Yesterday’s Post’s Title
If you don’t know the reference, or even if you do, take 3 1/2 minutes out of your life to watch this. It was recorded a month before she married Gregg Allman. Amazing.1
Also, in Baltimore cultural touchstones yesterday, I omitted Hairspray. Apologies to John Waters.
The Compleat Bryce Elder
I am gratified to see two of you (stamton and hsmith for those keeping score) comment on my estimation of the probability of a Bryce Elder complete game, which remains around 200:1. Just a note about what that means.
Since August 2022, when he was summoned to Atlanta for good, he has made 93 regular season starts. That’s Top 50 among major league pitchers. (Logan Webb leads with 128.) Figuring him for around 30 starts a year (that optimistically assumes he never gets injured), we’d expect him to have a complete game once every seven years. He’s ahead of schedule! He’s probably good for one more, maybe two if he lasts a long time. So to pick a Bryce Elder game at random and say: “Yep. This is the one” is probably pretty optimistic.
HuffPost
Sam Huff‘s grandfather, the real Sam Huff was, for those of us old to barely remember (he retired when I was 13) a truly landmark NFL player. Those old John Facenda NFL videos highlighted play after play of awesomeness. He and Ray Nitschke were the two guys Tommy Nobis was supposed to become when he was drafted #1 by the Falcons in 1966, the first of the four years they got the first pick in the NFL Draft. (Trivia question: name the other three. Answers at the bottom.2)
So I just looked it up, and in his illustrious NFL career, Sam Huff earned around $300,000. That isn’t chump change… call it a little over $3,000,000 in today’s attenuated currency. His grandson, the Orioles backup catcher to Chadwick Tromp (while Adley Rutschman is on the IL) will have earned around $2,000,000 playing baseball by the end of this season, not counting any signing bonus he might have received. It is not impossible that the son will pass the grandfather, but it is unlikely, as he’d need another full two seasons or so, and third-string catcher is not really a thing.
By comparison, Carl Yastrzemski earned around $8,000,000 2026 dollars over his somewhat later career than the elder Huff’s, and his grandson has earned $47,000,000 playing baseball. I have no grand conclusions here. Fun with numbers.
The Game
Observation #1: The word galoot was created to describe Pete Alonso. He’s a pretty good baseball player, but he’s definitely a galoot.
Observation# 2: Bryce Elder’s quest for complete game #2 was pretty clearly not going to happen when his 50th pitch, occurring in the third inning, was yo lo tengo’ed by Jim Jarvis. At that point, you need to minimize pitches, not extend innings. Jarvis then dove and missed a single and then failed to corral a line drive to allow Sir Galoot to score the first run of the game. By the end of the third, Elder had thrown 70 pitches, and Jarvis’ bet on Kalshi that Elder wasn’t going to have a complete game tonight was secure. His 93rd pitch, in the bottom of the 5th, was deposited by Gunnar Henderson into the seats to make it 2-0. He finished with 5 innings pitched, 98 pitches.
Meanwhile, Brandon Young, pitching for the songbirds, was cruising along until a groundout in the sixth brought a run home. He was replaced in the 7th by Mark Wolfram, who probably tires of explaining to everyone why the atomic symbol for tungsten is W. Eli White hit a one-out double in the 7th which included a blown tire rounding first, but the filaments of Wolfram’s arm eliminated any further problems. If I were baseball commissioner, I would force Wolfram to wear #74. (Oddly, there has never been a major league player with last name Silver or Gold, or any other element. Silvera, Golden, Goldschmidt, Carbo, etc. But I think Wolfram is the only elementally-last-named player, at least until Fred Lithium makes the bigs. Please: somebody set me straight if I’m wrong about this.)
Victor Mederos returned to spell Elder. He too was victimized by a simple missed catch from Jarvis. Calm down, young man. (Jarvis apparently also bet on the number of times The Galoot would reach based, personally assuring two safeties.)
This game was nothing like last night’s game. In that game, a Drake Baldwin bomb off Rico Garcia erased a one-run deficit in the 8th inning. In this game, an Ozzie Albies bomb off Rico Garcia erased a one-run deficit in the 8th inning. Completely different.
