Marlins 8, Braves 7
ESPN.com - MLB - Box Score - Braves at Marlins
Well, that could have gone better. Kyle Davies was super wild, walking six and throwing more balls than strikes. He allowed two in the first, then got through the next three innings, but allowed three in the fifth without getting an out. Villarreal came in to try to hold it, but this time the Vulture Magic wasn't there this time, and he allowed three runs of his own to make it 8-2.
It's a pity, because the Braves rallied. Francoeur hit a solo homer to make it 8-3, and the Braves got the tying run to the plate in the seventh, getting two runs in to make it 8-5. With two out in the ninth, Chipper homered and Andruw and Francoeur had back-to-back doubles to cut it to one. Bobby came with McCann -- sitting out to rest his bruised finger -- to pinch-hit, but he struck out swinging 3-2.
Moylan pitched a scoreless seventh, and Gonzalez pitched the eighth in his return to action, walking one but otherwise effective. Francoeur had four hits and four RBI. Chipper missed the cycle by the double. But the Braves yet again got nothing from the first base and left field spots, held this time by Wilson and Diaz, who were collective 0-8. And for some reason Johnson sat for Woodward, who was 1-5.
posted by Mac @ 4/23/2007 09:00:00 PM
43 Comments
43 Comments:
We need a Starting Pitcher.
Redman will not do.
Davies is inconsistent. We have 3 quality pitchers, including the young James.
We NEED a starter. A good one. Salty must be traded. We need good value.
Davies will be fine. He was just wild tonight. Good offense, good defense, timely hitting, bad starting pitching. We'll get 'em tomorrow.
I'm anti-Redman, of course, but Davies is okay for a fourth or fifth starter. Last year (offense is down some) the average NL fourth starter had a 5.11 ERA. The average fifth starter had a 6.26. Fewer than half the teams in baseball got an ERA better than 5 from their fourth starter, and only three from their fifth.
How Good Is Your #4 Starter? -- The Hardball Times
If you make the playoffs, the fourth and fifth starter spots are pretty marginal. You can argue that part of the Braves' World Series problems in the early to mid nineties was that they were spending resources on those spots rather than strengthening the offense. The problems right now are first base and left field.
FREE BRANDON JONES!
did i mention we need to get rid of diaz?
Coming to tonight's game I didn't like the matchup, regardless of D-Train's wife's status. I wonder if our pattern is gonna be 3 games on (we have a chance), two games off (we kinda don't) all year. I mean, I'll take it, but that's what it seems like.
And I agree that Redman means nothing in post-season. If we have 3 guys we can count on, one iffy guy and one lousy inning-eater, we can win 90 games.
Sorry to sound like a blues jam here, but I'm very bummed out about the death of another one of my all-time favorite writers, David Halberstam. A hero and an inspiration.
"The Best & The Brightest" is an amazing, deep & eye-opening truth-telling. But for those who would prefer to avoid such weighty subjects, his baseball books are terrific, too. I recommend "Summer of '49."
Vonnegut & Halberstam in the same week. Jeez, I need a beer. That just sucks.
We need a 3rd-4th Starter......
Chuck James is not an experienced veteran he is really young.
Plus he can get shelled occassionaly.
Davies is really inconsistent.
We have 2 starters 40 year old Smoltz(Lets pretend he is 100% teflon and won't get worn down, and his age won't effect him), and Hudson who are top notch.
We need a 3rd-4th starter
Davies was our 5th starter, James our 4th, Hmapton our 3rd.....
The reason the 90's Braves struggled wasn't a lack of offense.
Galarraga, Mcgriff, AJ, CJ, Lofton, Grissom, Lopez...etc.
It instead was a lack of bullpen closing, and effective starting pitching in clutch games.
Plus we were playing really good Yankees teams.
Sure the offense sagged here and there.
But super Starting pitching didn't hurt the White Sox in 2005, Red Sox in 2004, Marlins in 2003, Diamondback in 2001, and Yankees in 2000.
We need 3 reliable starters.
I'm really liking Jeffrey....
Well, I did even when he was swinging at everything, but I'm really happy the way he's been going these days.
I'm anti-Redman, of course, but Davies is okay for a fourth or fifth starter.
I agree, but he definitely needs to work on his control issue, and how much faith do you have in Roger McDowell helping him with that?
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
A. Obviously all of those players weren't on the team at the same time. The Braves usually had two or three weak hitters in the lineup -- Lemke, obviously, catcher before Javy, Blauser in his bad years (or even Belliard, who had 75 postseason AB. Sid Bream was basically Scott Thorman with defense. In a must-win, do-or-die Game 6 in 1992, Bream, who hit .261 .340 .414 on the season, hit fifth.
B. Those teams you mentioned mostly put their pitching in frontline players -- top starters and/or ace relievers. The D-Backs put their money on two guys, they had a pretty good third guy, and let the rest of the rotation go hang. The top three starters on the regular season after Johnson, Schilling, and Batista were Brian Anderson (5.20 ERA), Robert Ellis (5.77 ERA) and Albie Lopez (4.00 ERA, but Albie Lopez).
