Angels 4, Braves 1
May 22, 2011 at 6:17 pm by Capitol Avenue Club under Atlanta Braves
Contending teams shouldn’t be letting Tyler Chatwood go 7-5-1-2-6.
Also, Nate McLouth injured himself during his first plate appearance and had to leave the game, resulting in a Prado-Mather-Hinske OF alignment with Diory Hernandez at 3B (it was Chipper’s day off).
There’s no point in discussing the pitching staff if the team is never going to score runs. It’s a shame this good of a staff is being totally wasted.
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Even through all this, the Braves are only 3.5 games back in the division, and 2 back in the wildcard. So even despite Fredi’s best efforts, this team is still in contention. How much longer it stays there remains to be seen…
The thing that is most frustrating to me is that we don’t need the offense to go on some monster tear, hit .330/.400/.400 as a team or something ridiculous in order to reach the level we should be achieving at. If everyone tomorrow starting hitting at a clip anywhere near their career averages (or even just slightly less than expected rather than much less) we could win the division easily. At the start of the season, I would not have been surprised if we had the best record in baseball. Right now I just hope with can get it together while we are still within striking distance.
On a second note, I was happy to see Jason go on the DL, not so happy about McClouth. There are some words I thought I would never type.
No one is going to get fired in MAY.
No one is going to get fired when we are above .500 in MAY.
No one is going to get fired 3.5 games out of 1st in the East in MAY.
No one is going to get fired in MAY when we have won 26 games while only 4 other teams have won more than 26 (Cleveland, Philadelphia, St. Louis, San Francisco).
No one is going to get fired in MAY.
And if we were owners we wouldn’t fire anyone in MAY while the team is still in contention. IF we did no one would want to manage for us.
It’s not good business OR baseball.
There are 13 teams currently below .500 and I haven’t seen anything on ESPN of 13 managers getting fired this month.
Believe me, I know what firing a coach during the season does. I’m a Clemson fan too.
There are a lot of things going wrong with our offense and a lot of things that can be blamed on Parrish and Gonzalez. However, the fact that our most talented hitter has been injured and ineffective for most of the season can explain a lot of the gap between this team’s offensive expectations and their performance.
Ahhh… remember the days when a free agent/trade position player would come to Atlanta and perform BETTER than they did in the seasons prior?
Fredi is loyal to his coaches, so don’t expect a hitting coach change. The offense was always in danger of being an issue with Chipper’s age/return from injury; Freeman being a rookie; McLouth’s issues.
Here’s a crazy idea: Carlos Beltran for RF and let Heyward play center when he gets back.
Larry Parrish’s career high in walks: 52 (9.9% walk rate). His career average walk rate was 7.1%. I suppose we should not be surprised the Braves are hacking this year. Somebody please call Edgar Martinez and see if he’d be willing to move to the ATL.
Just a guess, but here’s my guess at the lineup for this week (all facing RH starters) and assuming that McLouth is DL bound or out for several games at minimum.
1-Prado
2-Mather
3-Chipper
4-McCann
5-Hinske
6-Uggla
7-Freeman
8-Gonzalez
I could easily see a switch between Uggla and Gonzalez.
@ #53…sorry to say, but I think you’re right. Fredi – and probably not Parrish either – is going anywhere anytime soon as long as the Braves are contending, even distantly. Firing either this early in the season would make Wren and the rest of the Braves front office look like idiots for hiring this crew in the first place. Ain’t gonna happen. It would be nice if Wren were the sort to at least call Fredi in for a “what the hell?” chat, but I doubt even that will be done anytime soon.
re: Parrish’s career batting stats…that worried me the moment I heard he had gotten the job, thinking there goes plate discipline right out the window. Of course, TP didn’t walk much as a player either, but he at least seemed somewhat willing to let guys take their own approach to hitting, and if they were the patient type that was okay with him. At least the results make it look as though he was. Given what we know about Fredi’s personality, and Parrish’s career (and results so far), those two look to be the types who chew out a player every time he takes a pitch, whether it’s one he can hit or not. The crappy results so far this season sure make it look like that’s the case.
