The Pittsburgh Pirates… maybe this is where it begins and ends.
On June 7, the Braves completed a sweep of the Bucs at home on an ecstatic, late-inning, 3-run double by MHII. That night, they stood 45-21, its high-water mark for the season. Since then, as we all know, things have gone a bit into the dumper – the Braves are 8-16.
But tonight, with a neat 3-0 victory at PNC Park, the Braves put themselves in a position to win its first series since June 20 when they bested Milwaukee – salted by another giddy win (an Ozzie walk-off HR).
For a good while tonight, things didn’t look all that great. In fact, after allowing a 3-HR/10-RBI performance last night to that O’Hearn guy, the Braves risked another evening of genuine ignominy. For the first 6 innings, Pirate starter Jared Jones had crafted a perfect game. And, after only 77 pitches, he looked just fine moving forward.
Luckily for the good guys, Buc manager Don Kelly pulled Jones. After MHII scratched a hit off reliever Mason Montgomery in the 7th, Atlanta jumped on reliever Dennis Santana in the 8th with a Yaz double and a Joey Bart 2-run bomb. Tack on a 9th inning MHII double & an RBI single by Drake, and there’s your 3 runs.
To be honest, I was surprised that we were the club that actually got the shutout tonight – but Grant Holmes, Didier Fuentes, Dylan Dodd, Dylan Lee, and Raisel Iglesias threw nothing but goose eggs. Quite a collective effort & we needed every bit of it.
If you watched the game, Jared Jones was beginning to look scarier each inning. Mixing a genuine plus 4-seamer with an occasional change and a dang-nasty slider, he blew thru the Braves lineup. Only Bart, who drove one deep to the LF fence, had any solid contact. (Pittsburgh LF Bryan Reynolds actually reached slightly above the fence to make the grab, but it was the easiest “HR robbery” you’ll ever see.) This guy’s stuff was electric, ridiculous, whatever you wanna call it – he had everything going tonight.
Luckily, our Kenny Powers matched him thru 5, only allowing 3 singles & a walk, striking out 5 – and also benefiting from a nifty catch, this one deep in the LF corner by Mauricio Dubón. Bottom 6, Didier Fuentes took over & he wasn’t fooling around either, issuing some real heat. He eased thru the inning with 2 Ks, allowing only a bloop single.
By then, all I could think was: We’re getting a helluva pitching effort here, but… can we get a hit, please?
Yes, and more… After Ozzie scratched a hit in the 7th off new reliever Montgomery, the Braves got to Pirates RHP Santana in the 8th. Yaz cranked a spinning slider high off the RF wall for a well-struck double. Then, Bart immediately crushed a first-pitch sinker (that certainly didn’t sink enough) into the RCF stands for a much-needed HR. 2-0 ATL.
Enter Dylan Lee, and now we’re envisioning a nice ending to this nerve-wracking movie. In fact, Lee was downright nasty himself, striking out 2 & facing the minimum on the strength of a filthy slider.
MHII opened up the 9th by plopping a double into the LCF gap off new Pirate hurler Isaac Mattson. With 2 outs and 2 strikes, Drake laced an RBI single into center for insurance. 3-0 ATL.
We all like redemption stories, don’t we? Andy Dufresne, Winston Churchill… Raisel Iglesias – right? OK, maybe the stakes weren’t nearly the same, but, after getting fully terrorized by Juan Soto this past Sunday, Iggy made sure the Bucs had “No Fun” in the 9th. K, F8, BB, K, ballgame.
At presstime, the Phils are down by a TD/PAT in Cincy, so there’s a chance to regain our 3-game lead by the end of the evening. [editor’s note: Reds 11-Philly 5 final]
Tomorrow’s rubber game in Pittsburgh a 12:35 “businessman’s special,” as it was once called. Braves send out Bryce Elder (5-6, 4.01 ERA) vs. Bucs’ Mitch Keller (6-6, 5.02). Go Braves.
It sure seems like we do better against the pen than we do against the starters. JonathanF, is that something you can look into?
