Game 50: Cardinals 8, Braves 2
May 28, 2012 at 4:30 pm by David Lee under Atlanta Braves
Source: FanGraphs
Game MVP: Matt Holliday, .198
Least Valuable Cardinal: Carlos Beltran, -.146
Most Valuable Brave: Juan Francisco, .032
Least Valuable Brave: Tommy Hanson, -.327
Big plays:
3rd – (STL) Yadier Molina RBI single gave the Cardinals a 2-0 lead, .101
3rd – (STL) Daniel Descalso two-run homer for a 4-0 Cardinals lead, .152
Eight in a row.
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Painful to watch right now. This team’s psyche is so fragile.
Every team has injuries. Much easier to withstand when they are spaced out over the season rather than clumped all in one stretch,
Heyward is an enigma right now. Missed a cutoff man today. Shows no signs of being able to key a turnaround.
The schedule is brutal for the next month.
Without Chipper, McCann, and Freeman, our offense is going to take a hit. No way around that.
What frustrates me is when we don’t play the game right, as when Pastornicky tried to make the spectacular blind behind-the-back flip to Uggla last night for the out at second instead of getting the sure out at first, and ended up getting no outs, and opening the floodgates for a bad inning for Beachy. I was at the game against Cincinnati two weeks ago where Pastornicky flipped the ball to second base with no one covering instead of taking a sure out at first, and then, after the game, said “I’ve got to learn to take the sure out at first there.” So last night what does he do? Bypass the sure out at first in favor of the spectacular play that doesn’t work. It’s things like that, and the healthy hitters abandoning patience at the plate and swinging at everything, and Hudson walking the pitcher with two outs against the Nats the other night to set up a huge inning, that are killing the Braves right now. That, and the general air that no one cares that they are getting whipped every night. I’d like to see some emotion out of someone, anyone on the team.
i would like to see Simmons brought up now. He has proved he can hit AA hitting and would be a huge boodt to the dfense and to the pitchers. Why wait?
Pastornicky has shown flashes on offense, but not enough to offset his terrible defense, in my opinion. Jack Wilson is completely useless at the plate. At this point, I wouldn’t mind seeing Simmons brought up, and either Pastornicky or Wilson sent down.
Simmons isn’t quite big league ready with his bat yet in my opinion. He’s improved for sure. I saw him when the MBraves came to Pensacola to play and his approach was better than what I saw in Spring Training. Yes he’s hitting well in AA now, but there’s a huge difference in facing Kyle Lotzkar and Wilkin De La Rosa and facing Stephen Strasburg, Gio Gonzalez and Jordan Zimmerman (Upcoming probables vs WSH).
That said, ATL will probably give him a look, but don’t temper your expectations that the guy will set the world on fire and be the offensive spark that will cure the ails of the team. He will be a defensive improvement, which we can all agree on and maybe that will help. He makes a great play in the hole that Pastornicky wouldn’t be able to make and it sparks the emotions of the team. Possible right?
I blame the state of the team on Fredi. He doesn’t have an aggressive, winning attitude. Last night’s game was a perfect example. He twice used one-run strategies in the first and second innings, something of which Joe Simpson approved. (In itself a bad sign.) Simpson argued that, being in a funk, they needed to score first. Well, we see how that worked out. A manager with some fire in his belly would have gone for the big innings.
Later at the end of the fifth inning, Fredi lets Beachy hit, then takes him out after one batter. You need to be more decisive than that. Either you pinch hit for him, or if you’re going to try to get another inning out of him, you give him more than one batter to do it. Then when you bring in a reliever, with the game still in reach and at the tail end of a six-game losing streak, do you bring in one of your best relievers to nail things down so your team will have a chance to come back. No, you bring in Livan frigging Hernandez, your excuse being that you don’t want to wear out your bullpen. What?! Guys like Venters and Kimbrel aren’t getting enough work because you haven’t had a lead to pass on to them in a while. I fear that it’s going to be a long summer.
I wonder if the players know that Fredi doesn’t have a clue. When things are going well it wouldn’t matter, but when they’re in a funk it could become a factor.
