Wild Card Game: Cardinals 6, Braves 3
October 6, 2012 at 2:08 am by David Lee under Atlanta Braves
Source: FanGraphs
Game MVP: David Ross, .296
Least Valuable Brave: Dan Uggla, -.144
Most Valuable Cardinal: Matt Holliday, .261
Least Valuable Cardinal: Jon Jay, -.053
Big plays:
2nd – (ATL) David Ross two-run homer for a 2-0 Braves lead, .209
4th – (STL) Chipper Jones error puts runners on corners with no outs, .113
4th – (STL) Allen Craig RBI double for a 2-1 Braves lead, .142
6th – (STL) Matt Holliday solo homer for a 4-2 Cardinals lead, .130
First of all, the fact that Major League Baseball would even allow the Braves to be put in this situation reflects on its lack of competence. To have a baseball team play 162 games over six-plus months only to determine its fate for the entire year over a span of three hours is complete idiocy. This is compounded by the fact that a human has the ability to make one single judgment call that can make or break a team’s entire year. I’m sure MLB got its ratings. It got people talking about the sport. It grabbed the next day’s headlines. It also lost credibility, not only on the field with the umpires but in its leadership roles. Major League Baseball wanted to create a drama-filled show but got a circus.
The infield fly call was wrong. You don’t even have to fully understand the rule to know the call was missed. Pete Kozma did not reach “ordinary effort” under the ball, no matter how badly Sam Holbrook wishes that was the case. And people can talk about his feet shuffling and whether he was camped under the ball all they want. Lost in all of this is the fact that Kozma is nearly in Matt Holliday’s spot in left field. If MLB wants to get away with this being a “judgment call,” they should take a look at how far Kozma is in left field and judge that the infield fly rule is no longer a legit call that far out. MLB will say whatever is easiest in order to sweep this under the rug and move on, and that’s exactly what we got out of its leadership after the game.
The Braves messed themselves up before any infield fly call was made. Chipper’s error in the fourth gave the lead up and was perhaps the biggest mistake. They attempted a safety squeeze with runners on the corners, one out and the pitcher on deck, which is just unheard of. Dan Uggla and Andrelton Simmons committed errors in the seventh that led to a bigger hole. In the midst of all that happened in the eighth, they still had a shot to get back in the game but left the bases loaded.
It’s just about the worst way you can draw up the end of the season and Chipper’s career. Plenty of it was the Braves’ own faults, plenty of it can be put on the umpires, plenty of it can be put on MLB. Add it all up and you get a disappointing final loss for what is a solid team.
I’m going into hibernation for a while.
Loading ...
Heartbreaking way to end the season…that was one of the sloppiest games I’ve seen in a long while.
David i’ve been following you since bravesbuzzer. All your pieces are very insightful m. This one is just right on point. This is the absolute worst way for the braves to go out. Look forward to seeing your analysis next year and I appreciate all you’ve done this year
Can’t even put it into words. It just fucking sucks. 94 wins. For that. As much as I want to complain about the format, I would be praising it, had we won. I’d just like to think our team played hard enough all year to deserve more than that. It hurt to see it happen like that. It hurt even more to see Chipper just….gone. Just all around sucks. We should be playing October baseball.
But if we had won we would have been right where we were having not even played the game. It’s a stupid format plain and simple.
First things first, well said. This whole thing reaks of incompetance.
Second, to Spencer, if the Braves had won I’d still hate the format. It does nothing but flush a good teams season down the toilet, and at the very least risks it all together. I get the whole “you should have won the division thing”, but to have the WC decided by one game after you play 162 games, all being played in series of at least 3, is just, well….incompetant.
I’ve been telling this to people for months. For a group to rally behind the honor of baseball’s past for years and years now, to deny instant replay on the bases of said past; for there to be a one game playoff to decide who goes into the post season, and it isn’t based on a tie of some sort, is a slap in the face of said honor.
Pathetic game. Not any single game will ever define what Chipper was and still is to the Braves. I have watched baseball for over 20 years and never saw a call that bad in a game that big. We shot ourselves in the foot with the errors and bad bunt call, but for the umpire to make that call was just awful. Oh and to top it all off the Cards were chanting “infield fly” while celebrating proving they knew they needed help to win.
Is this confirmed? I read somewhere that they might have been chanting “Happy Flight” which they have been known to chant after big victories.