I’ll try to make that my Friday intro,
I would imagine that is probably true for most teams right now. We’re not the only team not letting their SPs see the order a 3rd or, heaven forbid, a 4th time. And then teams, like us, are throwing spaghetti against the wall trying to use 20-25 relievers throughout the course of the year. There are quite a few turds in that list of 20-25 pitchers.
Pittsburgh has a guy throwing a perfect game, and they still pull him, as they should. Then they spin the roulette wheel with 3 relievers, and 5 ERA Dennis Santana is the one to give up a couple of hard hit balls. And unlucky for them, both of the hard hit balls found holes and led to 2 runs. And their bullpen already stinks, so I would just assume that something like this would happen more often than not. I think we’ve been fortunate that we can only use our SPs for 5 IP, but we have a bullpen 6-7 strong at times to survive spinning the roulette wheel 3, 4, 5 times in one night.
I am trying to answer JamesD’s question but it’s a little tricky and I need some sleep. But there have clearly been dozens of innings in which a pitcher threw 10 strikes or more and no balls. As near as I can tell (though there are some edge cases to run down) the record is 19, for Brett Cecil in the fifth inning of https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MIL/MIL201708030.shtml He also threw two strikes to Orlando Arcia to start the next inning before throwing a ball. So the one inning record is 19 straight strikes, and 21 straight strikes across innings may or may not be the record.
Thanks!
Given Murphy’s track record, Bart has a spot on this roster through September.
Needed five runs in that first. One run is far from enough Bryce buffer.
Man, when Olson gets into one…
EDIT: Weird bit of baserunning there by MHII, but it worked out. Time for a big inning…
Hard to believe that we got Jarvis for Rafael Montero.
Hard to believe anybody wanted Montero
So many meatballs. And we’re stuck with this guy every fifth day.
Hunter Wendelstadt needs to be bought out like the other umpires.
“Hunter, you’re not worth a pimple on your daddy’s ass!” -Bobby Cox
Sucks that Elder had strike 3 on Reynolds but Drake didn’t challenge. Then he homers on the next pitch
Ritchie had strike 3 on Gonzales also but Drake didn’t challenge that either.
Until he can start getting some swing and miss, it’s hard to see Ritchie getting too much better than this.
His command is not MLB caliber either. Trade Bait IMO
Wow, Jarvis just turned a phenomenal double play there. Between that and the two-run homer, he’s been the absolute star of this game.
He’s costing Kim and Boras millions. Not unhappy.
Speaking of that, the unintended consequence of always trying to squeeze every last penny out of owners is that if a Boras client is on a pillow deal and struggling, you’re going to sit the bench. When you don’t owe the team a thing, well, they don’t owe you a thing.
On the other hand, Kim got an extra $4 million out of us, and it was probably the last $4 million he would ever get. Nobody gives him more than a minor league deal next season. He’s toast.
Lee can’t pitch back to back days now? I’m for protecting pitchers, but I think we are starting to go too far with this.
Way to pick ’em up, Yaz — nice.
YAZ!
Yaz is picking it up of late. On the other hand, Riley is 0/5 with 4 Ks
Including a strikeout with the bases loaded, immediately before Yaz’s slam. He fouled off two pitches right in the middle of the zone, when a ball to the outfield would have brought home a run. It’s just impossible to watch him and feel like his plate approach is where it needs to be. He may very likely have some lingering issues after all his injuries that are still nagging him and affecting his mechanics, but it sure seems to me like his biggest problem is between his ears.
Still, hard to be mad about a game like that! The back of the pen did a good job – Dodd, Ritchie, Young, Karinchak, and Mederos, whom I’d literally never heard of. Handshakes all around and our first series win since Milwaukee from June 19-21.
Yeah, fouling off 2 hanging sliders down the pipe was painful, but I had no hope he would get the run home.
