During the most recent MNF game, the Giants’ QB Jaxson Dart got crunched by two Rams as he launched a pass downfield. With replay, everyone could see that his left knee was, at the very least, hyperextended. Not the ugliest injury you’ve ever seen on a football field – LT/Theismann is still the reigning champ, IMO – but enough to make you at least wince.
After initial conjecture that Dart was probably going to be OK, not to mention a PR-peddled monomyth that the Giants had to “take his uniform away from him to keep him returning to the field,” it turns out that… yeah, he’s really injured & he’ll have season-ending surgery. Result: After two games in 2026, the Giants are pretty fooked. (If you doubt that, you probably didn’t watch the performance of Dart’s replacement Jameis Winston, who played like he’d just shotgunned a bottle of Robitussin.)
Back in BravesLand, I flipped on my iPhone last night just in time to see RAJ foul a ball straight off his shinbone. He took a few steps, then collapsed to the ground, writhing. Really? Now?
I’ll admit, there are times when RAJ goes down and looks like a soccer player conning a ref for a penalty kick, then he’s, y’know, OK. But, at first blush, this was different. The replay revealed a direct, ball-on-bone smackaroo. It looked truly painful and maybe worse. I thought of Dart (and previous RAJ catastrophes) & how things can go very wrong in an instant.
Luckily, it turned out that RAJ didn’t break a bone & suffer another season-ending injury. I can’t imagine winning another title without him. Yeah… this year, I think we’re really gonna need him.
The Game: Tonight at Truist Park, the Braves defeated the Cincinnati Reds 3-2 in 10 innings. Mauricio Dubón added another chapter in his folk-hero story with an infield chopper that drove in Manfred Man DaShawn Keirsey for the game-winner. Given the circumstances – doesn’t really matter, right? – it was a fairly ho-hum comeback victory. But a win is a win, and this was #93 for the season.
At this point, we’re really just looking to see if Chris Sale is sharp in this tuneup for the post-season… and tonight, save one pitch, he was certainly himself. On Sale’s fifth pitch of the game, the hot-swinging, rookie RF Juan Brito swatted a belly-high, 97-MPH, 4-seamer over the CF fence – 1-0 Cincy.
Otherwise, his slider was devastating to righties like Elly De La Cruz & Sal Stewart, the Reds’ two best hitters, both of whom looked helpless in their 1st-inning ABs. That’s what you wanna see. After 2 IP, Sale had 5 Ks.
In the 3rd, he recorded a couple harmless pop-ups with upstairs heaters that defensive Reds hitters couldn’t handle. With 2 outs, Brito stroked a single to CF – Sale Buster? – but he struck out De La Cruz looking on an unhittable slider that just ticked the bottom of the zone.
In the 4th, he blew away Stewart again, this time with straight upstairs heat, and did the same with Dane Myers before he plunked Eugenio Suarez on the hand. After 2B Matt McLain dunked a shallow single into RF, sending Suarez to third, he did us a favor by getting thrown out trying to steal second – Drake to Ozzie, right on the money.
Ex-Yankee Oswaldo Cabrera led off the 5th with a cue-shot double that trickled out of Matt Olson’s reach and hooked over the 1B bag into foul territory. Sale recorded a K & a groundout, then for some reason, Cabrera stole third with Brito at bat. Why anyone tries to steal third with 2 outs & a legit threat at the plate still puzzles me, but Sale retired Brito on a 5-3 ground out.
One might’ve thought Sale was done there (86 pitches), but WW let him go back for the 6th, apparently to attain his 200th K of the season. After De La Cruz popped to right, he got it by whiffing Stewart for the third time. With that, Sale was done at 97 pitches – 5.2 IP, 1 ER, 4 H, 10 K, 0 BB. I’d say he was in fine form. We’ll certainly see him again next Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the Braves offense still hadn’t awakened since clinching the division in Houston on Sunday. Reds’ lefty junkballer Andrew Abbott kept the Braves at bay by changing speeds with an assortment of low-velocity heaters, deft changeups, sharp sweepers, and lollipop curves that didn’t always hit 80 MPH.