No, we, the fans, at the stadium were chanting that anytime a fly ball was hit into the outfield, being ironic, sarcastic. The cardinals ran off the field and celebrated in the locker room because we started trashing the field again…
I was very impressed w the crowd last night. They were top all game. Always into it. I would’ve been throwing stuff too. I’m proud to be a braves fan.
Also, thanks big to everybody who puts this site together and to everyone who contributes. I’ve really enjoyed coming here. My everyday addiction keeps getting bigger.
Words fail me. You said it all above.
Horrible call, and, as an ump, you have to know you fucked up when the winning is team is chanting your call as their victory song in the clubhouse. The “circle the wagon” mentality of MLB about the call is deplorable.
But, it was not a bad call in the sense of being decisive, or plainly productive of a false outcome (even if the Cardinal players thought so). Or at least we will never know. In reality, the Braves 3 errors were decisive. The score should have been 3-1, a Braves victory. The ump’s call would have been, and should have been, a soon-forgotten oddity.
So the Braves again choked. They choked last year. Since 1991, when Lonnie Smith got deked at second base, the Braves have a solid history of playing very good baseball–until the big games at the end of the season and in October. St. Louis, on the other hand, is a team which seems to thrive in post-season. If I was a Cards fan, I would say just what Molina said. ”We played to win the game. They played to lose the game.” In other words, the Cards are chronic winners, and the Braves are chronic losers. Since 1991, in the big games, that’s been true. Painful to someone like me, a native Atlantan and fan since 1966, but true.
On a side note, I sure wish one of our error-makers last night could have been more contrite over the past several months about how he has turned out to be such a monumental big league bust. It’s hard to swallow when you see him go 0-fer with a big fielding gaffe in the biggest game of the year. Ugh!(la).
Just read that after the game joe torre disallowed the protest. Frank wren issued an apology to MLB and the cards for the behavior of the fans. The ump when asked after the game said he made the correct call. All three of those points just irk me to no end. Wrens comments hurt the most. Turning your back on the most loyal of loyal fans is not the way to increase attendance. At least hold MLB feat to the fire for the call that changed the outcome of the game one way or another.
So can anyone still say that Braves fans “don’t care” anymore?
Nope… but now they say we’re not classy. If that had happened in New York you would have had some meat head saying’ well, hey… that’s the Bronx baby, you make a bad call here and we’ll let you know about it.’ They expect the southern genteel fan to sit there in our overalls and just stare with our mouths open… BRAVES 2013!!! I want Constanza in LF, Prado to 3b and Uggla out in the players parking lot washing cars…
I’m already getting over the call. The outcome was better than if the ball was caught, which is what would happen on that play 95% of the time.
With that said, the rule should be rewritten. Maybe something like (please go easy on this, it’s still a first draft):
“If the fielder, with ordinary effort, would be able to obtain two or more outs by allowing the ball to hit the ground… Ordinary effort shall be defined such that failure to obtain two outs would require a fielding or throwing error”
hey there and thank you for your information ? I have certainly picked up something new from right here. I did however experience a few technical issues the usage of this website, since I experienced to reload the web site a lot of times prior to I may get it to load correctly. I were considering in case your web hosting is OK? Now not that I’m complaining, however slow loading circumstances occasions will often affect your placement in google and can damage your quality rating if advertising and marketing with Adwords. Anyway I’m adding this RSS to my e-mail and can glance out for a lot more of your respective interesting content. Make sure you replace this once more very soon..
I’m pretty sure Simmons bunted on his own and Fredi is just saying he called the safety squeeze to protect his player from some heat. I can’t even talk about the rest of the game so I’m going to focus on that bit of good managing and tip my cap to somebody.
Thanks to all the folks for operating this excellent site and those who regularly contribute. I’m also putting away my baseball focus for a month or two in order to get away from the sting of this loss, among other reasons. Chipper went out with a rousing overall season. Too bad he had this game as his swan song.
This hurts so much more than last season’s collapse did. The Braves legitimately earned a playoff spot and were the better team over 162 games all for one afternoon to piss all over that. If I were at the game I would’ve ripped out the chair i was sitting it and thrown it on the field.
Fuck Bud Selig for whoring out the game for ratings. Fuck Bud Selig for hiring incompetents to ref the game. Fuck Bud Selig for refusing to utilize modern technology.
I’m done with these horseshit playoffs, I’m only pulling for the maniac As to win it, that way at least one team with an “A” on their cap will win something.