Holy cow. Time to move to game Chatter for a while.
No politics, okay?
4seam,
Although I don't think much of them, your entitled to your thoughts.
I know retired officers from the Viet Nam era who have personally told me that Halberstam, essentially, was right. From all I've read & all I've personally experienced, I know that Halberstam was seeking truth. And that's what a journalist is supposed to do.
And save that Cold War talk for the tourists, OK? It's been over for a while.
I'll wait til Mac puts up another politics-only page & perhaps we'll continue these thoughts there. But I'm done & you're cordially invited to cease.
I've deleted the comment. The rules still apply despite the new site. I will set up a political thread when I get the new new site up. 4Seam, your comment is not permanently deleted and can go there. I'm sorry, but you know the rules.
Mac,
Sorry 'bout starting that fuss.
Wow, I think that's the first time I've seen ububba get almost heated. "Cordially invited to cease." WHOA!
Good to see the rally tonight, even though it was on XM heading back from a play my girlfriend directed and acted a small role in.
In fact, I'll set up a politics thread on Thomason Tracts and you can post there.
I think Mac just pulled the internet equivalent to "taking it outside."
By the way, did I mention I liked XM? :)
Thanks for taking the politics off Mac. I contributed to the site - it is always an interesting read and I appreciate your hard work Mac.
I'm probably more conservative politically and socially than many here, but what unites us is Braves baseball. It's great to have a place to go where we can talk baseball and the political stuff (on both sides) is held in check!
Diaz hit the ball pretty hard and I think the hits will fall with him - on the other hand, Wilson hasn't shown much of anything. I still am interested to see if the Cormier in Spring Training was an aberration.
I can't get this new site at the office. I am not too happy.
I want to see what Cormier can do when his name jumps into the fray. Davies, Redman, and Cormier fighting for the 4th and 5th spots are pretty good considering what other teams are putting out there in those spots. We had our 4th/5th starter against the Marlins' #1 starter tonight, and we lost by one run. This team is talented, and if we're fortunate enough to get bearable pitching from our 4th and 5th starters, we will win in the regular season and in the postseason.
I love our clutch hitting too. We got more than half of our runs in the last 3 innings. Francouer is heating up too.
They probably have blocked all blogspot sites -- which sucks. You can try an RSS reader such as Google Reader.
The new site will hopefully be ready in the next few days, but I can't make any guarantees.
Say Rob, how's that XM radio working out for you?
//ducks
Heh, well I meant to say I like XM. I hope the tense typo didn't throw anyone off. It's difficult to not be compelled to try to find some spontaneity in listening to music because I have a bad habit of being mentally restricted to about 250-300 of the 2,000 songs on my iPod. It's almost like I'm mentally weak and I have to let XM arbitrarily dictate what I listen to because I'm incapable of sifting through a particular genre on my iPod without settling on a mental playlist because of this restricting view of my iPod library. How great is it that I live in a country technologically and economicly equipped to handle
my peculiarities about music.
Sorry, it's late and I just can't get myself to think like William Butler Yeats or Oscar Wilde to finish my British Literature classwork. Those guys were crack-pipes. But then again, and not to make this political in light of the fiasco earlier, just imagine if we lived in a country and an era where you went to jail for multiple years for being a practicing homosexual like Wilde. I'm not a supporter of homosexuality because of obvious reasons for those who know me, but dang, the Irish government was a little over-the-top there...
I'm happy to see that the guys didn't give up after being down 8-2. The teams of the last couple of years probably would have started thinking about the next day's game with a score like that.
So who do you think we'd have to give up to get Baldelli? Salty, Escobar, and a pitcher (Harrison or Davies?). I think it would definitely be worth it.
Salty, Escobar and a pitcher worth it for that overrated heap?
Not to jump on you specifically, but this has been going on for several years now with Braves fans in general, and for the life of me, I still can't understand why everyone's ready to dump the entire Richmond Braves squad in Tampa Bay's lap so we can get Rocco Baldelli. I mean, he's pretty good, I guess, but there are better outfielders on the Devil Rays, even (Carl Crawford, anyone?).
I'm not even fundamentally against trading our two best prospects, necessarily. But to trade them both and a decent pitcher for a middle-of-the-road guy is complete madness. There's a reason we told Chuck LaMar to go screw himself, and I believe that was probably it.
I would rather go through the entire season with the exact same situation we have now than make that trade.
There's a thread on Minor League Ball about the Devil Rays' future. Numerous posters in that thread have mentioned a Salty for Baldelli trade straight up. The consensus there seems to believe that is a fair trade. Only one poster out of about 15 suggested the Braves throw in another player and the player was Joey Devine.
