I have made one flight from Atlanta to Seattle. 6 hours out and 5 hours back. Yes, the expected Jet Stream is every bit of that. The “Great Circle” takes you more like Omaha, Billings, Spokane, SeaTac. But Denver is pretty close to half way. So, by Major League Baseball standards, not a bad long flight.
On the way, Jonah Heim was DFA’d, then traded for that universally accepted player “cash considerations.” If cash considerations is one tenth of the gamer of Cash Jones, then the Braves came out good on that. Sean Murphy was activated (or maybe not completely activated, depending on your perspective, as he caught and went 0 for 3). Probably will soon see a note that Raisel Iglesias has been activated. Who will leave? Only the shAAdow knows for sure.
Young J. R. Ritchie “toed the rubber” in his home metro area of Seattle. When you walk lots of people (6 in less than 6 innings), things tend to not go well. But he kept up the “wobble” with 0 (get that, zero) runs until inning 6. He went out to start the 6th working on his THIRD TIME THROUGH THE ORDER. At this time, for anybody associated with baseball not to treat that situation kind of like smoking at a gas pump requires serious stupidity or excessive reliance on tradition (its own form of stupidity). So far, Walt Weiss has been such a breath of fresh air to the organization. He seemed to understand that you can’t ignore revalidated statistics because you wish your pitcher could make another inning. Last night, Weiss paid homage to Brian Snitker, and that may have cost the Braves a game. So far this year, I can’t come up with a single previous game I could hang on Weiss, but this one “smells like Snit Spriit.”
For JonathanF: how often does a team score 4 runs on 4 solo home runs? In losing 5 to 4, the Braves were right on that line. If a team scores 4 per game (in the “live ball era”), it is a losing team. It it scores 5 per game, it is a winning team. So, maybe one baserunner, somehow?
So, up 4 to 0 with 5 innings in the book, Ritchie goes out one more time. Walk, Walk, home run. Still a one run lead. Weiss goes with Tyler Kinley. Kinley goes strike out, walk, strike out. Now, 2 outs. Still holding the lead. Run Roh, home run. And there, at 5 to 4 does the scoring end.
You can’t win them all, but it doesn’t mean you don’t want to.
This is really weird. There were, before this season, 162 games in which teams hit 4 homers and scored 4 runs. And teams in those games were 81-81. Or, as John Sterling used to say: “Suzyn, you can’t predict baseball.”
It has now happened twice this season…. both times in Seattle. Last night, the Braves lost, and on March 26th, the Mariners lost to Cleveland 6-4 hitting 4 solo homes. So the alltime record is now 81-83.
I’m making the argument on Twitter that Matt Olson really looks like a future Hall of Famer. Someone noted that per WAR, Matt Olson and Mark Teixeira have had very similar career so far. And it was pretty much at this point that Teixeira fell off a cliff. And of course, Chris Davis did something similar.
Why does it seem like Olson is almost getting better with age, not declining as he ages into his 30’s? Or do the parallels with Freddie continue in that Olson won’t start declining until his mid-30’s? And more broadly, are 1B’s (previously the “bad body” types) staying in shape better, not losing their bat speed, and aging better?
Speaking of bat speed, I’d like to have a separate comment about Austin Riley. Do I remember correctly that Keith Law or somebody said that Austin Riley had mediocre bats speed? In my youth, I remember being a salty bitch about this. If so, is he being proven right right now? I know the Statcast data still says that Riley is hitting the ball hard. But it really just seems like he’s always had a slow bad speed and it’s just getting worse as the ages. He can hit the ball hard still, but do to his slowing bat speed, he sells out early and pitchers can exploit it. What do you think?
Yes, the rap on Riley was that he had a slider speed bat. (He also was dinged for his defense, which he has quite notably improved.)
Lindsay Crosby notes that the bullpen could have been more ragged than usual last night: “We found out after the game that Atlanta was working a bit shorthanded – Dylan Lee and Didier Fuentes were unavailable, while long man Martín Pérez was being held out for a potential start later in this series. It’s largely a cascade problem from Spencer Strider’s short start on Sunday and the workload it thrust on the pen.”
https://www.bravestoday.com/p/todays-three-things-atlantas-pitching
There are two logically equivalent statements:
A) “The bullpen could have been more ragged than usual last night.”
B) “Carlos Carrasco was brought in with the bases loaded in a one run game.”
Riley’s cliff is approaching, I’d guess…
We’re going to need pitching help at the deadline, if not before.
We do have pitching help. Their names are Spencer Schwellenbach and Hurston Waldrep.
Gosh, you’d think this talking point died after April when we absorbed all of the pitching injuries.
The rap, especially from Keith Law, was indeed that Riley’s bat speed was a problem. Turns out though, that his bat speed in the big leagues has been elite, and although it’s down slightly this year, it’s still quite good. https://www.bravestoday.com/p/austin-riley-has-a-problem-and-its
It’s more a timing problem, I think. The writer here suggests it could be related to his injury from last year.
Am I reading this correctly that they’re saying he has good bat speed only because of his hard-hit percentage? That doesn’t mean he has good bat speed. That means he hits sliders hard but doesn’t prove he can catch up to fastballs. Like Alex quoted Keith Law, he’s got “slider bat speed”.
Do they track your triple slash/hard-hit rate on specific pitches? I feel like, anecdotally, I only see him clobber mistake pitches. Is he barreling and hitting 95 mph+ chowder hard? I just don’t feel like I see that.
He has good bat speed on fastballs. Hard hit rate is a different measurement. The home run that he hit 430 feet in Denver was on a 98 mph heater, IIRC. Where he is struggling is on breaking balls, especially from RH pitchers. He looks bad sometimes on fastballs because his pitch recognition is so poor.