Going into the bottom of the 6th, the Braves only had 3 hits – an Olson bloop double, a Riley single, a Dubón infield hit – and a walk (after which, Brewer Hicklen was caught leaning & picked off first). But with 2 outs, Olson wacked Abbott’s high, lazy sweeper over the CF fence for HR #41 – 1-1 tie.
Enter Robert Suarez, whose first 31 appearances in ’26 resulted in a 0.56 ERA. Of course, he went onto the IL in June with forearm tightness/strain & right-elbow inflammation. On Suarez’s first pitch back, McLain tripled off the RF bricks, then he later scored on a Will Banfield sac fly to RF – 2-1 Cincy. For the record, Suarez had a lively fastball topping out at 99.
Earlier in the game, after Riley wrapped a single to CF, I did a quick check of his stats – I mean, I know they’re bad (0.8 WAR, .220/.292/.359), but I didn’t quite realize he had 193 Ks so far. My thought was… I sure hope he’s got a couple magic swings in him next week. Lucky for the Bravos, he got an early start – leading off the ATL 7th, Riley blasted Abbott’s 91-MPH heater just over the CF fence – 2-2 tie.
Dylan Lee pitched a perfect 8th, then Raisel Iglesias did the same in the 9th, striking out the side. The Braves didn’t seriously threaten, so… free baseball. Lefty Brent Suter got in the act by pitching a perfect 10th, which included a strikeout of Cabrera on a wicked changeup.
Bottom 10 with Luis Mey on the mound & DaShawn Keirsey as the Manfred Man, H.S. Kim bunted the speedster to third. Mey then plunked Drake on the foot, setting up Dubón for the hero role. Mission accepted.
Dubón chopped a 3-2 sinker high off the plate – too high for Mey to have any chance on the breaking Keirsey, who dove in for the winning run. 3-2 ATL. Ho-hum. Four contests left until the games get real again.
Tomorrow night, the Braves go for the series victory with Tyler Mahle (4-1, 1.28 ERA in 8 starts as a Brave) facing off with Reds RHP Brady Singer (6-15, 5.67). Go Braves.
“Shotgunned a bottle of Robitussin” was not a phrase on my bingo card.
In 879 plate appearances since the 2023 All-Star Break, across three and a half injury-plagued seasons, Sean Murphy has struggled to a batting line of .186/.289/.353. Just by comparison, over the same time period, Jonah Heim—who was also a surprise All-Star in 2023—has hit .213/.268/.346 in 1487 PA. Indeed, Heim substantially outhit Murphy in a Braves uniform this year: Heim hit .231/.311/.410 before the team dropped him in preparation for Murphy’s IL return; Murphy has hit just .168/.236/.297 this year.
There’s nothing really to be done at this point. It was just so aggravating watching him at the plate last night. He had no particular offensive approach, no particular bat speed, no particular anything. He’ll be 32 in a couple of weeks, and he’s got two more guaranteed seasons on his contract.
I’m confident he can outhit Sandy Leon, at least.
Oh, and while I’m grousing, that wasn’t the first time Brewer Hicklen got caught napping at first, and while the team-wide epidemic of pickoffs is something that should embarrass the whole team, and Antoan Richardson, I’m particularly disappointed in Hicklen, who’s got more than a thousand professional games under his belt. He also misplayed the carom on McLain’s triple – if he had positioned himself better, he could have held him to a double. Admittedly, Ronald would have misplayed that ball in the exact same way, but Hicklen doesn’t have a lot of value to the team if he’s going to snooze on the bases and in the field. I’m pretty sure Eli White would have kept his nose clean on both of those plays.