Erick,
They’re first in the league in defensive efficiency.
considering how prado has been getting at least solid contact recently, and how hinske has been doing well in the mid-to-lower half of the order, coud fredi consider a tony larussa style shift of contact towards the rear end of the order and put mccann in the 8 hole? i know it’s far fetched but if we could just have some men on base by the time prado come up, we could actually escape the black hole that is the middle of the order right now…
ps: freeman’s oppo single the other night was the prettiest inside out swing i have seen in a while…
Here’s basically the Parrish problem: he’s a fucking moron with no clue whose telling the batters to swing at more pitches because you just can’t have them taking a called third strike, that would be the end of the world. So they’re swinging at bullshit, resulting in weaker contact. Ground balls are up, pop-ups are up, line drives are down. Not surprisingly their team BABIP is down about 20 points and their team ISO has actually decreased despite the fact that they’re fielding a more powerful team. Oh yeah, and walks are down and strikeouts are up. So the less talented 2010 team that was 1 percent better offensively than the average major-league team has turned into a team that’s 11 percent worse offensively than the average major-league team. Yet the team has made no adjustments to their approach, Parrish thinks he’s doing god’s work, here.
He just doesn’t get it.
61/noah,
Why would you do that? I am not a LaRussa fan by any means, but I’m not familiar with TLR ever doing something as luny as that. Why wouldn’t you just put McCann above Prado at the top of the lineup?
Not that I would do that, but in the scenario Noah was describing, it would be exponentially more effective if it was designed that McCann and Prado were near each other at the top of the order — not McCann (8) Pitcher (9) Prado (1).
yeah, what i was referring to was the notion of actually having people on base when prado comes up, in order to minimize the ability of opposing pitchers to just run through the middle of the order with no problems as has been occuring to frequently lately…
he’s been hitting and getting on base, but then no one can get him in, so why not put him lower where there could potentially be some rbis for him to get?
Right. I understand your thinking, but your logic is weak. To truly maximize your hypothetical lineup switch, you would want McCann to bat higher in the order so that he would bat more.
McCann hitting lead off with Prado hitting 2nd would be the better “bizarre” lineup move that you are looking for.
For anyone that may object to a catcher hitting lead-off simply because he’s slow, that person should realize that the Braves’ currently fielded lineup is already the worst base running team in the majors. I’m unsure how much worse that would make the team, but it’s not like they’re going to get any better.
I think McLouth getting injured and buckling over in pain after looking at a pitch pretty much sums of the season so far for the Braves.
I’m afraid Parrish will not be canned in May, and perhaps not in October, but displacing TP was a disaster. I was amazed the Braves under Pendleton put up respectable OBPs, given his history as a player. But they did.
The second time was not the charm. Giving Parrish the job with no previous experience as a professional hitting coach was sheer folly. But yes, the organization values stability over all, so we’re stuck with this guy for awhile.
What would truly be scary would be if his hitting philosophy, such as it is, were transmitted throughout the system. Hello, Royals! Might as well have Frenchy as your hitting coach.
(Our greatest hope might be that Parrish would be “reassigned” within the organization and an instructor at a lower level with a clue — Dismulke? — would take over at the major league level.)
Batting McCann 8th would do more harm than good. I understand that offense is interactive, but you want the players interacting at the top of the order, not the back, because the top of the order comes to the plate more frequently.
If you’re going to have a weak spot in your batting order, put it at the end thereof.
@53: I believe that if you know that you’ve hired a bad employee, and you allow them to do horrible work just because you don’t want to have people look at you wrongly, you’re doing far worse business than you are if you fire them after realizing their flaws are not good for your business.
If you don’t understand it that way, I’ll explain it another way.