Can someone explain Similarity Scores on Baseball Reference?
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/o/olsonma02.shtml#all_ss_other
In what universe is Richie Sexson the most similar batter to Matt Olson? Yes, he’s a first baseman. Yes, he hit home runs. Yes, he’s tall and caucasian. But that’s where the similarities end. Or is Similarity Score so lazy that it ignores league context? Because yes, Richie Sexson hit a bunch of home runs back when people were roided up, pitching was diluted, and it was easier to hit home runs. Sexson hasn’t had one WAR season remotely close to Olson’s best seasons, let alone multiple.
I don’t get it.
The method is here: https://www.baseball-reference.com/about/similarity.shtml
IMO, it is not one of Bill James’ finer moments, though you’ll be pleased to know that neither height nor ethnicity figure in.
You’ll both be pleased to know I am working on a metric that considers only physical traits. I got the idea when they kept comparing Ryan Klesko to Biff Pocoroba.
I think James acknowledged when he introduced the method that what it measured was similarity of numbers and not similarity of value of those numbers. He also said that it was funny sometimes to see which players that weren’t at all physically similar produced similar numbers.
My take on Riley is he goes cold when he swings at everything (especially low and outside). When he does not swing at the outside pitches, he rakes. To me (my eye test), Riley’s issue is his batter’s eye and his desire to do too much. When he relaxes and lets the game come to him, he gets hot.
Like Olsen (and Baldwin), he’s at his best when driving the ball to RCF.
Iglesias back and Carrasco out. 40-man is down to 38. I hope Bummer goes when Dodd returns. Although paying Bummer $9M to pitch at Gwinnett would be a “bummer”.
After that, I don’t see any holes. Unless someone else gets injured (knock on wood), I’m not sure where Schwellenbach, AJSS, Waldrep, and Karinchak fit in.
Austin Riley’s bat speed actually is elite, per Baseball Savant, FWIW –
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/austin-riley-663586?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb
This year, he’s only 82nd percentile, but from 2023 to 2025, he was 95th, 90th, and 93rd percentile. Bat speed hasn’t been the issue.
Also, this was interesting, from Brendan Gawlowski’s chat:
I feel like we need to figure out how to use all these “starters” in the bullpen. If they can’t go back to back days (understandable) then they need to pitch multiple innings when they do pitch. Didi and Reynaldo both pitched an inning on Sunday. If either had pitched 2 innings instead, the other one could have been available yesterday.
Agreed. Maybe they need to employ minors strategy and think about tandem starters (Holmes and Fuentes, for example).
I’m with Big D, I was not happy to see Didier pulled after one.
I agree that Ritchie was left in too long. He seemed to unravel after the HBP and got lucky to escape a bases loaded 5th. If you’re going to send him out for the 6th, you need someone ready at that point. He’d been missing arm side with his fastball much of the night and when he airmailed 4 in a row to RA, you have to pull him then. Complicating matters was mismanagement of our long men, either of which could’ve piggybacked on the baby faced rook if they hadn’t both been blown in the previous game.
This is rare malfeasance from Weiss but I trust he’ll learn from it.
Definitely. Don Sutton used to say that when you have rookie pitchers, you need to pull them when they have a lead and before they get in trouble, typically in the fifth, to build up confidence. Later, in the second and third years, you let them try to work out of trouble, but still with a quicker hand. Only established vets, if I remember correctly should be given the opportunity to work out of trouble beyond the 7th. Of course, much has changed, but I think Sutton had it right about rookies and how much of a leash they should be given. Ritchie shouldn’t have been sent out after the fifth.
Kirby only needed six pitches to get through that inning. Come on guys, make him work a little.
Gosh, it’s nice to see Mike back in the field, even if he’s in an awfully strange position.
Man, Elder’s changeup has looked disgusting tonight. He’s gotten 5 whiffs out of 6 swings on that pitch, with 17 whiffs altogether. Nice.
So CJ wanted to know how often catchers have hit leadoff. Amusingly, he could only go back to 1974 and Johnny Oates hit leadoff over a dozen times in 1973. Then there are some ancient Boston games as well. But no leadoff homers.
gid id team b_hr
0 CHN190307160 Charlie Dexter BSN 0
1 CHN190307181 Charlie Dexter BSN 0
2 CHN190307182 Charlie Dexter BSN 0
3 BSN190308152 Charlie Dexter BSN 0
4 BSN190308192 Charlie Dexter BSN 0
5 BRO190309092 Charlie Dexter BSN 0
6 BSN191505282 Herbie Moran BSN 0
7 ATL197305010 Johnny Oates ATL 0
8 ATL197305020 Johnny Oates ATL 0
9 NYN197305070 Johnny Oates ATL 0
10 CHN197306030 Johnny Oates ATL 0
11 ATL197306080 Johnny Oates ATL 0
12 ATL197306090 Johnny Oates ATL 0
13 ATL197306101 Johnny Oates ATL 0
14 ATL197306110 Johnny Oates ATL 0
15 ATL197306120 Johnny Oates ATL 1
16 ATL197306130 Johnny Oates ATL 0
17 ATL197306150 Johnny Oates ATL 0
18 ATL197306160 Johnny Oates ATL 0
19 ATL197306171 Johnny Oates ATL 0
20 LAN197306180 Johnny Oates ATL 0
21 SFN197306260 Johnny Oates ATL 1
22 SFN197306270 Johnny Oates ATL 0
23 PHI197307100 Johnny Oates ATL 0
Matty O!
Matt “MVP” Olson! Maybe!
Another encouraging win…
Recapped.