Okay, now that I’ve got that out of my system: Chris Sale sure is something special. He’s almost certainly going to finish in the top four of the Cy Young voting again, something he’s done five times in his career already – this would be the sixth. (Just for comparison, Max Fried’s a wonderful pitcher but he’s only done that twice; Smoltzie only finished that high three times, and Glavine also did it six times. So has Scherzer, for that matter.)
Getting Chris Sale for Vaughn Grissom is very possibly the best transaction that Alex Anthopoulos ever made, including the franchise-altering trade that brought Josh Donaldson to Toronto in exchange for Brett Lawrie, Kendall Graveman, and Franklin Barreto. Sale’s three seasons in Atlanta have been so dominant that it wouldn’t be impossible to dream of seeing an A on his cap in Cooperstown. What a dude he’s been.
Murphy’s 3-1/2-year total at least has a decent amount of walks and power to go with the near-total lack of singles, but this year even the walks and power have dropped off. If he’s not a better defensive catcher than Baldwin (pitch-framing shouldn’t matter much any more, and I wonder how much pitch-calling/pitcher management the catcher does), then I could see Baldwin catching every game in the postseason. Even with Smith not being a particularly good DH (and Yaz playing left and Dubon SS), that’s got to be a better lineup than having Murphy & Kim start.
I think Kiersey may be the team’s good luck charm. He’s appeared in 3 games, and the team has won all 3. In the game of the year on September 11, as a PR he scored from first on what should’ve been a single to tie the game with 2 out in the 9th, the next day he went 1 for 1 and scored a run as a sub in a blowout, and last night he scored the winning run as a PR for the Manfred Man.
But I would note that Baldwin has hit considerably better as a DH than as a catcher: https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=baldwdr01&year=2026&t=b#all_defp
Catcher is clearly a cumulatively wearying position, but it probably affects at-bat focus in-game as well. If that extra 56 points of OPS is meaningful, then you can think of transferring it to Murphy’s credit.
Catcher framing is still a useful skill and Murphy is still elite at it. According to Fangraphs he is also the best at challenges (and Drake is horrible at them) so he is still providing value
Suarez looked good last night, McLain’s triple notwithstanding. His four-seamer averaged 98.6 mph and had the 17 inches of IVB that it usually does. The average velocities of his changeup and sinker were right in line with what he was doing pre-injury.
This bullpen could be absolutely filthy in the postseason. I know the established high leverage guys (Suarez, Iggy, Fuentes, Lee) will be relied on heavily and would pitch most of the relief innings in a short series, so thinking about who fills out the rest of the bullpen is mostly academic. However, I‘m pretty excited by the prospect of having those four arms plus Mederos, Kerr, and Suter, along with AJSS just airing it out for 1-2 innings at a time.
The acquisition of Murphy is one of the three worst trades in my lifetime of fandom. I judge trades partly on their outcome and partly on whether they made any sense at the time. The Murphy trade made no sense for a team with any sort of salary constraints, turning a young cheap catcher into an older expensive one, and limiting capacity to upgrade the roster at other key positions. Those problems directly impact this roster and our inability to score runs.
The other two worst trades to me are the Justice/Grissom for Lofton trade and the
Alex Wood and prospects for Hector whatshisface who was a 30 year old minor leaguer with a blood clotting disorder acquired by a tanking team nowhere near the place on the win curve to use such a player even if he’d been good. None of these made sense, and I hated them the day they were made.
It’s not as if William Contreras ever developed into anything.
And Vaughan Grissom homered last night, so the Chris Sale deal looks suspect as well.
Counter-points: Murphy was a 27-year old catcher coming off a 3.7 bWAR season in an unfriendly hitting ballpark known for his defense and work with pitchers, and we value catcher defense and pitch-calling. Contreras was not that. In Murphy’s age-28 season with Atlanta, he put up a 4 bWAR season, largely out-earning his contract. It’s his implosion after his age-28 season that no one could have seen coming at the time. And he still put up 2.5 WAR last year, so for his Atlanta career, he’s accumulated 6.6 bWAR in 4 seasons. And he probably provides some help to Baldwin and the pitching staff off the field, which is something very few other position’s players can do. He’s probably adding 1-3 WAR person to the pitching staff and Baldwin just sitting in the dugout.