Sometimes I feel like a bad fan when I don’t know who some of these guys in the back of the bullpen are, and I just had to remind myself that we just use a ton of pitchers. We set the major league record for pitchers used last year and could easily end up close to there again this year (46 last year, 29 so far this year). By comparison, in 1998, we used 19. It helped to have your rotation anchored by 3 HoFers and 2 All-Stars.
Dodd is the winner!
Ritchie is a rookie. Don’t give up on him yet.
Kim on the other hand… I think that’s sunk money.
Austin hasn’t been the same since Mike Brumley died. Terrible story there…
Let’s sweep the Cardinals!
Let’s just get to the break in first place (very hopefully by more than 3 games) & breathe a bit.
And it hurts to say, but how ’bout those Marlins? They’re tied for 2nd w/ Philly.
Not letting bygones be bygones, but I’d honestly rather see the Marlins doing well than Mattingly and the Phils. Mattingly’s redemption arc as a manager is one of the more sour stories of the season, imho.
Anyway, yay for Jarvis, Yaz, and a big win!
Exactly. My least favorite team is wherever Mattingly is.
I think most people felt Dubon would be a good backup or were kind of meh about the signing. Would anyone have believed he’d have 330 at bats and 50 rbis at this point? Funny thing is Dubon and Albies are almost the same hitter statistically at this point. Surprisingly, I’m great with that.
Dubon was insurance in so many places that we should have expected him to get a lot of PAs. I thought Albies was cooked so I thought he’d be our starting 2B. Glad I was wrong.
He’s basically been peak Martin Prado, in just about every sense, including the sense in which Martin Prado came completely out of nowhere and was just found money.
(We apparently signed Prado as a 17-year-old for $5,500, and went on to be worth more than 20 wins in the majors. God, what an incredible player.)
It feels like we’ve been a little lucky to be where we are, but we do have a +95 run differential, which is third in MLB. In fact, Pythagoras says we should actually be a couple games better than we are. We’re just doing it differently than you ideally would. We don’t have a great rotation, but the first five names in our bullpen have been elite, and Weiss is doing a really good job of shorten games. Our offense has holes, but our bench has actually been pretty decent and Weiss is also done a good job of mixing and matching.
Man, we are so lucky to have Chipper. He could kill somebody, and I still don’t think I would regret tattooing his jersey number on my body (inside the paw print of the late Chipper the Dog).
I’m sure it’d be a “hunting accident.”
But thanks for posting this. I’m sure Chipper’s right about the diagnosis, but – fundamentally, I think he’s describing symptoms. Like, Austin’s mechanics are all over the place, we know that. He hasn’t been comfortable at the plate in a really long time, it’s very likely that he made some unconscious post-injury adjustments which ultimately resulted in a lot of drift so his swing is now completely off his old mechanics, and the one coach who really knew his swing passed away. The biggest thing, though, is that he’s completely in his own head and he’s just been spiraling. He’s not going to fix the mechanics until he first regains his confidence.
I dunno, I thought he was more specific than that. He’s talking about a complex swing that is too big and moves his eye plane too much. Austin is strong and creates so much bat speed that he can shorten things up with his stride and path and still drive the ball. Freddie Freeman has been almost slump proof for the last decade plus because of that kind of approach. Austin has nothing to lose by simplifying. I think the complexity is why he has been slump-prone in general and why he’s struggled with sliders for years.
I mean, it sounds like just every single physical thing is wrong with his swing: his swing is too long, plus he’s not keeping his head still and he’s overstriding so he’s losing his balance. Again, to me, that doesn’t sound just like mechanics, it sounds like a guy who’s lost without a map.
Did Keith Law say he had bat speed issues, or am I now remembering that it was the whole “objectively long” Twitter controversy? Or was that the random guy that said that about Acuna? I can’t remember such things anymore.
Riley’s bat speed is 91st percentile. Yes, AAR it’s everything and that’s the point. He needs to get simple and short to the ball and that is an overhaul, and he has nothing to lose. It’s always been complicated and that worked for him when he was younger at the expense of streakiness but he need to adapt.
Chipper got shorter and flatter later in his career as he lost power and turned it into a high-average, doubles approach.