Quite frankly, I am not sure that I would want to make that trade one-for-one, even. I think it would definitely make us better over the next two years, but fear that we would regret it every year after 2009.
A pity that the Braves came up a bit short in the 9th--but at least the Richmond Braves beat Kolb and Kevin Gryboski....
http://www.minorleaguebaseball.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?gid=2007_04_23_ricaaa_indaaa_1&t=g_box&did=milb
I think it's probably worth talking about Jeffrey Braden's monster game. The kid had a legitimately great day. If we're gonna have a good season, we'll need him to be able to carry us for brief stretches, and he seems to be showing occasional signs that he's not as dumb as we thought.
He's been taking pitches and occasional walks, driving the ball to the opposite field, and even situational hitting--sacrifice flies and moving the runners along, as he did with his groundout in the first. I think the kid deserves some credit.
We have to go find an upgrade at first or in left. We have the money with insurence picking up Hampton. How long will JS and Bobby let this go on? I think we have to pcik up someone in the next three weeks, or we are in trouble.
Can Escobar play left? Could Rnty move to left if he can't? These would be major upgrades to what we have.
I really think that if Matt Diaz played every day, he'd be a more than adequate 7-hole hitter. Similarly, Thorman/Wilson is a more than adequate 8-hole platoon. Our 1-6 guys are gonna get us runs. What we really need is for Kyle Davies to find the strike zone. Quotes like this are worrisome:
"It felt like the first three games of spring training," Davies said. "If you told me, 'Throw three straight strikes,' I couldn't have done it."
Why not turn Salty into a first baseman? I've always been of the opinion that an MLB 1B should be someone who hits around 25 HRs and drives in at least 85. Salty would only be playing every fifth day anyway since he's behind McCann.
Diaz will do just fine in LF. Sure he's not going to belt 20 HRs but his ability to drive the ball to all parts of the field means he can produce if he gets a chance to play daily.
I agree that Redman needs to be replaced. The loss of Hampton hurt more anyone could imagine. In the games I've watched Redman pitch and while at times, he's looked ok for a couple of innings, most of the time, he's looked like he's lobbing it up there for the hitters to swing away.
Diaz is only hitting a little better than Langerhans
If it continues like this, I firmly believe we will trade to improve at least one of the positions. Now, I would be a little surprised if that happened before June. And surely somebody of the four is gonna start hitting. Hell, Diaz was earlier in the year. In any case, I'm not sure I agree that we would be in trouble if we didn't do anything. Or I guess it depends on what your definition of "in trouble" is. It's two spots, and the rest of our lineup has been playing great. I can't think of a game where I thought that the left field or first base spots in the batting order cost us the game really. For instance, we scored seven runs last night. Sure, Diaz left a lot of men on base, but I find it difficult to blame that loss on him and not Davies and Villarreal. Seven runs should be enough.
I love my XM too. I have an old Roady XT and I have two home kits, one for the house and one at work. I constantly shift mine around.
How anyone tolerates regular radio is beyond me.
Historically speaking, at one point do teams usually start making moves to shore up weak spots in their lineup/rotations? All-star break? First of June?
Its too early to start talking about trades for 2 reasons.
1. Season is only 17 games old.
2. No one will trade anything of value now anyway....see #1
3. I think that the platoon has to stop in LF. Give Diaz the majority of the PA's and he'll hit. Maybe not .327 but better than Langerhans.
Ok so I gave 3 reasons. LOL. We have pitching options.
Cormier if he ever gets healthy. Trying Soriano as a starter. But really Davies had a bad game. Lets really see if he can be an adequate 5th starter before we push the panic button.
Johnny--I couldn't agree more: despite some injuries we are half a game out of first--hardly time to panic....
Thorman and Diaz will hit--the former will be a much better hitter in the second half. Diaz should come around....
There's no reason to panic but there is reason to worry about Davies. History is full of "can't miss" guys that missed. Davies is still young, but not that young. He seems to be making little progress.
It's very difficult to make significant trades during the season anymore, in part because more teams are contenders. So, I think it might be wishful thinking to believe the Braves are going to make trades that will fill the holes. Even if they wanted to, the kind of trades they could make would most likely involve (1) giving up a lot of young talent, and (2) assuming large salaries. I doubt the Braves are going to do that. And, in any event, it makes no sense to talk about trades this early; last year, everyone had LaRoche traded by this time.
Diaz not much better than Langerhans right now? Just one week ago everyone was saying how Diaz needed the position full-time. I actually agree with that assessment. I think Diaz is getting really unlucky right now - kind of like Kelly Johnson at the beginning of the season. I watched the game last night, and Diaz hit every ball except one right on the nose - just right at people. Langerhans hasn't hit a ball hard all season long. Diaz needs to start every game, and if we have a marginal lead late, bring in Langerhans to hold down the fort defensively. You can't forget what Diaz did last year - he IS a .300 hitter (not too much power though), but that's ok in the 7th spot in the order.
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