He’s been a disappointment, and it was a bad trade, but to predict he would fall off a cliff so precipitously ignores his history before the trade.
I would say that the absolute worst trade in recent memory is trading Strider’s arb year salaries for $20M per season salaries for no damn reason but to get a slight discount on his first 2 free agent seasons. I will never get over the Strider extension. We better stick him in the bullpen next year as our closer and run his ass into the ground. Sorry, Strider is my least favorite Brave since BJ Upton.
It’s not that Murphy didn’t have value. The problem was that a team that wasn’t going to be able to afford a shortstop or left fielder that already had a good young catcher traded that catcher for an older, more expensive one. The trade turned out worse than even I would’ve predicted but it didn’t make sense for our financial situation and resource constraints.
The Strider deal was bad, but not really a trade. It’s another situation where we spent money like we had it and then “oh no we can’t sign a shortstop or left fielder because we’re paying Murphy and Strider”. Unforced errors.
If we can combine a group of similar trades into one, I think you could argue that AA’s best “trade” was nearly simultaneously getting Pederson, Soler, Duvall, Rosario, and cash in July 2021 for the immediately-released .178-hitting corpse of Pablo Sandoval, Alex Jackson, Bryce Ball, and Kasey Kalich. Only Jackson played in the majors after being traded, and while he’s still playing and actually having a decent year as a seldom-used backup, he’s on his 6th MLB team and has negative career bWAR. Even if you ignore their regular-season contributions, the four outfielders hit 12 postseason HR (3 each, though Duvall sometimes gets forgotten) in a third of a season’s worth of PA against top teams & pitchers.
Butler/Jacoby for Barker makes my worst 3 list.
Hector Olivera was a Cuban defector who scouts seemed to think had a chance to be very good for a few years. I thought it was a reasonable roll of the dice for a team that wasn’t going anywhere, so I didn’t hate it at the time. Certainly didn’t work out, and wasn’t there a domestic violence incident soon after he joined the team?
Jonathan, that would make an interesting study after the season – for players with at least 100 PA at both a defensive position and DH during a season, do catchers as a group hit better as DH, and how do other players do? I know RAJ has hit much worse as a DH this year, so maybe he needs to have his mind in the game (or maybe it’s just coincidence). You have sorting capability that I don’t, or I’d look at it.
Héctor showed up in a van with “p***y wagon” painted on the side and immediately had some sort of abuse/assault allegations as I remember. And then he looked like someone who had never hit a 90+ mph fastball.
If Sale wins a ring with Atlanta and he plays 2 more seasons, I wonder if he’ll go into the Hall of Fame as a Brave.
7 seasons with Chicago. 30 bWAR, no Cy Young’s, no rings
6 seasons with Boston: 17 bWAR, no Cy Young’s, no rings
5 seasons with Atlanta: ~22 bWAR, one Cy Young, one ring
2 big “IF’s” — does he get a ring and can he hang on two more seasons — but if he can, Atlanta has just as good of a claim for his ballcap as Chicago.
The 2018 Red Sox won a a ring. Sale was on the mound for the final out.
Derp. I forgot about that. Sorry.
Every time I think of trying to evaluate a trade (ex ante, not ex post) I am reminded of the words of Mac Thomason: “His floor is Matt Williams. His ceiling is the Hall of Fame.” Prediction is hard. https://bravesjournal.com/2005/12/08/this-is-a-bad-deal/ I’d note that doesn’t stop me from pontificating… I just try not to sound too sure.
In his defense, he didn’t know Marte was using steroids and had to stop when they cracked down on it.
I think it’s likely why Marcus Giles suddenly fell off a cliff too.