He was working with a short bench and wanted to give Beachy a chance to get through the next inning quickly since it was the bottom of the line-up. No need to pinch hit there in a close game where you need to save the bench for later innings and possibly extras. We can’t blame this losing streak on Fredi’s tactical moves
I don’t buy it. Read “The Book” by Tom Tango, et al., on pitcher batting. And as I said, if he wanted to give Beachy a chance to get through the bottom of the inning, why did he take him out after one batter? It doesn’t make sense.
Braves are floundering AGAIN. This time before the AllStar break. Its time to get rid of Freddie Gonzales and bring in a new manager. Time to trade some dead weight or unproductive players….. Gonzales has lost the team, AGAIN….
@Wes
The general arguement is that he needs to see teams multiple times and prove he can make adjustments when people adjust to him
Yeah. This sucks…a buddy of mine is a HUGE Nats fan and he’s in Turkey right now. He watched every game (mlb.tv is awesome) and emailed me non-stop…nothing but shit talking.
With all these injuries though we aren’t going to do much. But 8 in a row now? 8!??? Killin me, Barves….killin me.
This sucks…
I hope the front office is proactive. Trade for Demspter. Replace Pastornicky. And possibly replace the manager if the streak hits double digits.
Fragile psyche? That is such a lazy forced narrative to me. I don’t see weak willed players on this team. I see pretty decent players with flaws. I see injuries to chipper, mccann and freeman. I see we have two very young starting pitchers. I see relievers whose performance is predictably volatile from year to year. I see alot of key players younger than 25. I see a key player who is 40. I see some guys who were performing way above expectation early now regressing back to their mean – without that happening to coincide with some other players getting. A season of 162 games is one of market corrections, some massive, most minimal. Unfortunately, this is a massive market correction. Could swing back the other way quickly or over enough time. Just give it time to even itself out over enough time. The pysche of the players and the team is never close to fragile as that of a fan, especially the kind of fan who accuses the team of a weak will before he discusses anything relevant
I agree with a lot of what you say. Still, I do see certain players, such as Heyward, having repeated mental lapses on defense that seem to be snowballing on him, and I get the impression, as an outsider, that Minor’s combination of poor performances and bad luck in recent weeks is starting to mess with his mind. I think that players like Hudson and McCann are going to go out there and give it their best effort regardless of how bad things get, but I do worry about the psyches of some of the younger players.
I agree that Minor is struggling with confidence for the most part, and that you can see that in his body language when things go bad. But then, within starts, you see him struggle really bad in one inning, and then pitch well in the next three innings, and then struggle again. Just one of those strange things where he seems to wilt under the pressure, but then show some toughness, but then wilt again. So I don’t know if I’m entirely convinced that it is just a psyche thing, or if he has just not figured out how to timely make adjustments within innings.
I feel like he is also only as good as his fastball command. Everyone focuses on the offspeed stuff, but alot of times when I see him struggle, it seems to be based upon a lack of command of the fastball. It just seems like when he is unable to paint the corners in and out, up and down with the fastball, he is unable to get ahead in the counts to set up his offspeeed stuff. I feel sometimes like his lack of command sometimes causes his fastball to drift over parts of the plate you don’t want them to drift over. I also feel like his lack of command causes him to get behind in counts which either makes the next pitch predictable or causes him to sell out and groove fastballs and offspeed pitches in order to get strikes. I dunno. Just kind of the frustration I get when I watch him sometimes. Guess it’s important to figure out if the lack of command is caused by lack of confidence in his fastball, or by a lack of consistency in mechanics, especially release. He also needs to find a way to get some tilt, wiggle, fade or rise in that fastball. Strange to struggle with command of a too straight fastball. It’s usually the fastballs with too much movement that are difficult to command.
The strange thing is that we thought we were getting a calm, poised college pitcher with excellent command. Those were sort of his selling points as a draft pick. But he seems to lack command at times, and poise as well. But he’s young. I just hope he’s not another Chuck James.
