Mike Yastrzemski gave the Braves the lead with a solo home run leading off the bottom of the 3rd, and Matt Olson added his 31st of the season in the 4th to tie the game at 2. The Braves final 2 runs were unearned, but win, win, win. The Braves sweep the 4-game series and remain 8 games ahead of the Phillies.
One of my favorite players growing up was J.R. Richard of the Houston Astros. I had no natural attachment to Houston, but I thought his baseball card was just the coolest thing. If I remember correctly, in 1974 he liked dancing.
Richard’s diminutive, JR Ritchie, started for the Braves after being hastily scratched from his previous day’s start in Gwinnett due to the late knee injury suffered by Reynaldo Lopez. Ritchie gave the Braves 4 innings of 4-hit, 2-run ball before turning it over to the bullpen, taking advantage of the benefit of a day off Monday. JR may never be another Richard, but maybe someday he’ll be a Rich, or at least a Rick.
Didier Fuentes struck out 4 in 2 perfect innings, and Raisel Iglesias locked down his 21st save. The report on Lopez is that he may need only the minimum 15-day IL stint.
The resurgent floundering resurgent Marlins come to town on Tuesday at 7:15 Eastern, Chris Sale scheduled against, presumably, eventually somebody.
You can find the card in the featured image above on eBay for around $1.50. No, you can’t have mine.
Mark Bowman reports that now we are going to skip Sale until the weekend and go with Grant Holmes on Tuesday.
If I recall correctly, Dale Murphy once said that J.R. Richard was the pitcher he most dreaded to face. Or words to that effect.
I believe that 100%, and I imagine plenty of others said the same. His last 5 seasons he pitched about 1240 innings and gave up 910 hits.
Whenever I try to convince myself that the Mets have the alltime worst medical staff, I remind myself about the Astros and JR Richard.
At least he got to retire at his peak.
Was a huge JR Richard fan — he played for my hometown Southern League Double-A Columbus Astros when I was a kid, so I followed him a bit. (In Columbus, he was teammates with 2 guys named Ramon de los Santos & Jesus de la Rosa — some things you just remember.)
The year after he finally broke thru & became a bit of a star, the Houston Astros played a one-off spring-training game in Columbus at Golden Park vs. the Texas Rangers (’77?). My mom let me skip school w/ my buddy & we were at the park all day getting autographs, collecting baseballs, etc.
JR was in street clothes & sitting in the box seats in the stands and my pal asked him: “Hey, JR… you gonna win 20 games again this year?”
JR looked at him like he was insulted, and said, “25!”
Richard’s only 20-win season was in 1976, so your spring training game must’ve been in 1977. You & I are the same age or a year apart, but I stopped following the Astros before you, because the most prominent player from when I attended games was Greg Gross, who had a 17-year major league career based on hitting some singles, drawing some walks, having no power (.287/.372/.351, only 7 career HR), apparently being an adequate defensive OF for a few years, and being a specialist pinch-hitter whose lifetime BA was .300 as a starter and .240 as a PH. He may also have held the pre-Belliard record for longest time between HR for a nonpitcher – his sixth was on April 30, 1978 and his seventh on May 28, 1987. (Belliard’s streak was between May 5, 1987 and September 26, 1997, so more than a year longer.) Gross’s 12 SB and 20 CS as a 21-year-old jumped out at me as something else that wouldn’t be the same now that they actually count things. He must have been a good clubhouse guy.
Oh, are you from the Fountain City?
Yeah, the C-Astros teams w/ Greg Gross had a buncha future MLB guys.
I just saw that Kevin Gausman has gone to the Cubs for Southisene… I said: What? But it’s Tate’s brother.
[I definitely wouldn’t trade Tate Southisene for two months of Kevin Gausman. Been there… done that. That’s how we lost Evan Phillips.]
Rosenthal on Hammer Territory said Shapiro and Anthopoulous hate each other and thought it unlikely that they’d work together to get Gausman here.