No disrespect to Mac at all. The only thing is that hot takes sometimes look bad.
I agree with you Rob. Strider is one of my least favorite Braves as well and his starting days need to be over. I wish we could have dumped him for deGrom but to no avail.
I do like giving him the Lopez treatment. “Hey, we’ll stick you in the pen, and if you can stay healthy, a rotation spot is all yours. But we’re just not going to count on you and it’s easier to absorb your loss in the pen.” If I’m a pitcher, I would be perfectly content to spend a half season in the pen just working on my mechanics, getting outs, and staying healthy. And if you do indeed stay healthy, you’ll be more fresh for the playoffs, as Lopez would conceivably be.
I’m a Strider fan, but I often thought he could’ve been a closer.
He’s been injury-prone since college… minor & major hurts all the time.
Rob, if Strider ate a little meat now and then would you hate him so much? Would his elbow hold up better?
Seriously, I don’t have an opinion about Strider as a person, and I’m not defending his contract. But it is true that the numbers he put up in 2022 and 2023 were historically good. Of course, given the increasing frequency of injuries, committing anything beyond a couple of years to a pitcher is looking like a fools errand.
I’m not sure what I think about the offense right now, but the best version of this pitching staff appears to be peaking at the right moment based on their strategy. I like that Elder is not in the equation. I’m not saying he’s bad and I’m not saying he’s good. I just don’t trust him, and I just don’t want to talk about him giving up a 3-run bomb to Harper all offseason.
We have the rotation, then the following guys clearly getting work as 2-inning relievers in the playoffs: Murphy, AJSS, Suter, Kerr, Ritchie, and Lopez. I think I trust AJSS, Suter, and Kerr. I might trust Ritchie or Lopez. Murphy doesn’t make the playoff roster.
If Suarez is healthy, the back of the pen is set with Lee, Fuentes, Suarez, and Iglesias. Dodd is in the equation here.
Will they do a 8-man bullpen? Iglesias, Suarez, Fuentes, Lee, Suter, AJSS, Kerr, and 1 of Ritchie, Dodd, and Lopez? Is Dodd a lock and Ritchie and Lopez are the odd men out? Do they go with a ::gasp:: 9-man and just go apeshit with match-ups? Do they treat Perez and Holmes as 3-inning relievers who could also conceivably come in relief depending on the way the series plays out?
If we don’t hit, then it’s all a moot point. But the pitching is really, really interesting and can win playoff games.
I like Perez and Holmes as piggybacks.
The Phillies will be a nightmare in a short series. Wheeler and Nola are back pitching well, Luzardo’s fantastic, and Sanchez is one of the best pitchers in the league. They just don’t have the pen we do.
Luzardo’s trying to come back from injury, for what it’s worth, and it seems quite likely he’ll go into the pen. And notwithstanding his better performances lately, Aaron Nola is he’s leading the majors in homers against. I’ll take him seriously, because he’s actually handled us pretty well in October, but he’s still a guy with a career 3.90 ERA.
They absolutely have some studs who can catch fire in a short series, but so do we. I’m pretty happy with how we match up against them, as long as Utley stays retired.
I think WW will consider using Fuentes for 2-inning stints in the postseason, especially if he has an easy first inning. He’s had six two-inning appearances since August 23 and has done pretty well in them – 12 IP, 6 hits, 3 non-intentional BB, and 2 runs. Might not pitch him the day after a two-inning appearance unless it’s an elimination game, though.
I still get cranky thinking about Adam Wainwright for J.D. Drew. Yeah J.D. was great for a season, but…
Barker for Butler, Jacoby, and Behenna is the gold standard for bad deals. But Darrell Evans for Willie Montana’s is underrated among connoisseurs of bad trades. Comparing post-trade career WAR in that one is very ugly.
EDIT–that’s Willie Montanez, of course (although Willie Montana probably would have been better). Evans’s post-Braves bWAR was about 33. Montanez had negative cumulative WAR in the six seasons he played post-trade.
