I assume you all watched it, so you know the Dodgers defeated the Braves 3-1, taking a 2-1 lead in this best of 5 series.
JonathanF said before the game that this was a matchup between two of the top three pitchers in the league. I love Chris Sale; he’s a no doubt hall of famer, and I hope he pitches several more seasons for our Braves. Tonight Chris was just a little off. It was a combination of not having his very best command and the Dodgers having a very good approach.
“Admiral” Yamamoto is pretty remarkable himself. When he commands the fastball (which he almost always does), it makes his wipeout splitter and curveball practically unhittable. The Braves’ batters haven’t done much this series, and Skubal and Yamamoto are a big part of the reason. They just need to find a way to start hitting long fly balls instead of grounders. Also, take Roger’s advice and score at least five runs.
Let’s hear it for the Braves bullpen. Dodd, Lee, Suter, and Iglesias held them scoreless on just one hit over four innings. These guys, plus Kerr and Fuentes, keep giving us a chance to win. Even in the two losses, the Braves had the tying run at the plate when it ended.
The Dodgers have several good role players. Kike Hernandez’s role is to hit home runs in the postseason. Kike’s been with the Dodgers since 2015, with a couple of years exile in Boston before returning to LA. Throughout, he’s been just a role player in the regular season, but always comes up big in October. Freddie Freeman’s role is to torture his ex-teammates. Freeman hit only one home run in the regular season after the ASB. In three games against the Braves in this series, he’s hit three—although Mauricio Dubon made a terrific catch that brought one of those back. Is there just a little part of me that feels good for Freeman, since he was such a big part of this franchise for over a decade? No, there is not.
To advance to the NLCS, all the Braves have to do is win two more ballgames. I realize some may believe that’s an insurmountable task. But it’s not; odds are about one in four, if you assume you have a 50% chance against each of Tyler Glasnow and Tariq Skubal. Glasnow is good, but I like our Tyler. Skubal is tough, but the Braves have Ray Kerr. Might as well believe. I guess the alternative is to proclaim loudly that it’s hopeless. If the Dodgers do win this series, you’ll at least have the satisfaction of being right. As for me, I’m looking forward to the exhilaration of overcoming the odds and crushing this blue monster.
Acuña did not speak with media after the game, per the beat.
Yes, we need to score more, but sometimes you just face a really good pitcher and the only way to win is to pitch a little better and win 1-0 or 2-1. We didn’t do that.
I think there’s a good chance we win tomorrow and send it back to LA. And then anything can happen.
The ability to get runs off of elite pitching is what wins playoff games (crapshoot notwithstanding). Our pitching is and has been elite, too, yet the Dodgers score enough to win. I said when we didn’t score off of Schlittler, it does NOT matter who is pitching; you have to score.
I take no pride in being a negative Nancy, it was the braves themselves who made me this way. Being the best record in baseball only to get trounced by cold bats, Eric gregg, leyritz, Lonnie smith, infield flies, or a dozen other stupid things.
I’ll tell you one thing: I did NOT watch the world series in 2021. I was afraid of jinxing it, and only watched it on YouTube, (many times), right after the series was over. Obviously jinxes are (probably) not a thing, but I will try it again the rest of this series to see if it works. See you all in the NLCS, hopefully.
I feel it too. The reason I prefer the regular season to the postseason is that so many stupid random things have cost our team in October over the years. The playoffs are a crapshoot, but our luck never seems to even out.
I’m not necessarily referring to this series right now. The Dodgers are really good. But having a Cy Young pitcher start every game for your team doesn’t guarantee victory, as Braves fans from the 90’s know all too well.
FWIW, I’m going to have to miss most or all of tomorrow’s game. I have something I must do from 6:00 to 8:30. If the Braves win, it might be because I didn’t watch, so perhaps I should not watch on Friday either. Nah—I’ll be right there with them every pitch. I’ll take the chance that a loss would be my fault.
I’ll take the jinx on this one. I watched the first two innings at work and it was 0-0 and, by the time I got home and turned on the TV, it was 3-1.
I heard about Dubon’s catch on the radio but I could not find the game.
What is up with Acuna being absolutely terrible at challenging strikes and often times doing them earlier in the game? Because then Olson couldn’t challenge a strike call in the middle innings that could have flipped the at bat?
https://x.com/APGroover/status/2107779349420142973?s=20
If you don’t want to click the tweet and it doesn’t preview for you, these are the stats:
“Ronald Acuña Jr. has unsuccessfully challenged 14 called strikes this season, including the postseason.
In those 14 plate appearances, he’s gone 0-for-14.
Seven of them ended in strikeouts.”
Acuna is an emotional player–it’s one of the attributes that helps make him special at times (quite often over his career). I’ve seen him when he takes a pitch that he doesn’t think is a strike react emotionally, tapping his helmet insistently–that’s the emotion showing. But it’s not driven by any logic other than he feels that it’s not a strike. And when ABS says different, I think, that’s when he loses the at bat and why he’s 0-14. These are the emotions flooding in. I don’t know exactly what’s going on in his head. My guess is that if we went back through his at bats in previous years, we would see much the same result after he received a strike call on a pitch he doesn’t believe is a strike. I think it takes him out of the at bat. He’s not alone. One of the most difficult things to do in baseball (and in other sports) is to not let the last play affect the next play (or in this case, pitch).