I don’t think Gausman left here on the best of terms either.
Jon Heyman reports we traded Anthony Molina to SF for Tyler Mahle. Mahle has an ERA above 5 but his FIP is only 4.38, and clearly a change of scenery (and a good defense behind him) could help him. He’s been better since he came off the IL in late June.
Not sure he’s an upgrade over any of our non-Sale starters, but I suppose he’s another option in case of injury. He is an upgrade on Ritchie and can fill Reylo’s spot for the next couple of turns for sure.
The Padres hung 5 ER on him in a loss yesterday, but he struck out nine. There’s some upside possibly. This probably gets Ritchie out of the rotation and lets you not rely on Lopez’s knee being fine in two weeks, but this doesn’t move the needle.
Another thing is that he has pitched at least 5 innings in 16/18 starts. That’s been an issue for us.
Mahle also could help shift Holmes to the bullpen even if we don’t do anything else when Reylo gets back. (Hopefully we do and can get a playoff starter.)
Mahle has basically been average this year (97 xFIP-), but you could argue that he’s now our second best starter (Elder and Perez are right behind him in xFIP-, Holmes and Ritchie are significantly worse). Getting a league average arm and inserting him into a rotation that is in desperate need of some stability, without giving up anything of value, is nothing to scoff at.
I have no problem picking up Mahle. Would’ve been nice to get Gausman, but like has been said, I don’t think he left on the best of terms here. (Didn’t AA release him?). Let’s get another arm of some description and roll with it.
I like the Mahle pickup. He’s not as bad as he’s looked. We need two starters: one to eat innings to get you to the playoffs and one to pitch in the playoffs. Mahle is nice and cheap to be the former.
If you’re AA, your window is only so big. If we don’t get to another WS in the next few years he’s going to be shown the door when this core group fades. So, why sit on all these prospects for the next GM to potentially come in and succeed off them?
Which is what often happens by the way. It’s happening now in Washington. All these hitters are Mike Rizzo dudes. Nationals are close to turning it around but Rizzo got canned because it wasn’t happening fast enough. And he won a WS just 7 years ago! Sound kind of familiar?
My dream would be a deal with the Angels for Neto and Soriano/Detmers. Help LAA start their rebuild while helping us fill big holes with control right now. Added bonus is some control and certainty going into the lockout.
I am not a fan of Soriano based on what he will likely cost. He consistently walks about 4 batters per 9 innings and his whip is hovering around 1.3. I know he has elite stuff, but I just see a huge risk of significant regression, especially in the playoffs with more patient hitters.
He got traded to the Blue Jays anyway.
Rumors are that we are interested in Jacob DeGrom, and that he might waive his NTR to come to us. He is old but still a front line starter.
The Phillies have apparently traded for Luis Arraez to be their everyday second baseman, and are reportedly shuffling their whole infield around to accommodate him (including sending Harper back to the OF). Regardless of how that works out, the fact that the preceding is a true sentence in 2026 feels like one of the more remarkable feathers in Ron Washington’s cap.
Before anybody goes googling it like a moron, no Brent Suter is of no relation to Bruce Sutter. Their names aren’t even spelled the same. What sort of cretin goes googling something like that?
Suter isn’t going to move the needle much, but he’s not bad — his career xFIP of 4.01 is basically dead average. And the cost was minimal — Nacho didn’t have much of a path to playing time here.
Suter & Mahle sounds like someone to call after getting hit by a big rig.
It’s some sort of word game. We’re doing letter extraction from ’80s Braves Sutter and Mahler. Now we just have get Tampa Bay to give us Bryan Baker.
I prefer Holers
Depth is good. Especially in the playoffs. And short of a catastrophe (I’m not going to provide hypotheticals, we know what they are) this team is playoffs-bound.
I’m still holding out for Ray/Ramos. I think SS will solve itslef and neither Thomas nor Mahle nor Suter move the needle much. I would live with Detmers/Adell.