Melky Cabrera and Arodys Vizcaino for Javier Vazquez and the actually useful Boone Logan always bothers me. .just because the notion of Melky Cabrera still bothers me more than the trade itself.
I just revisited the old video of Melky’s goofy errant throw yesterday for giggles.
Smelky eating something off of his bat.
That trade made little sense at the time (criterion 1) but it was redeemed by subsequent performance (criterion 2). We had just come off our most promising season in years and almost snuck into the playoffs, but we traded a 6 WAR ace for a relief prospect and a fourth outfielder. Imagine any team taking back so little for a full season of an ace pitcher today. The rationale was that we wouldn’t be able to afford him the next year when he became a free agent, which would’ve been true if he’d repeated 2009, but he tanked in NY and never got another big contract. We could’ve even further redeemed the deal if Melky had juiced a season earlier and not been one of the most feckless outfielders we’ve ever had. As bad as he was, we still got back more than Vazquez gave the Yanks (negative WAR).
True story!
Martin perez out for 15 days ….now who is the third starter?
Hoooooo boy.
I mean, it’s Grant Holmes. But Jonathan may need to allocate a little more budget to his top shelf.
You gotta be freaking kidding me.
Who is the 4th starter is the bigger question (if we make it to the NLDS)
Elder on a short hook.
Sucks, especially for Perez. But I don’t really think it’s going to be too big an issue next week. Our bullpen, incl. AJSS and Suarez rocks. Make it a bullpen game.
I think any Game 4 is now a bullpen game. Elder may be healed enough to be the bulk guy if we get that far.
Wild Card series rosterbation
Starters: Sale, Mahle, Holmes
Bullpen: Iggy, Suarez, Didi, Lee, Dodd, Mederos, Kerr, Suter, AJSS, Ritchie (could eat innings in a mop up situation)
Catchers: Baldwin, Murphy
Infielders: Olson, Albies, Dubon, Riley, Kim
Outfielders: Harris, Acuña, Yaz, Hicklen, Keirsey (for pinch running), Dom Smith (pinch hitter vs RHP)
A 4-run first inning… haven’t seen that in awhile. And Mahle getting touched up – haven’t seen that at all.
Re: Rotation
Not to look ahead too far, but if the Braves win the WC series in 3 games, they’ll have to start Game 1 of the NLDS with a 4th starter/bullpen game. If they win the WC series in 2 games, then the 4th starter/bullpen game would go Game 4 of NLDS.
Unlike the ALDS this year, there’s no day off between Game 1 & Game 2 of the NLDS.
Also, if the Braves make any kind of run, it’ll be interesting to see how Sale is handled. Could he go on 4 days’ rest, or would he require more time? Assuming he pitches WC G1, Sale would get 4 days’ rest going into NLDS Game 2. Same story for a potential NLDS Game 5.
We will just have to sweep the WC
On a recent Locked On Braves podcast, Lindsay Crosby pointed out that for the month of September, the Braves’ collective wRC+ is 41 (!) during innings 1-5, and it’s something like 165 for innings 6-9. He thinks this may doom (I know, I know: DOOM!) the Braves in the postseason. Of course, last night they put up a crooked number early and still lost. Not that that makes me feel any better . . .
Luis Arraez hurt his ankle. By the way, it’s looking increasingly likely we will play the Phillies.
Padres have 89 wins, Cubs have 88, and Phillies have 87 with 3 games to go. Dbacks are 2 GB with 85.
B14 is right. Most likely we get the Phils next week. They’re a game behind the Cubs and the cubs have that head to head tiebreaker. Wheeler is set up for game one on Tuesday (unless he’s needed for them to clinch this Sunday—very unlikely) with Sanchez for game 2 on Wednesday. Game 3 would be either Nola or Luzardo, if he’s healthy.
Snowshinedog has an excellent new post up, on the state of the farm and who we might see on the big club next year.