Braves 3, Nationals 6
April 2, 2011 at 6:00 pm by Capitol Avenue Club under Atlanta Braves
After Derek Lowe and four relievers combined to pitch a shutout yesterday and the Braves have their young stud in Tommy Hanson going against a slop-throwing lefty, you feel pretty good. Then the game happened.
Tommy Hanson looked more like a 35 year old who was good 8 years ago trying to come back from his third shoulder surgery in five years than a budding ace today. His control wasn’t good, his velocity was way down–sitting 89-91 MPH with little life on his fastball–and his command was terrible. Even his breaking pitches lacked the bite we’re accustomed to seeing. I think the problem is mechanical. A hail delay forced him out of the game after 11 outs, but he really should have been pinch-hit for after 9.
In the second inning he issued a leadoff walk to Mike Morse and threw the ball away on a pickoff attempt. The Nationals moved him over on an Ankiel groundout and brought him home on a Danny Espinosa sacrifice fly. I’m pretty sure that counts as an “unearned” run, which is hilarious. He walked the pitcher later that inning, but got out of it having given up only one run. Atlanta got the run back in the top of the third behind a Nate McLouth HBP, wild pitch, and Chipper Jones single.
Then Hanson really fell apart in the bottom of the third. Jayson Werth doubled to lead off the inning and the next batter, Ryan Zimmerman, was hit by a pitch. A pair of deep flyouts got Werth home, then Hanson threw a 91-MPH, straight, belt-high fastball to Rick Ankiel who deposited it in the seats in right-center, giving the Nationals all the runs they would need.
Those weren’t all they would get, though. In the bottom of the 7th Ryan Zimmerman, facing Scott Linebrink who was making his Braves debut (joy!), hit a sinking liner to straight-away center field that McLouth tried to make a sliding play on. He didn’t, and by the time the ball was back in the infield Zimmerman was standing on third base. George Sherrill–also making his Braves debut (double joy!)–relieved Linebrink and got Adam LaRoche to ground out to second without a run scoring. Then Jim Riggleman pinch-hit for Mike Morse with Jerry Hairston Jr. and Fredi Gonzalez threw up four fingers. According to the walk Bonds chart, it was a ‘go with your gut’ situation. Of course, Jerry Hairston Jr. is no Barry Bonds, though he’d probably hit like him facing George Sherrill an infinite number of times. This brought up Rick Ankiel, whom Riggleman ordered to bunt in an attempt to squeeze the run home. It worked and the Natspos scored their fifth run of the afternoon.
Peter Moylan pitched the 8th. After a strikeout, ground-ball single, fielders choice, and walk, Moylan got Ryan Zimmerman to hit a grounder down the third-base line. Chipper tried to glove it but failed and instead punched towards the stands. Ian Desmond, who had reached on the FC, scored the final Nationals run of the afternoon on the play.
Dan Uggla and Alex Gonzalez each added solo shots to bring the Braves’ scoring total up to three. Didn’t matter. The latter went 3/3 with a walk, which I’d wager is fairly rare; it’s a shame it had to come in a losing effort and that it was obscured by Hanson’s poor outing. Every Braves starting position player got on base except Martin Prado, who is now 0-for-the-season with no walks. The Nationals had only three more baserunners than the Braves (10 hits, 5 walks to Atlanta’s 10 hits, 2 walks) and an identical number of extra-base hits (3), but did a better job of clumping their hits together. Atlanta sabotaged themselves with at least three errors (only one of which was actually scored as an error because official scorers are dummies).
It’s too soon to worry about Tommy Hanson, sometimes guys just don’t have it that day. It’s certainly something to monitor, though, because the Braves probably can’t win this division if they don’t have late-2009/early-2010 Tommy Hanson.
For the second game in a row Nate McLouth had one more plate appearance than Jason Heyward, and I just can’t let it go. It’s utterly asinine. Heyward didn’t have a great day, he went 0/3 with a walk, and it probably wouldn’t have mattered if he did. At some point it is going to matter, though, and this foolishness needs to end before then.