Yeah… it was awful. The defense, the offense, the umpiring… just a horrible way to go out as a team and for Chipper. This one isn’t going away anytime soon.
A very hearty Thank You to the guys here at CAC that do a superb job covering the Braves. I love spending my screw off time at work comparing stats and using the CAC formula to compare players. A baseball nerd’s dream.
For the game, as we all now, going in was 50/50. The Braves gave away five outs due to defensive failure (Chipper’s missed DP counts two, Uggla’s throw, Simmons’ throw, Venters not getting to the bag to cover 1st). Four of those outs scored. In a one game take all, the probability of overcoming all that is almost nil. Yet the Braves still with one big hit at three different stages in the last three innings could have tied the game. Just a miserable defensive effort topped off by the bad umpiring judgment call. I’ve never been one to blame the umpires for a loss, and last night stung, but it was not the reason the Braves lost.
I, too, hate to see Chipper’s career end this way, there seemed to be some magic out there ready for the Braves to capture. I was up until 3 AM dozing in and out on the couch, waking to realizing and contemplate Chipper’s career ending. In no way can last night taint a career, just like a play in game should never ever be associated with baseball. Chipper’s career spanned my freshman year in high school to last night. It’s a link to the official torch passing to adulthood and now I look for others to keep me “young” (Maybe Medlen, when I heard him called Med-Dog Medlen, oh how that rang so sweet). I pitched all the way through school, my go to guys were Glavine first then any other good LH starting pitcher (Avery/ Neagle) b/c I am LH. But after the torch passed on the big 3, Chipper became the sole provider to that link to my own past. What a great career, and it is truly a sad day for any of us. I told my wife last night, my least favorite day of the year is the day the Braves season ends. Today I have that feeling times 10 (no pun intended, well maybe it is).
I
MLB decided to make a second wildcard after hearing fan frustrating resulting from and unbalanced division structure, but instead of addressing the problem with divisions they did this two wild-card quick fix. It’s sloppy. When one of the teams that qualified for the playoffs is “the second best team that didn’t win a division” you know that your definition of a playoff team is contrived.
The one game format is also obviously stupid. It was originally intended to help deserving teams get into the post season, but it does the opposite because it will always put a team with a better record in a scenario where they have a near 50-50 shot of watching a team with a worse record steal their playoff spot (the one exception being a two-way tie for the wildcard, in which case there would be a one game play-in anyway, so there’s still no need for the wildcard game). The one-game format results from the schedule and the rush created by having 5 teams in each league make the playoffs. I don’t care what has to be fixed to make this not be one game, but give me a break. Even a regular season series is 2-4 games. Why on earth is a playoff series shorter? Shorten spring training by 2 games. Go back to four teams. I don’t care. Just do something so we can at least have a series that demonstrates who has the best team, not a one game “who has the best ace” contest.
You should go into hibernation. It’s obvious you could never be a Sports Official, you’re not near smart enough. You have to know the rules or how to correctly apply them. You do not have the ability to do either. I didn’t see you whining and crying over the blown call and mistake when the HP umpire inadvertently gave a time to to the hitter even though the pitcher had already started his motion. The batter should have struck out, but was given a second chance and hit a HR. You didn’t see the Cardinal coaches, players, fans, or bloggers crying did you? Go to sleep and give your eyes a chance to dry out!
Well this sucks. I’m gonna go cry and fall asleep. Somebody wake me up in April
The problem I have most with the call is that it was made AFTER Kozma bailed on the catch. replay shows him clearly going forward when the infield fly is called. ON top of this the position he was prior to that was not the correct position to make the play. If that is not obvious that the call was a mistake, then it is impossible to declare any call bad.
You’re exactly right. Kozma and Holliday’s body language on that play tells you everything you need to know. Even if the ump called it, it’s clear neither player heard it.
The call was not the worst part of the game. Chipper never came back on the field to say goodbye. I was one of about 500 fans that stayed for an hour after the game chanting “we want Chipper” until we were escorted off by the police. How the hell can you do that to your fans? Yes they gave the game away, yes the fans made sure it became the spectacle that the umps provoked, but to punish them by hiding in the clubhouse to never say goodbye was bullshit. Shame on Chipper for going out like that. Shame on the Braves by giving the game away. What a terrible was to end a hall of fame career.