Chuck James didn’t even know who Albert Pujols was when he faced him for the first time. Chucky was a talented guy who…let’s just say was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Minor is a talented guy who has had a string of bad luck and bad execution. The better worst case scenario comparison would be more like Everyone Loves Jo Jo.
the reason i said chuck james is because minor and chuck are fastball/changeup guys who throw with the same velocity and who both give up alot of dingers. chuck was more homer prone, but minor gives up a ton of homers too. jojo wasn’t really the fastball/changeup combo guy.
chuck and minor have problems for different reasons. it wasn’t really chuck’s lack of intelligence that hurt him. it was his screwed up mechanics. chuck never followed through, so all of his pitches would be up. eventually this mechanical flaw effectively ended his career. it was like chuck would slam on the brakes before his shoulder came through, which is horribly violent for the shoulder. but, anyways, chuck’s screwed up mechanics severely limited his ability to get a pitch down in the zone and basically eliminated any chance of developing a breaking pitch. minor does not have these mechanical flaws from what i have seen. but there must be some type of mechanical flaw that is hampering his command.
Heyward has been 1.5 WAR so far, I’m not worried about him.
I am worried about Fredi though. His constant state of “trust my gut” is horrifying. He has no energy, he doesn’t back his players up on the field. (for example, Bobby would have gotten tossed when the pitch that was strike 3 against Harper wasn’t called and the next pitch he got a hit) As a former high school player, having coaches that care really makes a difference. Sure these guys are pros, but they have emotions just like the rest of us and this team looks lifeless and beaten to me.
a regime change is in order. FW, call Tito Francona and pay him whatever he wants.
I agree that a regime change is in order. However, to say that we can pay a manger “anything he wants” is in error. The Braves don’t have the money to pay for players, must less expensive managers…
I don’t agree that the problem merely is that Freeman, McCann and Chipper are out of the lineup. Contrary to what the local media would have us believe, Freeman wasn’t tearing it up. To this point in the season,his OPS+ is 102, where league average is 100. Likewise, McCann’s OPS+ has been 104. As for Chipper, the Braves knew that he was going to be in and out of the lineup. The fact is that this is a very pedestrian offensive lineup that was playing over its head for a while. Take Bourne, for example. He went through a period where he was playing like a future Hall of Famer. That wasn’t going to last. In addition they’ve been lucky with balls in play. Their BABIP is .303, eighth in the majors, and that includes the losing streak. That’s likely to regress some more. The fact is that without superlative pitching, the Braves have little chance of making the playoffs, and right now they’re not getting that kind of pitching.
Exactly. And how can a team be successful when they only have one starting pitcher that can put out consecutive quality outings? Especially with our volatile bullpen. We’re just hitting a period of the injury bug. Unfortunately, that is coinciding with having to play almost every single top tier team in the league. What a cruel, lopsided schedule.
I think it’s more a case of how many games in how many days, moreso than the competition itself. 33 games in 34 days is a lot and THEN to add the competition you face over a majority of that stretch.
But, I also don’t necessary agree that the offense was play “Well above” their heads, maybe slightly…but not well. They’ve certainly taken more advantage of opportunities than they have in the past, but that isn’t incessantly a product of playing well over your heads but instead making the best use of the opportunities awarded to you. Last year during the middle of the summer when the offense clicked for a while, it wasn’t really because anyone(with exception to Uggla) was hitting any better than they had to that point(Freeman might be another slight exception, but he had been reasonably consistent outside of April and May). The difference was they were not stranding runners on 3rd with less than 2 outs.
This year, we’ve gotten runners in(last or near the bottom in sacrifices last year, a near complete 180 this year….at least before this current losing streak). That is the single largest difference in run production. At worst, we’re looking at 10-15 runs fewer to this point in the season in regards to “playing over their heads.” That would put the Braves what….9th or 10th in runs, instead of top 10? The BABIP regression was going to happen, sure…but I don’t honestly see it dropping anymore than it currently has. .303 is still well within the realm of average, and a healthy lineup likely raises that still.