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A couple thoughts:
- While Prado is Ofer the season he seems to be hitting the ball well.
- Chipper looks good at the plate.
- Official scorers in baseball are a joke. I wonder what the process is by which one becomes an official scorer.
- That Conrad AB in the 6th hurt.
Some more thoughts:
-The Nationals (particularly Espinosa early and Burnett in the 9th) played pretty good defense, robbing the Braves of a few hits.
-Chipper looked bad at 3rd. I’m not sure if he’s just slow, but he seemed pretty tentative moving laterally.
-AGon hasn’t gotten on base 4 times w/o committing an out since 7/7/2006. Hopefully he can replicate his offensive production from 2010.
Another at bat for Heyward flushed down the drain. Sigh.
What’s the timetable on McLouth’s “audition” again?
instead of the magic number count i am seeing on the left of my screen, in April. How about a, how many PAs Heyward is losing as a result of attempting to bolster Mclousy’s confidence?
thanks for your match thoughts…
it would be nice if the word ‘retarded’ did not appear here again on official postings from the site owners…it is lazy, cheap and painful to many.
Prado has had some good at bats, but with a little more production from 1 and 2 and we would have already scored 10 to 12 runs in 2 games..
I agree. I’ve tried but I can’t let this batting order thing go either!
McLouth doesn’t look good anywhere in the order, and the strikeouts are back. I know the sample size is incredibly minimal, but I’m concerned.
Defense will drive me nuts this season.
At least there is hope that Fredi’s mind can easily be changed. From David O’Brien’s AJC Braves blog:
“Talking to Roger [McDowell] on the way to the game [Thursday], he said, ‘Let’s just go with Kimbrel,’” Gonzalez said of the Opening Day move. “We decided, let’s give the kid a chance. For me, they both have good stuff and can get guys out from both sides.”
Blazon,
agreed. Perhaps you saw Tim Shriver on Bill Maher last night with with his rebuke of using that word in every day speech.
So many things wrong with not allowing a word. It’s okay in the movies, but not okay anywhere else.
An endless cycle of words being okay for many years and then all of a sudden some people have a problem with it when all it is is a word.
My aunt has down syndrome and I have worked at a school for children with autism. It’s a word and it was obviously not being used with any intention of insulting anyone else. Relax.
Braves record 1-1. McLouth v. Heyward AB competition 2-0. It seems asinine to monitor this competition now because so far we have lost 2 at bats for Heyward when the game was, essentially, decided. While the Braves may be a better team with Heyward at 2, it hasn’t been as concerning as the lack of hits with runners on base throughout the lineup. I am all for manager nitpicking, but I personally would rather hear a rant about Tommy Hanson’s consistent inability to throw his fastball for a strike, especially early in the count. That rant has 3 years worth of numbers to cite.
I’m of the opinion that the first delay had something to do with his lack of command today. Impossible to prove, but nothing he did all spring would give you any opinion of his fastball being that wild. His sliders and curves were fine, but the command just was never there with the heater.
He’ll be fine. It also isn’t that the game would have been decided at that point, it’s more that there would have been an opportunity for Heyward to be on in front of Uggla if the order were at least somewhat appropriate. Again, impossible to prove, but you want your high OBP guys in front of your home run hitters and Uggla is the most prolific home run hitter on the team. Heyward needs to be in front of him in some form.
I don’t get the sensitivity over using the word “retard”.
Mental retardation is a disease. So are alcoholism, drug addiction, schizophrenia, and diabetes. I’ve got friends who are addicted to drugs, I’ve got friends who are schizophrenic (well, just one), I’ve got friends who are alcoholics. These are all serious diseases, just as mental retardation is. You don’t hear me–or anyone–whining when someone says “official scorers are drug addicts” or “official scorers are drunks” or “official scorers are schizos”. Hell, you don’t even hear me whining when people drink and use drugs around me! Why is it OK to use any disease as an insult except retardation? I don’t get it. I’m really not trying to offend anyone, help me understand why it’s not OK to say “retard” when it is OK to say any other disease.