Chipper does not owe you a thing. He gave more to this team than any person in my lifetime. It was a horrible loss, and I don’t blame him for just wanting to go home. Quit feeling slighted by your own selfishness.
imaginary heroes will always let someone down
That is not fair, he has gone on an entire season of fairwells and cerimonies and on his last night of his career he just wanted to be with his teammates and his family. It’s a shame you are soo selfish as a fan that you get mad that he would choose that over an unnecessary curtain call after a difficult loss…shame on you not Chipper.
Chipper rushed off the field initially because of the possibility of the fans to start trowing things again. Second he had post game interviews right after so he could not come back out. I know the call sucked and was horrible but maybe if the fans had not acted so poorly throwing crap he would have come out of the dugout and tipped his cap or something.
Plus Chipper owes the fans crap. He has been giving to Braves fans for 19 years. If anybody owes anybody its the fans who owe Chipper for all the memories. I know you all bought tickets to the last game of his career but the fans there were an embaressment to the Braves. You think its the umpires who clean up the crap that was thrown. No, it was the Braves employees.
Thanks for a great season CAC!
Self righteous biggots. The Pharisees of baseball; Joe Torre, Bud Selig, and the umps.
I understand protecting an umpire’s decision to protect his reputation, but especially in the one game format, some responsibility needs to be taken, and they should’ve at least admitted the call was wrong. Saying it was “absolutely” right doesn’t even try to mask the fact that the higher ups were force feeding us bull crap.
Baseball is run by a bunch of scared boys, scared to make an actual decision on anything. You don’t want to take away a batting title from melky Cabrera because that would mean you have to change other records, and you don’t want to draw the line? Draw the line NOW. Stop feeding the loyal fans crap to protect your reputation.
Bud Selig and co. Could earn my respect if they would admit they were wrong once in a while.
Ok, what do we do with Bourne and McCann. Has Ross earned the right to be the starter considering McCann’s salary and his arm?
Craigs, I understand your frustration for Chipper not coming back out, but instead of placing your blame on Chipper, I think you should refocus it on the large number of Braves fans in attendance that ruined that chance for you. Personally, I’m glad he didn’t come back out and while it’s punishing the fans who kept their wits about them during the whole ordeal, not a single one of the fans who threw things on the field deserved anything other than to be escorted out of the stadium. The debacle it became was unacceptable and embarassing.
As far as the call itself, it was piss poor at best and unfortunately I think we all knew what MLB was going to do. They aren’t going to jeopardize the credibility of the umpire by changing the ruling on the field and both Torre and Reliford, whether they believed it or not, toed the company line and fed us all a load of crap so they could sweep it under the rug and move along as quickly as possible.
RE: Bourn and McCann. Between the two, I would rather Bourn be back, but I won’t be heartbroken if both of them, along with Hanson are playing elsewhere next season. McCann isn’t currently worth what he’ll be paid if his option is picked up and he has a proven track record of wearing down and underperforming down the stretch. Bourn completely fell off the planet starting in late July/early August. His low walk rate and high strikeout rate doesn’t justify what some team is going to pay him this offseason. I know I’m in the minority with the above sentiments towards certain players and that’s fine, but I haven’t and don’t see myself waivering from those viewpoints anytime soon.
That’s 0-9 now in playoff elimination games in Turner Field. Unbelievable. Ridiculous call notwithstanding, that was a pathetic showing yesterday. Again. What is it with this team in October?
Excellent beat ! I wish to apprentice while you amend your web site, how could i subscribe for a weblog web site? The account helped me a appropriate deal. I had been a little bit familiar of this your broadcast provided vivid clear idea
McCann will be a Brave next year. After that, it could be Bethancourt with 1 more year of minor league experience.
Torre has not an ounce of integrity. Holbrooke, isn’t he the yahoo that tossed a starting pitcher after 4 pitches.. The MLB is a joke.. No respect left for you. Even the Cards were laughing at you while they celebrated. This season tick holder is done.
There were so many things I wanted to write about this. Irrational things. I was so wasted while watching that horror show, I’m really quite glad that I didn’t write them last night. But really, I think we all saw this coming. One bad play that brought in 3 runs was enough to take a team down that really had only 2 big hits, and they were from Ross and Constanza. ROSS AND CONSTANZA. And even Ross’ home run should’ve never happened. Everyone else pretty much performed like they have for the past month.
This is the postseason Braves. Same shit, different pants.
And if you want to go by earned runs, those of you predicting we would win 3-2….well, there you go.