I don’t think anyone really realizes how average the hitting(sans run production) has been. With exception of Bourn who hit .330-.340 for the better part of the month, everyone else has hit at or below average. We were scoring runs with Mac playing terrible, Freeman playing average, Prado slightly above(and honestly most of his “above” has come during this losing streak), Chipper about as well as you can expect at this point, Uggla ~10 points above here and there, Heyward….somewhere between reality and expectation, Pastornicky like Uggla….up and down between expectation, etc. The bottom line is we’ve taken more advantage of defensive woes from other teams and sacrifices than we did last year, and that has been the largest part of the turn-around. Having 3 of your top 5 offensive producers out(DL stint+~5 days, 4-5 days for flu, 4 games because of eye issues) is going to make your offense suffer, but isn’t necessary indicative of some sudden regression in general.
TL;DR….our pitching needs to step up before any of this matters.
er…should be “instead of top 5″ for the runs thing.
Well our pitching was there during the Cincy series. Minor gave up 4, Beachy 4, Hanson 1, and Delgado 4 (and Medlen allowed 3 of those to score on the GS). And then vs. Washington, Minor allowed 4 and Beachy 3. Are they all great starts? Not at all. But they gave us a chance to win (despite putting us in early holes nearly every single time). We’ve scored only 20 runs in these 8 games. You’d need multiple shutouts to accumulate any wins with 20 runs in 8 games.
I should have stopped reading after you advocated more sacrifices…I definitely stopped when you started using only BA to compare the success of hitters.
I find it funny Tommy said yesterday they’re putting in the work yet today……only St. Louis took BP.
Well like I said, 3 of your top 5 run producers being out for half/a majority of this 8 game stretch is going to do that to you. I’m just saying the offense “coming back down to earth” is more a symptom of those run producers being out than a product of expected regression. The “expected” regression, much in the same, is a symptom of the run producers not being there as well.
Beachy had a great start yesterday(sans pitch count), HR’s killed him in Cincy(much the same as they did for Minor in Cincy), and Hanson and Delgado both had an amazing start(but like you said, Medlen allowing a first pitch GS tarnished that start). Even still, in some of those games we scored an average amount of runs, others we faltered…but it wasn’t all inherently offensive(as it wasn’t all inherently pitching) but a mix of both. I was more saying as an on-going theme for the season, offense has given the Braves the record they have far more than pitching, and when the offense does have injuries or dry spells, the pitching has to step up in general. They’ve somewhat done that for half of this stretch, but they’re not going deep into games during the good starts either….which leads to that volatile bullpen.
I get what you’re saying. Though I think our poor offensive showings are influencing Fredi’s decision making. If we were scoring more than 2 runs per game (and a lot of it coming after the 5th inning), he’d probably let the starters work out of some of these jams. As it is, they’re leaving earlier because he wants to protect whatever slim lead we muster or keep it as close as possible. What compounds the problem is several struggling relievers and his choosing the wrong guy more often than he should.
Basically nothing is working. Other than that, not too shabby.
Well, three of the Braves top run producers have not been out. Here are the WAR values. Bourn 2.8, Prado 2.8, Uggla 1.8, Heyward 1.5, Chipper 1.1, McCann 0.9, Freeman 0.6. It’s only Chipper who’s suffering from lack of playing time. McCann and Freeman have not been among their chief run producers. In my opinion, Freeman is the most overrated player among Braves fans.
Sitting on WAR in this situation isn’t accurately descriptive of run production. You’re taking a scaled stat in relation to peers, to try and define a team who isn’t putting 30 players out there at each position. I understand, yadda yadda this is a SABR blog and all, but WAR doesn’t honestly play into the conversation when speaking strictly of the team who is employing 1 person in each position. How Chipper compares to other 3rd basemen, or how Bourn compares to other CF isn’t overly relevant(Bourn isn’t driving in runs….his production is solely linked to his OBP[sans the 3 miraculous HR's he hit in the bandbox]). Outside of Prado, who this year has been the “go-to” guy in reality(not paper) when you need that “clutch” hit. Uggla his recently become a bigger portion of that, same with Heyward(not really getting a lot of hits, but the hits have been for extras and in run scoring opportunities). Chipper, Freddie, and to far lesser extents this year, Mac have been coming up with these hits.
