I haven’t been able to watch too much, but is Austin Riley basically just hitting pop ups every at bat?
Riley’s definitely struggling right now. And we need him to stop because an offense that has to start Mateo and Dubon over the course of a season won’t be a particularly good offense. Plus they won’t sit a man making over 20mil a year for a backup SS.
Unfortunately, there’s a large sample that makes it reasonable to conclude that Riley is not the same player that was given the most lucrative deal in team history. I’ll give him some leash since he has been hurt a lot over the last two seasons, but by September, we could be looking at $130 million owed to a middling 3B entering his 30s.
We outscored the Dbacks by 15 runs over a 4 game series so I can only conclude we won the series and probably swept. Go Braves!
No doubt. Pythagoras is certainly smarter than I am. In fact, the Braves Pythagorean record of 8-2 on the season is the best in baseball.
We can all agree that Riley is completely lost at the plate right now, and that it’s pretty important for the Braves’ success this year for him to turn it around. But these ten games are far too small a sample to draw any conclusions about the rest of this season or his career. He was a terrific offensive player in 2021, 2022, and 2023, with OPS+ of 135, 140, and 130, and he was a top ten MVP finisher each year. He tailed off each of the last two years. It may be that 2024 was the start of a career decline, but I doubt it. Injuries certainly played a part in 2024 and 2025. It’s also the case that Riley is streaky. It seems his mechanics and timing get fouled up sometimes, but then he gets back on track and starts crushing it. As Chip Caray would say, we will see.
Jarred Kelenic is 1-22 with 10 K’s in AAA Charlotte (White Sox).
So, slow improvement.
Chris Sale threw a pitch.
Bobby Cox once told Hunter Wendelstadt he wasn’t worth a pimple on his dad’s ass.
Beyond just Riley … what point is it fair to be concerned about Acuña, Riley and MHIII combining to contribute precisely bupkis?
For me, May 1st.
Acuna has at least been good recently, Riley and Harris I am not ever counting on again. Dead weight. Harris OPS has declined 5 straight seasons, yes, anything can happen, but the data does not support a rebound.
Until tonight there have been 417 times that a pitcher let five men on in an inning via either walk or hit-by-pitch. There have now been 418. None of them were Chris Sale, although in the last week of last season (https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/ATL/ATL202509220.shtml) he hit two batters and walked two more.
recapped.