Freeman did well, they were good hits with runners on. Simmons had the most bizzare 1st post season game imaginable.
wanted to say thanks to everyone who works on the blog. i really appreciated all the work you did over the season, it made me really enjoy baseball this season being able to read intelligent commentary. thanks!
One additional thing I would like to state about the infield fly call.
Kozma has abandoned the play prior to the infield fly call being made. AT THIS POINT THERE ARE NO VALID INFIELDERS BY WHICH TO MAKE THE PLAY.
And infield fly must be made by someone IN THE INFIELD AT THE START OF THE PLAY.
“The pitcher, catcher and any outfielder who stations himself in the infield on the play shall be considered infielders for the purpose of this rule.”
Outfielders can be valid options for the rule to apply IF THEY ARE IN THE INFIELD FOR SOME DEFENSIVE ALIGNMENT.
Once Kozma bailed there wasn’t a valid infield option for it to be rule an infield fly. Holliday does not count AS HE WAS NOT IN THE INFIELD AT THE START OF THE PLAY.
People who want to argue the letter of the rule seem to be incompetent to actually understanding the rule and just want to make a contrarian point.
I agree with everyone else that the infield fly call was a travesty, but I can’t say
I was surprised by the other huge play that hurt us – Chipper’s error. Age has caught up to his defense more than it has caught up to his offense, and he has been a defensive liability for much of this season. Ironically, he made what has been the difficult part of that play for him this season – catching the short hop line drive in his glove. I can think of five or six other occasions where he either oléd a similar ball, or had it deflect off his glove into left field for a hit. So when he actually caught the ball, I thought he had made the difficult part of the play. But that wasn’t the first time he has made a bad throw to Uggla on a play like that, either. Pretty frustrating.
The other huge bonehead play was Simmons’s botched safety squeeze. If Fredi actually called for that from the bench with lead-footed Freddie Freeman at third, he deserves to be fired. Also, after that play failed to work, it was a huge error to let Medlen hit with two men on and two out. I understand that Fredi was never going to employ the SABR strategy of beginning the game with Kimbrel or anything like that, but he managed this game like it was an ordinary game, which it wasn’t. Medlen had been victimized by errors, sure, but he wasn’t on top of his game, either, and leaving him in to hit in that situation was conceding two runs, and there was zero reason to do that when this game was for all the marbles, and we had a playoff-roster bullpen out there loaded with pitchers who could have come in and replaced Medlen. If anything good comes out of this debacle, it will be that Fredi is fired.
This team has a good future with the young core of Heyward, Freeman, Simmons, Kimbrel, Beachy, and Minor, but it will never reach its full potential with Fredi managing.
I woke up hoping to see a story on braves.com about Fredi getting shitcanned. Bowman can start the article with a reference to last year’s collapse.
Does no one remember that Chipper was moved to LF for his catastrophic failures at 3B in the playoffs? We signed Vinny Castilla because we didn’t think we could win in the playoffs with Chipper fielding at third. VINNY CASTILLA!
Chipper is a marvelous regular season player, but he has not helped us win in the playoffs (0.4 WPA in 93 post season games) and he has hurt us in elimination games (-.8 WPA in 18 elimination games, roughly .200 BA, sub-.600 OPS). None of this considers his generally awful playoff defense.
JohnWDB:
Addressed this on the other thread. Chipper has a career .376 wOBA in the postseason and 127 wRC+. Accumulating WPA from cherry-picked games scattered over two decades is idiocy; doing it to justify taking a crap on Chipper is just perverse, grotesque immaturity.
Why didn’t he pinch hit for Medlen? Because Fredi can’t think more than 1 step ahead. I do think that Fredi called for the safety squeeze. Horrible decision #1. But, in calling for the squeeze, he should prepare for it to fail, leaving 2 runners in scoring position and your pitcher up and had someone warming up in the bullpen. He didn’t. Horrible decision #2. Even with not having someone warming, he STILL should have pinch hit and let a pitcher warm as quickly as possible. Horrible decision #3.
Sad thing is, Fredi is not what cost us this game. Yes, he managed it like any other ho-hum game, but the overall play (offensively and defensively) of the team is what lost the game. Thus, I seriously doubt Fredi will be fired.
I guess this goes down to one queston… Which sucks worse, major league umpiring or minor league football referees? When will the umps/refs realize that we don’t put our money down to come see them blow calls. Just plain disusting…
For me the best way to simplify the circumstances regarding “the call”, is that had infield fly not been invoked, nobody would have come out to protest that it should have been. This makes it obvious which is correct.