I am hired to manage a group of people to teach them how to do their job. I not only teach them how to do the job incorrectly, but I continue to express that this is the way they should do things. My quarterly review comes back showing that my employees have been below par with management’s philosophy. Should I be fired or reprimanded?
The only question I would have from there is where is Frank Wren’s philosophy and has he already been working on pushing Parrish/Gonzalez in a different direction? I have already written here and other places that I’m willing to wait another month to see if that happens, but after this amount of time, trends are beginning to show in the stats.
According to MLBTR, the Braves signed Julio Lugo to a minor league deal. Is he a better utility infield option than Diory or Hicks?
Alright everyone calm down..first off I’m extremely let down in the team in particular the hitting..but we had a nice streak not too long ago..granted it was all due to great pitching..but there wasn’t too much crying then..the hitting is terrible and must get better..but being a few games back in may isn’t anything to freak over..especially considering we’ve gotten the best of the phillies so far..lets see how this team shakes out..one thing…venters needs to close..period
The Dan uggla contract has to be one of the worst in franchise history.
Despite the fact the last 5 days being a total bloody disaster, we are still above 500, we are still in the picture to go post season and our starting pitching has in the main been great. That said, we have a shitload of question marks and problems to address and my main worry is do we have the management to do this??? The season is at a crossroads- we have stuttered along to this point and we still cannot say which direction we are heading, I just pray FG finds his brain, Big Dan gets the shit out of his eyes and Jason gets healthy and hot, not to mention someone cuts Nate’s very very feminine hair- I bet Ross and Big Damage rip the shit out of him! Go Braves!
@71 Precisely. I was under the impression that FW’s priority was turning over the roster over time to get more athletic players with baseball tools (meaning solid pitch recognition). The approaches of Gonzalez and Parrish are precisely the opposite. Who’s in charge hee? If FG and LP represent Wren’s philosophy, then the Braves will be lucky to be mediocre.
“No one is going to get fired in MAY.
No one is going to get fired when we are above .500 in MAY.
No one is going to get fired 3.5 games out of 1st in the East in MAY.
No one is going to get fired in MAY when we have won 26 games while only 4 other teams have won more than 26 (Cleveland, Philadelphia, St. Louis, San Francisco).
No one is going to get fired in MAY.”
Good points: despite the complete lack of hitting, Kimbrel’s inconsistency, and several games that we have gift-wrapped for the opposition, we somehow have managed to win the 5th most games in baseball.
The problem is that we are in the same division as one of those four teams, and the Florida Marlins look like they’re going to be right there in the wild card race with us all season, too.
The Phillies have had a bad week to ten days – they were there for the taking this week – we should be tied for first place with them right now. I don’t know how many opportunities we can squander to tie them or get ahead of them – last year we got ahead of them for a long time, but they passed us in the end. If we’re still 2 – 5 games behind them when they go into their finishing kick, we’re not going to catch them, and we’ll be lucky to beat the Marlins or any number of other teams (Cincinnati, St. Louis, San Fran) for the wild card.
@67-jon
maybe a switcharoo in thinking is exactly what this team needs. look at some weaker hitting teams that still get it done on the bases… i know bringing in reyes or another impact runner is highly unlikely, but how hard would it be to inject some speed like young or others just to give us some extra opportunities? who is in charge of coaching/ strategizing the baserunning?
everytime I watch Uggla, it seems he is incapable of hitting the ball to right field. It doesn’t even look like hes trying to. Every time he gets a ball on the outside corner of the plate, he rolls right over top of it and grounds out to shortstop or 3rd base. I have not watched that many games this year but based on what I have seen, is it possible that the reason Uggla is struggling is due to being incapable to hitting the ball to right field or did I just happen to catch the games where he was trying to pull an outside pitch?
@ 71:
“I believe that if you know that you’ve hired a bad employee, and you allow them to do horrible work just because you don’t want to have people look at you wrongly, you’re doing far worse business than you are if you fire them after realizing their flaws are not good for your business.”