With a tie game in the bottom of the 8th and the good relievers available, Mederos was not given a third inning. Didier Fuentes got the 8th. Once again, Weiss was trying to win a game before he ran out of pitchers. Fuentes was overpowering, consistently over 100 mph.
9th Inning. Nada for the good guys. In the bottom of the inning, the pixie dust wore off. Fuentes gave up a double that Dubón almost caught, brought home by a single that Ozzie almost reached.
Reylo on the mound tomorrow, and a speech from Andruw.
If Jarvis had bets down on Kalshi, he concealed his glee well enough. He greatly resembled someone looking for a hole to crawl into.
The only other time I’ve heard anyone called a galoot is Yosemite Sam to Bugs Bunny. “Say your prayers, you long-eared galoot!” The definition from the American Heritage Dictionary is “a clumsy or uncouth person,” which doesn’t seem to apply to Bugs. I don’t know whether Alonso is more or less uncouth than a typical ballplayer, though he may be more clumsy. It might be more fair to call him a big lug, like Ryan Klesko.
Regarding elements, I was excited to find there was a Hi Nickel who played in the Teens but apparently not at the major league level. Larry Nickels played for the White Sox in 1964. So close!
I know I’m a broken record but how many games ya’ gonna win with 2 runs? Not a lot. I cannot wait for Ronald to come back. Everyone will be better.
Another three strikeouts from Riley. He’s coming back ever so slowly……
How can you fault Elder for giving up one earned run? How can you fault a bullpen that gave up one run in 3 2/3 innings?
Belated thanks to JonathanF for the detailed analysis of the probability of Elder pitching a complete game. I learned a little about the estimation of binary probabilities from sparse data. (The starting point of my knowledge of the subject was zero.)
When I asked the question “what are the odds?” I was pretty sure JF would provide such an answer. That is part of the delight of this blog! It reminds me of when Mr Spock would tell Captain Kirk “the odds of your plan succeeding are 1,358 to 1.” Just because Kirk’s plan worked did not mean that Spock’s estimation of the probability was wrong. Of course Spock ignored one huge variable: the need of the scriptwriter for things to work out. Fortunately baseball does not have a script or story arc that it must follow. We really don’t know what will happen. As Yogi probably did not say, predicting the future is hard.
When I asked my question about the odds of Elder pitching a complete game, the mental answer I gave was zilch, nada, zero. And with the benefit of hindsight, I was right!
As to Elder, the announcers love to remind us that Bryce visited Greg Maddux in the off season and that he is a different pitcher as a result. He did learn from Mad Dog: the new cutter is a good pitch and occasionally he can throw the two seamer to a lefty that looks inside and darts to the inside corner at the last second. On the other hand, 98 pitches in five innings is about as un-Maddux like as you can get. Greg should have taught him to always throw to exactly the spot you intend and never miss it.
I have nothing to add to the Cher memories.
Cher memories?
When I was a kid, she was huge… pop songs, TV shows, eventually movies. In fact, we had a family friend who made Cher paper dolls for my sister… including the Bob Mackie wardrobe.
At a checkout counter yesterday, I saw Cher on the cover of an entertainment magazine — she just turned 80. Bravo.
The Cher clip was great, IMO, but the intrepid who clicked the link in the footnotes to find a Beatles medley with Cher, Tina Turner and Kate Smith will find something…unique. One of the great things about Braves Journal is that I suspect a higher percentage of readers know who Kate Smith was rather than they would at, say, the Athletic.
Ugh, here’s bad Raisel; his sinker’s all over the place.
If having Kate Smith participating in a Beatles medley wasn’t enough… having Tim Conway stumble out in the middle of it was pure ’70s variety-show TV.
Man, game turned in a hurry. Would be a tough one to cough up.
EDIT: I sure didn’t think this one would go to the 11th.
Had it all the way.
My unsolicited advice to the Orioles: sell.
Weird game, weird series… glad to get out of there with 2.
Onto Flushing…
Ozzie has helped us win a lot of games. That wasn’t one of them. A Bill Bucker special and a pop-up with a runner on third and 1 out in the 10th to finish off an 0-6. I trust he is glad for the change of scenery.
How do you pick up 4 games in the standings in just 10 days?
Braves since All-Star Game: WLW WLWW WLW (7-3)
Phillies since All-Star Game: LWL WLL LL (2-6)
Go Yanks.
Recapped.