This conversation has evolved to a debate that has nothing to do with this post. Can’t we all get along?
Maybe the cold strange weather in DC effected Hanson…once it warms up a little i think he will be fine
+1 for 5/ Kieth’s idea.
It scares me to think about how big that number is going to get…
i think the cold absolutely affected hanson today. i think the second game is too early in the year to be worrying about things like the batting order or our pitcher’s effectiveness. let’s worry 15 or 20 games in the season.
@CAC/15
Big fan of your work and the site, but you’re taking a very simplistic view here. All diseases are not created equal.
I’m in no way sensitive to the word “retard”. However, I do think it is a little bit different than “drug addict”, “drunk”, or “schizo”.
Mental retardation and autism are birth defects and bear no culpability whatsoever to the person affected. All the other terms (save, in most cases, schizophrenia) are caused in some part by the affected’s choices and generally are not stigmatized to the same degree as mental retardation or autism.
Calling something “retarded” that simply doesn’t work or you don’t agree with implies there can be something done about it to fix it. In contrast, there is nothing blameworthy about the people with the actual mental illness. These people are true victims and they should be treated as such rather than lumping them w/ things that don’t work properly, or can be fixed.
I don’t know if I made a convincing distinction, but people afflicted with mental retardation and autism have a hard enough time without being lumped w/ other problematic things in society. For whatever reason, some people are offended by the term and because of that I think people should make a concerted effort to stop using it.
Go Braves.
@15: I think there’s more of a history of treating people with mental retardation as subhuman than there is with people who have substance abuse or other types of mental disorders, and the use of the term as a general epithet may reinforce that bad pattern of thought. Too, although you can obviously plug in various things that people might use as derogatory terms, in practice the term “retarded” is much more commonly used as an epithet than is the term “schizo” or the label of drug addict.
Don’t get me wrong; I use “retarded” as an insult too, at times. But I do think that people in this thread are right in that many people (myself included) could afford to be more sensitive to their use of the term, and to cut back on it.
Hunter/20,
You haven’t presented a case, here, you’ve just thrown out a couple of aloof assertions. You need to follow up with a) what makes them unequal and b) why that inequality makes it not OK to use one of them in the manner I have but completely OK to use any of the other ones just the same.
Let’s get even more basic with this. I don’t think there’s a more tragic disease than cancer. Professional sportswriters with reputable companies are allowed to call a player a “clubhouse cancer”. You don’t hear cancer survivors or their relatives or the relatives of the deceased on account of cancer whining about it. Why is it OK to say cancer but not retard? Why? How is it hurtful to say retard but not hurtful to say cancer? It just doesn’t make any sense to me.
And I’m not being over simplistic. Alcoholism, drug abuse, and schizophrenia are all serious mental illnesses that nobody seems to have a problem using as a casual insult. If you’re going to take the moral high ground, you can’t just single out retardation without a reason for doing so. If you do you have no intellectual ground to stand on and I’m not going to take the position seriously. I’m listening, waiting, so far we’ve got nothing.
tim in mpls,
Alcoholics and drug addicts are people who suffer from a disease. To say they’re culpable or responsible for their disease couldn’t be further from the truth.
However, this:
Calling something “retarded” that simply doesn’t work or you don’t agree with implies there can be something done about it to fix it. In contrast, there is nothing blameworthy about the people with the actual mental illness. These people are true victims and they should be treated as such rather than lumping them w/ things that don’t work properly, or can be fixed.
I’ll buy.
No more posts from me containing the r-word and I’ve changed the incarnation of it in this one to “dummies”.
Just think about all the times you hear in conversation or on twitter, for instance, about how Miguel Cabrera’s a drunk or how Josh Hamilton’s a junkie. Then think about what Peter said. Which one of those statements is really offensive? Let’s get real people.
CAC @ 24: Good for you. It’s a lazy word for you to use anyway – you’re a much better writer than that.