False! WAR isn’t a stat to compare CF with CF, or 3b with other 3b, it has a positional adjustment incorporated in it so you can compare players from different positions. And I know it isn’t the stat that says it all but it comes pretty darn close to it.
So yes, using WAR to point out that the top run producers aren’t the guys you point out (McCann, Chipper and Freeman) is legit. It also supports the comments made by other users that the braves are going through a ”regression to the mean” fase and can thus partly explain this horrible losing streak. The fact that the big boys are not playing is not as important (imo) because even when they were playing, they weren’t very good (besides Chipper then)
True, WAR includes a defensive component, but it’s not accurate to say that you’re only comparing players at the same position when you use WAR. It’s normalized to make it possible to compare players’ contributions no matter what their positions. In other words, no matter what the position, a player who has a WAR of 3-4 is a good player. (I’m referring here to the Fangraphs version of the statistic. It’s my understanding that Baseball Reference calculates the defensive component differently.)
If it’s purely offensive stat one’s looking for, there’s Runs Created. Here are the wRC+ version of those stats. Prado 151, Chipper 138, Uggla 122, Bourn 117, Heyward 110, Diaz 106, McCann 101, Freeman 100. In other words, though Chipper has been sorely missed, McCann and Freeman have made league-average contributions to the offense.
methinks someone doesn’t really understand the stats he dismisses
last 14 days team OBP .285, team SLG-% .359, team WOBA-.284 runs scored- 46
last 7 days those three slashes are .255/.345/.269 runs scored- 19
March and April? they are .323/.409/.322 – 116 runs (in 23 games)
for May .321/.392/.312 – 120 runs (in 27 games)
this shows that it’s fairly obvious that run scoring for the Braves is pretty contingent on getting on base and slugging and not on sacrifice flies and bunts,
They have not gotten on base, they have not hit for extra bases… it’s that simple really.
Starting Pitching wise let us look:
last 7 days- 6.34 ERA , 4.29 xFIP, .321 BABIP
last 14 days- 4.84 ERA, 4.74 xFIP, .272 BABIP
May- 4.54 ERA, 4.40 xFIP, .273 BABIP
March/April- 4.37 ERA, 3.97 xFIP, .314 BABIP
It looks to me like the starters haven’t really been a whole lot worse in the last 7 days than they were the rest of the month, it looks like they have gotten unlucky . This has happened to coincide with the bats falling apart.
btw, I can’t help but notice that this teams magic OPS number for scoring runs is .700.
I feel like calling out sick today after this losing streak and lack of hitting continues.
“He doesn’t have an aggressive, winning attitude. ”
This kind of stuff drives me nuts. What does it even mean? That Fredi doesn’t want to win? That the players don’t want to win? What is a winning attitude? This is the kind of stuff fans say out of frustration. For the most part, people at this level are far more strong-willed than the average fan and they are all extremely competitive. Fans always say that such and such team doesn’t care when they are playing poorly. It’s probably just the opposite-they care too much and are pressing. Baseball is not a game where you make Vince Lombardi-style speeches and go out and kill the other team. You need to be relaxed. Mental errors, such as Pastornicky’s, happen when teams are trying to hard to make the great play. There are specific, physical problems with this team: injuries, overrated starting pitching, bullpen struggles, too much reliance on Chipper Jones, poor defense, etc. I don’t believe the problem with this team-or any major league team-is it’s psyche. IMO, the team has been built to be a slightly above average team with the ability, if everything goes right (which rarely happens) to be better.than that. I mean, compare the Braves rotation to the Nationals, which I see every night living in the DC area. Is there any Braves starter that you would take over Strasburg, Zimmermann, and Gonzalez at this point? Heyward is a big disappointment and, while he certainly isn’t “the” problem, he isn’t proving to be a solution either. This isn’t a matter of psyche; it’s a matter of talent.
Go BRAVES! Scalp’em!!
All this talk about Chipper being out. What is going to happen next year?