1: Who believes that they have hired a bad employee? Wren? You blindly assume that Wren feels this way because you are emotional about the teams under performance.
2: The “horrible” work that you are speaking of as a emotional fan has gotten us the 4th best wins in baseball. (Did you not read my post?)
3: I never said anything about pride or public opinion being the reason to keep an employee. I stated that other candidates for the position will look negatively toward a manager being fired in the month of May while still being above .500 and having 26 wins.
4: Again there were 13 teams below .500 as of my post. No of which are firing their managers at the “quarterly review.”
5: I think the main idea that you are not understanding is that the Braves have an employee that is under contract. With contractual obligations for keeping him and letting him go.
It’s not like Freddi is an hourly employee who is going to pick up state unemployment once his is fired. The Braves would be stuck with a hefty buyout and not to mention other managers looking down at the fact that a manager was fired with less than 2 months of work.
I am proud that you are a Braves fan but we aren’t dealing with firing a McDonald’s cashier.
I’d be more impressed to argue with you if you had read my entire post. But I’ll argue anyway in your points
1) There is no blind assumption. I questioned at the end of my post “where is Wren’s philosophy” and then went on to say that I’d be willing to wait another month to see if things have changed.
2) I’d say that if there are stats pointing out the fact that the Braves are being much more aggressive at balls out of the zone, and looking at the results, there is something wrong. Just because the pitching has been pitching spectacular, and above career marks in many cases, to keep the Braves in the ball game, you believe that it’s a good skill that the Braves are in the position they’re in. I’m saying they should be even better.
3) I hadn’t pointed towards your post in making my opinion in regards to this. If someone does a bad job, and they’re fired or reprimanded for doing a bad job, and I would not mind others looking at the odd timing because I got a bad employee off my books.
4) If you equate 14 other teams, with varying skill levels, below .500 with the Braves skill level, then I believe you’re not making a very good point. These are different circumstances that, if we began to argue about, are not at all like the situation the Braves are in. If you can point out a team or two with whom the Braves are on the same level, then tell me what their records are, I might be willing to listen to that point.
5) With contractual obligations, one has to understand at what point it all becomes a sunk cost. If the Braves ever consider their hitting coach to be a sunk cost, which I have never stated SHOULD be fired, then they should consider whether or not he fits in the Braves’ mold.
These last two points show that you hadn’t understood what I argued, and maybe you will if you read what I’ve posted above.
Sunk cost. Ha. I’m sure that Wren is saying that right now.
Please.
You know what he is saying.
It’s time to admit it.
“NO ONE IS GOING TO GET FIRED IN MAY.”
Give me one week and you know what I’m going to say.
“NO ONE IS GOING TO GET FIRED IN JUNE.”
Every good fan believes their team is under performing.
You are just being a good fan.
However, you MUST think of the situation objectively and as if you had actually spent the money to hire someone. You’ll see where I’m coming from.
I tend to disagree with the sunk cost idea.
It’s not like Wren bought a vacation package, decided not to go, and then the price was non-refundable. That would be a sunk cost.
With a contractual obligation the Braves are in a different position. If they get rid of Fredi this early, and the rest of the management team goes with him, then the cost will be substantially long term. Not to mention very financially hurtful to the teams budget.
If they buyout all the manager’s contracts then what?
No money for another “good manager.”
No money for a legit outfielder.
No money to keep the players that we want.
The Braves have made their bed. No getting around it.
As long as we are above .500, in contention, and we have injuries, Fredi has many reasons/excuses in his favor.
You’re obviously not understanding what I’m saying, and it seems that you are attempting to break down your argument when I’ve already broken your argument completely.
It’s not worthwhile for me to argue with the kind of logic that you’re putting up when you’ve already shown on multiple occasions that you aren’t willing to read all of what I’ve said.