By the way, the MLB.TV blackout rule sucks. I’m closer to DC than ATL here in Raleigh. But still – no Bravos for me on Roku this year.
CAC, are there any competent analyses of Tommy Hanson’s mechanics? I’m no expert by any means, but they don’t look good to me. He seems to have the “tall and fall” approach, and he doesn’t seem to drive off of the rubber toward the plate. Instead, it appears that his arm leads his body. If so, that can’t be good.
I’m not sure how to link on here, but type “Driveline Mechanics Tommy Hanson” into Google and you’ll get a pretty good analysis.
re: McClouth vs. Heyward and the stupidity therein…Braves fans best be hoping Fredi isn’t as rock-headed stubborn about guys he latches onto with his “gut” as Bobby was or the “Heyward ABs stolen by McLouth” count is gonna keep running up for a long, long time. I’m betting that the more people complain about McLouth sucking (and he will, he’s McLouth), the more Fredi will dig his heels in and refuse to move him out of the #2 hole (much less out of the lineup). If he didn’t manage a *lot* like Bobby, Fredi would not have gotten hired to manage this team.
I don’t think the division is going to be won or lost over the next month or so. Let the guys settle in, find their groove/rhythm and assess the landscape when there’s a more signficant sample size.
Hanson’s inconsistencies are a bit troubling though and McLouth doesn’t look confident but again, early returns that could and hopefully do change for the better before we see the month of May.
@27
As Hanson was coming up almost every scout said he had a weird delivery. Some argued it was bad and could cause future injury, mostly because he seems to move so slow and then all of a sudden burst, which could cause some tension in the shoulder.
He isn’t out of the woods or anything with those remarks. We really don’t know how much he’s putting on his shoulder, but the decreasing velocity since the middle of last year is more of a yellow light than a red flag, signalling a tiny bit of caution.
There is nothing at all with Tommy Hanson because even a totally start totally winning oriented organization like the Braves is not perfect, Tommy Hanson will start to be his usual self again, as for the Braves their October heartbreak continued in 2010 for losing to the Giants. This Braves team has already gone 15 and half years without a World Series title and has already gone 9 and a half years without winning a postseason series, but hey, I have already seen 2 kinds of movies like these because those RedSox and the WhiteSox were also losing around October for at least 85 years and yet these 2 teams have won the World Series in 2004, 2005, and 2007.The Braves’ postseason heartbreak still continues, but I can guarantee anyone they will start winning and winning in October year after year after all that October heartbreak before and after 1995, since last winning the World Series.GO BRAVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!
davidinvirginia, it was Bobby Cox who put Heyward in the second spot in the batting order. Sometimes Bobby’s loyalty and rigidity was frustrating. But I don’t think he was an awful in-game strategist.
RW, even if McLouth bounces back, it’s unlikely he’ll be better than Jason Heyward and therefore less worthy to his second.
I think most people who read this blog understand that it’s too early to get a sense of what kind of season McLouth will end up having but that’s not the point. The point is, even if he has one of his better seasons, it’s still unlikely that he’ll approach Jason Heyward as a hitter.
++++++1
Why is Proctor resigned again? Peter you got any info. on this?
wisbrave: it was an april fool’s joke.
No seriously, the Braves re-signed Proctor and he’s been assigned to Gwinnet.
http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2011/04/braves-re-sign-scott-proctor.html
It’s karma
I never once questioned Bobby in 20 years because he was always right…Could I really be questioning Freddie in his first 20 hours? Looks like i might be leaning that way after the Mclouth JHey call.
Shaun, I know Cox had Heyward hitting 2nd. I’m not sure what that has to do with my point…that is, looks like Fredi can be just as hard-headed and “gut” oriented with his managing as Cox was. Cox just happened to get that one right. Fredi obviously has this one wrong (McClouth has never been worthy – at his best – of hitting ahead of Heyward…or most anyone else on this team for that matter)…my point is that he’ll be just as stubborn as Cox about changing his mind. I’d love to be proven wrong so we can get Heyward hitting higher, but I’m not holding my breath waiting.