Secondly, I accept that this is considered to be a judgement call. But, there is an underlying assumption that the judgement in question, is obliged to be sound. A judgement call should absolutely be reversed when it is found to be not sound.
Thirdly, the most important aspect of the infield fly rule is that it is intended to prevent the defense from recording a cheap extra out by dropping the ball intentionally. This incident makes the case that the rule should be changed. Giving credit to a poster at mlb.com, the rule should state that once the infield fly rule is invoked, if the ball should drop, whether intentional or not, it should immediately be ruled dead, and all runners (including the batter), should be ruled safe, after being awarded the next nearest base.
All of your points are valid, but there’s no weight to them, which is why Joe Torre & Co. can come out and say “we think it was the right call.” But, there is one aspect of the rule which was specifically broken which makes the call invalid…
“When it seems apparent that a batted ball will be an Infield Fly, the umpire shall IMMEDIATELY declare an infield fly.”
No umpire made a call until the ball was already on the way down. That in and of itself should have denied the rule because the runners are supposed to have the benefit of knowing it’s an infield fly.
IMHO, MLB should draw a line that follows the curve of the infield and is a consistent XX number of feet from home plate. If a pop-up occurs with the runners on and less than 2 outs and the ball’s flight will land it within that line, it’s an automatic infield fly. Anything outside the line, everyone will know it’s NOT going to be an infield fly. Takes all the judgement out of the rule. Simple.
I was hoping to see something about us hiring Francona, or maybe hopefully Manny Acta soon. I cant take another year of the Frediot. Anyway, i love talking about the Braves with all you guys and the writers did such an amazing amazing job this year. Having intelligent conversations about sports is so rare and everyone here is my personal baseball support group.
See you guys in a couple months. Let’s go Athletics!! Do the Bernie Lean!!
I think Acta would be a good hire. I’ve always thought he was a good manager since his days in Washington. I just don’t see how Fredi gets fired though which is really too bad.
I was out of the country for 3 years, and since I’ve come back I’ve paid way too much money to get Extra Innings so I could watch every Braves game these last 2 years. Especially with goddamn Fredi Gonzalez involved.
I had already decided to cancel DirecTV and all that shit. But when Joe Simpson immediately called the Braves fans “embarrassing” when the cans/other shit started raining down, I knew I would never listen to him again. Fuck him for eternity.
PS: Ron Darling calling that game was twice as bad as Chip/Joe during the regular season. Reminded me of Clark Kellogg with less charisma. And the “Freddie Freeman will win a batting title” line? Hoooooooly Shit.
PSS: Anything to keep our minds off the totally predictable 15-men-on-only-3-runs-scored performance, eh boys?
Joe Simpson was right on the money. The truth hurts sometimes.
Every aspect of this game sucked. Horrible call aside, we did not play to win. Hopefully our nucleus of young players grow, and frank wren can do some things to make us division winners next year. Fredi is still a huge problem but as we all noticed he still made some some improvement at the end of the season.
For the guys @ cac, thanks for all the hard work to make us fans have somewhere to come fo feel the comradery of the braves, with honest opinions and statistical evidence to boot. Your site is great and while i feel burnt out on baseball after wasting 162 games for a coin flip lost, i know next year i will just as excited to see what the braves do. Thanks again.
On another note. If hanson is still on our team next year…. I will be upset. Lets give julio and randall some action.
There’s plenty of justification to question the infield fly call that was made, but as bad as it was, the Cardinals have a legitimate gripe on the timeout granted to David Ross just before he launched his two-run bomb.
Friend made a great point above about how illegitimate it was for the infield fly call to be made in this instance by saying if it’s not called, then no one from the Cardinals is out to argue it should have been. Same goes for Ross. If that timeout isn’t granted, he swings and misses at strike three. Inning over. No two-run homer. Even Ross seemed resigned to that fact. But he sure made the most of his second chance.
So if we’re being fair, both of these calls were tainted and likely had an impact on the final outcome of the game. One was heavily tilted in favor of the Cardinals. The other for the Braves. In the end, it’s a wash, and the result is what it is. The Braves don’t own the moral high ground here over the botched infield fly call.
While defense and lack of clutch hitting wrecked the game, and the IF Fly call was absurd, no one has pointed out the idiocy of two extra umpires who have hurt us in the past (1996 WS) when one got in the way of Jermaine Dye and opened the gates to a 3 run inning.