I also think the prior poster was correct. Acuna has not been good since he fouled the ball off his leg. If hitting is timing then Acuna has to be in perfect shape for his timing. The swing looks fast and hard but it’s just not making contact.
With regards to the challenges, I’m hoping Acuna learns that his command of the strike zone is not as good as he thought.
We have the whole offseason to talk about the offseason, but I felt like whoever won last night would win the series. So I’m not feeling very optimistic. Of course, watch us win the next 2. But to start the offseason early, I’m just going to say that it seems like AA already admitted that some of the extensions were a failure by being willing to deal Strider and should continue that path. I read somewhere that Acuna hasn’t had a postseason RBI, and I’d really look at dangling Acuna as a way of getting rid of Murphy and/or Riley’s contract.
Someone (I think Jason Foster on X) had a horrifying stat:
Since 2020, Acuna has as many MVP awards as postseason RBIs.
The thing about our two losses – 3-1 and 5-3 – is that the very margin tells you these were winnable games. We are not getting blown out of the water, and the Dodger offense is not insurmountable.
Obviously, tonight it’s all hands on deck. I feel pretty good with Mahle on the bump and Glasnow rarely goes deep into games, and when their pen comes into the game anything can happen. Obviously, it’s awfully hard for us to get anywhere if Drake, Matt and Ronald aren’t in the middle of it. But if any of them wakes up, I like our chances.
I’m guessing Kim doesn’t get a lot of playing time in however many games the team has left.
I’m cool with that but the other options are not so appealing from a hitting standpoint. If you put Dubon at SS then you have to put Hicklen or Thomas or Yaz in LF and they have not exactly been tearing the cover off the ball. Pitching and defense only matter if you hit HRs (preferably 3-run but the Dodgers have killed us with 2-run HRs).
I don’t give a shit that LHB’s had a OPS 80 points lower than RHB against Yamamoto, you just simply can’t play Kim right now. Dubon at SS and Yaz in LF would have been a significantly better lineup than Kim at SS and Dubon in LF. And even with Dubon’s incredible catch in LF, Kim gave it right away with his error. Yaz is not a great hitter, and this is purely anecdotal, but I just have confidence that he’ll get the bat on the ball in a crucial situation. Kim is lost as a hitter, defender, and player. Good riddance.
I wanted to feel sorry for Kim, I really did, but I don’t feel sorry for any player who hires Scott Boras as his agent. When you hire Boras as your agent, you are saying that all you care about is the highest AAV. You don’t care about what team you play for, you don’t care about stability, and you don’t care about developing a longterm relationship with your teammates and, more importantly, your coaching staff. It would have been infinitely smarter for Kim to have taken a 2-year deal at a lower AAV so he can get settled with a new franchise and regain some stability. Nope, he wanted his highest AAV. Well, brother, enjoy free agency this year again and probably yearly free agency going forward and not knowing where the hell you’re going to play and live until February, genius. Lol. Looks like it’s going really well for you! And before you say, “Well, Rob, he just made $20M this year, so I think he’s gonna find a way to sleep at night,” look at him. He looks miserable. He looks like he sold his soul to the devil because, guess what, he did!
I do feel sorry for Kim, and signing with Atlanta may have been partly because he was comfortable with what he saw here last year, as well as the higher AAV of course. I’m glad he had those three big hits around late August/early September so the season wasn’t totally lost for him, and I thought Sale’s positive comments about him in the press conference after one of those games seemed more than just being polite for the media. That said, he’s far below replacement level right now, and whichever seems the best matchup tonight of Hicklen/Thomas/Yaz probably is around replacement level. I’m not going to look it up, but I suspect that on a per-game basis, Kim is farther below replacement level than our best nonpitcher is above it, so replacing Kim with one of the bench OFs would help more than hypothetically replacing that player with a clone of our best nonpitcher.
OK, I accept all that you and Rob say but you have a choice of two from six – Kim, Murphy, Yaz, Hicklen, Tellez, and Thomas. Which two do you select? The lineup solves itself based upon the two you choose (except you cannot choose Tellez and Murphy at the same time as Tellez is a pure DH).
In that scenario I choose Murphy and Yaz. Baldwin is DH and Dubon is SS. Against Glasnow, maybe you choose Tellez and Yaz.
I think Tellez should play the field. He certainly covers a lot of ground.
Sure, Murphy & Yaz seem like the least bad options. I don’t see any reason to be confident in Tellez, Hicklen, or Thomas, though I assume WW & his staff have a better idea of which combination of two out of the six is the least unappetizing option.
I totally agree that Acuna should no longer be allowed to challenge. He’s just not good at it. However, Olsen could have challenged later even if it would have lost us the second challenge if wrong. He didn’t when it was clearly a ball. Not what changed the game but a missed opportunity.
As to Tellez, his four pitch walk should have been huge (and yes, pun intended.)
I know Yamamoto is unreal, and maybe he was happy to pitch around Tellez if need be with 1st base open & runners on 2nd + 3rd already, but after he walked Rowdy Tellez, of all people, on four straight pitches, for Drake to then go up and ground out at the first pitch he saw was so deflating. Even if it got that run in.
On the other hand, while I very much don’t know what I’m talking about & the following is just vibes-based more than anything, Yamamoto is the only one of their starters that truly scares the daylights out of me. For as good as they are, getting to Glasnow & Skubal each feels possible, at least. Hope springs infernal.
New Game Thread