I think it’s very interesting that the Giants have made trades and a bunch of big pieces have been traded but no word on Ray yet.
OK, Adell is gone now.
Ramos becomes redundant with Lane Thomas.
Suter is an upgrade on Danny Young. Apparently he also can throw multiple innings in middle relief if needed.
He does have reverse splits, so you’re not going to want to bring him in to face a bunch of LHB.
The Orioles moved Taylor Ward. Go see what they want for Trevor Rogers, AA.
AA isn’t getting anyone. Ray is gone now. DeGrom will not waive his no trade clause. I do think Ramos is much better than Thomas – more control, younger, more upside. But AA is apparently not committing to anything. You have to give something to get something.
Maybe Suter will replace Young but Suter is old and we could have had him as a FA. Mahle might be good insurance for an injury (like ReLo’s). Thomas is a better hitter than White but not as fast and not as good a defender. The trades so far have been very marginal.
Now the Cubs get Detmers.
As I write this at 3:35, Detmers is apparently still available. As is Casey Mize. Going into today I thought those two were the most likely “front line” options for the Braves. We will see soon.
Braves Twitter is about to combust.
After the last two offseasons and trade deadlines, I’m not sure why anyone actually expected AA to make a meaningful trade this year.
I had the same thought.
T-minus 1 hour, 50 minutes until I’m back to hating Alex Anthopolous. We had a good run! And I’m the guy that doesn’t hate our pitching and I STILL think that we’re better off adding a playoff caliber starter.
I wanted Joe Adell, and Lane Thomas is better than Joe Addell, so that’s good. I wanted a reliever; we got 2. But man, gotta get a starter.
I don’t think anyone wnats to trade with AA. I think everyone feels rippped off to some extent except maybe the A’s or Brewers…..
The Mets and Phillies made an intra-division trade, but no one thinks the Braves would.
One of the cool things about prospects is that you can just go out and get some more every year. There’s a whole mechanism for it and everything.
Joey Bart, we hardly knew thee.
https://x.com/JeffPassan/status/2084381931689418834?s=20
Has AA learned anything about Murphy being made of glass? Gonna keep doubling down to justify what remains a colossal misjudgment, I reckon.
Well, supposedly the Cubs had acquired Detmers, then it was debunked, and now they’ve acquired Clay Holmes. So maybe Detmers is still in play for Atlanta. Detmers will be really good with an actual defense behind him. I want him.
Bart will hopefully be available after Murphy pulls his oblique eating a sandwich.
We traded Bart for a 26-year-old reliever with limited major league experience that no one seems to know anything about. But he has options!
Eli White has been sent to Boston for a reliever. I think Alex is signaling that no starter is coming. He’s stacking the bullpen.
Clay Holmes, Freddy Peralta, Huascar Brazoban, AJ Minter, Brooks Raley, Luke Weaver. (Also Tyrone Taylor) That’s 6 major league pitchers traded away from a team we still have to face three times next week. That’s the sort of changes you want to see… crippling one of the two teams we have a losing record to!
Eli White to Boston for RHP Tyler Uberstine, apparently.
I’m kind of sad to see Eli go, honestly.
Agreed. But once we had Thomas, there was no way he could stay. Same with Bart/Murphy
I hope Davitt and Uberstine are worth something but White and Bart were about to be extraneous. Now if we could only do something about Kim……
I wish AA would get a good SP….
White probably gets non-tendered and signs with the Braves again this winter.
So in Davitt and Uberstine we get 4.2 innings of major league experience.
Didn’t Davitt and Uberstine discover DNA?
No, RNA. (I will throw up a quick reaction post shortly, once I’m sure we didn’t reanimate Cy Young or something.) If y’all can wait 15 minutes, we can consolidate reactions there.
What a bust. Just wait for the pronouncements that we’ll have a great pitching staff when everyone gets uninjured.
Padres got Mize and Ray. I wanna have AJ Preller.
I am dead inside. I will live out the rest of my days numb on this floating rock.
Take it to the new thread, Rob.