Not to mention the blown call against Baltimore when the kid reached over the fence to interfere. This is obviously union featherbedding as umps not in normal position make bad calls and don’t add any value. Replay would be cheaper and more effective.
Every one of us was nervous that this game would go exactly like it did. Yes that call was a completely unecessary punch in the dick, but the sheer reality of the situation is that there is no way we were gonna reach the playoffs, or succeed in the playoffs with Bourn and Uggla having the seasons they were having. I do agree that Chipper’s defense has always been a liability, and I look forward to the moves we make for next season. I actually think the young core of this team is really talented and we can take a little hope away from how awesome Freeman (and actually Medlen) played in this game. I also think that giving Simmons a year to get his confidence back in his hand, restoring Beachy to the rotation and making some solid positional moves this off season will greatly improve our chances of continuing a post season run next year.
As for McCann. The dude just needs surgery and some time to get his swing back to normal. I don’t think his decline is a severe as it was this year. if you look at his best weeks of the year, they all came after significant rest.
I’m still hollow on the inside from this game, as I think we all are, and I won’t be watching any more postseason this year, except to root for the A’s in spirit. I’m turning my eyes to next year when we no longer have the pressure of a hall of famer retiring and this team can finally start to make its own history.
Avlon,
That was embarrassing. I don’t care what the circumstances are, there is no excuse for throwing trash onto the sacred ground of a baseball field. Anyone who says otherwise should pack their bags and head north to Philadelphia.
My dad, brother, and I were all there with our $100 seats (and squawking Cards fan right behind us in our ear), and I have to say it was such a bewildering loss, so outrageous and upsetting, that I was seriously bummed well into the next day and was even questioning whether I could still remain an MLB fan–much less a Braves fan (which I have been for 21 years). My brother was just testing his feet as a fan again, and has said that so long as the umpiring works the way it does (so antiquated!) he cannot do this again. He’s done. I went to this site because I figured I’d get a good assessment of the game and I did. Well summarized: there are three major reasons for this ugly loss. The past three years have been unbelievably tough season endings. For some reason, something tells me with the budget as it is, we can’t hardly expect another 94 win season. It had all the makings of a special year.
^ I get what you’re saying about McCann, but there’s no guarantee he actually needs surgery or will have it. He indicated he thought he would, but Wren said unless there is something that is happened since his most recent MRI he doesn’t NEED surgery. He’s been a great player while in Atlanta, but the longer I’m a Braves fan (25 years, but I did try to dislike the Braves after Murphy was traded, couldn’t do it) I am growing more and more frustrated that players that perform through July and shrink in September and October are rewarded with new contracts while the team is sent packing early every year.
McCann’s worst month(s) of his career are September and October, career, not just this season. If wild cards and division championships are your (not you, just in general) thing, sure, throw $12M at a guy who’s going to fade when the games matter the most, but there’s been plenty of choking (hate to say it, but we all know it’s the truth) over the last 20 years and though I’ll never be anything but a Braves fan, it gets old.
He has a frayed labrum and a cyst on his shoulder, which requires surgery and a 4-5 month recovery time.
I’m still reading about the braves because I hate myself!
^ If that’s the case (did they have the dye injection/MRI already? didn’t know they planned to have it this soon), if I were Wren, I would decline his option and try to work out an incentive laden 1 year deal with the understanding they would start talking about another contract late in the season. If McCann wasn’t interested in that option, let him walk.
If he has a possible 5 month recovery time, $12M is just too much under the current payroll restrictions.
I think what pisses me off about MLB’s attitude towards the blown call is how much of a double standard there is. If that had happened to the Red Sox or Yankees, Bud Selig would have been on the fastest plane available to reverse the call. Instead, it’s “Atlanta? Who gives a shit about them?”
This one game playoff thing is just another knee-jerk reaction from Selig. Tie game in the ASG? Make a stupid homefield incentive for the ASG. Unexpected playoff drama and ratings at the end of the season? Make an idiotic one game playoff format. I can’t wait until that prune faced fucktard retires.
Like long Braves fan here. Felt like I wanted to bring some balance to what’s being said about the blown call.
Yes, the infield fly call hurt our chances of a come back. But that call alone didn’t lose the game for us!
E’s and missed opportunities with our bats lost the game.
I hope this makes some of our young players pissed for next year, and that fire carries over to next year.