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Braves Ongoing Season Comments Thread..
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Luke is a good pitcher and a great story, and absolutely one of our best bullpen options this season.
He also leads the NL in blown saves. I think he could be a solid 7th or 8th inning guy but our postseason ceiling will be much lower with him out there in the 9th. It isn’t all his fault; bad luck and bad defense cost him a couple saves, but at some point you just have to throw clean innings and he hasn’t done enough of that.
Was encouraging to watch Riley’s at-bats last night, best contact he’s made in the last 3 or 4 weeks. Hopefully he’s figuring some things out and making adjustments like Dansby has made this year. When Riley makes good contact, the bottom of our lineup is fun to watch.
Leaving the ball up but with good suddenness and movement is ok, Rivera was the best closer in history using that high cutter so much every hitter knew it was coming but it was near unhittable.. Jackson hangs too many ''mistake pitches'' that are flat, in hitters' wheel house and often telegraphed to boot. It's not so much that he makes mistakes as it is he usually makes them at the very worst point possible. There have been closers who gave up cheap runs with a 3 run lead but getting to them when the lead was 1 was near impossible. This is why Jackson is a bad closer right now, he doesn't have the thing in his makeup to finish.
Some guys just don’t have the mental aspect of closing.
So what are everyone thoughts on the possibilities of Mike Minor coming back to Atlanta?
Oh, lookie there, what I was worried about is happening third time through.
Outside the Trea double, just soft single after soft single after soft single. That tends to happen at times against sinkerballing pitchers.
Based off the xBA's on statcast in the 5th, Trea's double should've been harmless.
Instead you had a bunch of singles, only two balls were hit hard, but they were perfectly placed singles, and you have 4 on the board.
GG you're just FOS on this, I'm done with you.
Minter make me sick
Except I'm not the only person that's talking about this on Soroka, and the game in general. There are plenty of people tonight talking about how it's a flaw for Soroka to rely on weak contact over Ks, because sometimes the weak contact's just gonna fall on ya even if you place your pitches where you want them to be, and about how the Nationals were getting lucky with Sanchez, the PITCHER getting a perfectly placed weak groundball hit, Eaton chopping the ball into no man's land, then a jam shot hit by Rendon. Then later, in the next inning, a harder hit ball then probably all but 2 in the 5th ended the inning. Heck, I think my 57 and 56 year old parents would even agree with the idea of good luck/bad luck happening. And they're old school like you, WC.
Then posts like:
Our xBA is .262 vs their .228 though.
Average fielder gets Anibal and Rendon.
What a stup.id inning...
All started by a cra.p dribbler...sheesh...
This is why you strike people out
A couple luck hits this inning.
Did the spirit of Luke Jackson take over Soroka's body?
But like I said, I think we can move on. You're not going to agree and you'll continue on with your eye-testing self. Even when I have eye test old school parents that actually agree with me at times on this, and not to be nice, either. They can see when two choppers end up skipping over defenders and it causes runs. And they can see when a pitcher is actually pitching badly too.
I'm having trouble with a new router so while I'm able to get a signal I'm going to explain my distaste with what GG has been posting about Soroka. While he was having one of the best runs by a rookie in history, not a word. Then when he has a glitch she's on here explaining how she knew it was inevitable based on some metrics. Now when the kid has a bad night, here she is going na, na I told you so... If a curve is hung, it gets hit, if a fast ball is high and flat, it gets hit. Mike is just not as sharp right now, it's not rocket science.
As far as Scherzer and Verlander. Neither made the majors till they were 23 years old and neither had truly dominant years till they were 28. Yet she acts like because of their pitch variety it was inevitable they would succeed and because of his pitch variety Soroka is predetermined by the metric gods to have a lesser career. These things are nonsense, they are insulting to Soroka. He is a 21 year old kid. I don't know if he'll be able to consistently have the command that made him remarkably affective earlier this season, and neither does GG, but he has a real chance to be special, that much I know.
Well, it was true. I was saying so earlier in my other channels plenty and I'll believe it forever (I said plenty at other places that I think Soroka is much more Hudson than Maddux and he can't do what he was doing early on forever, the difference is most love it as they loved Hudson). I also believe that, and I know I'm about to get hit with another downvote and I don't care, but because of his mind, he's probably closer to hitting his ceiling, and it doesn't matter that he's a 21 year old playing in the majors. I don't think he has too much better than what this season might end as. He's Nola/Buehler from 2018 in that 2019 is likely about to be one of his top years. It's not to say that he can't have other great years, but it's likely it's one of his top years and that a top year from him is already known (2.5-2.8 ERA).
Edit: Just got people to even agree with me on the idea that Soroka is closer to his ceiling that the norm.
Notice that I said something during the SD game too. I noted that SD was getting weak BS hits, and I noted that the Nats were getting weak BS hits too, they really should not have gotten 3 of the hits. At times, it's going to happen to sinkerballers. They're gonna have episodes in which the weak contact gets perfectly placed for them. Even if you place a pitch right on the corner.
I'll be here all the time. If you want to ignore it, then just ignore me, but I'm gonna be here, good or bad. I just wasn't saying stuff as much because there wasn't a thread until mid May.
First off I disagree that Soroka is a sinker ball pitcher. At least no more than a pitcher with a tight low curve or a sharp breaking slider is. When Mike had command and control earlier he had the ability to throw inside, outside, mid-high to low, all with excellent action. I don't care what type pitches you have if you can't hit your spot or leave them hanging you won't have consistent success. Touki has first rate velocity and movement, but he has very low command and control, and he won't have much of a career because of it if he can't get past his wildness.
Bottom line, if you don't have command and control it won't matter what you're throwing in the long run, you won't be successful. If you do have command and control it won't matter much what you're throwing either, you will be successful. Now when I allude to command I mean you can make the ball perform certain actions. If you throw anything flat and straight much you will get hammered.
@GeorgiaGirl I wasn’t able to watch tonight, but if the stats you touted on xba are right it’s probably just babip and sequencing bad luck. You’re right that that is bound to happen every now and then to guys who give up a lot of weak contact. Nothing too discouraging to me, it’s bound to happen.
its a reason I was happy he got so many k’s last start. As I’m sure you know, Ivan the great was saying he suspected soroka could get more K’s, but is content to generate weaker contact early in at bats. While he is mature and close to his ceiling, he could still be searching to optimize his approach.
But as long as he is pitching as he is now, with low hr/9 and low walk rate with respectable K/9, I think he is still a #1. Agree he is more Hudson than Maddux, but I’ll be damned if Hudson wasn’t really good for us.
On a semi related note, Ian Anderson is striking out tons of guys in double A. He is starting to approach soroka prospect status for me, a guy where I think he has a really highchance of being a TOR starter.
The difference in Hudson and Soroka, at least A big difference is delivery. Tim had huge sweeping arm action that was never going to lend itself to consistently excellent control. Soroka is closer to Maddux with his tight, controlled, repeatable delivery. It's what made his remarkable run possible. The question in my opinion isn't measurable, it's makeup. If Soroka turns out to have anywhere near Greg's makeup and he stays relatively healthy, he will be exceptional. It's the human factor, the one thing we can't know for sure till it plays out.
He did give up two rockets, but in between those, here was that silly 5th inning:
Anibal Sanchez, the pitcher: On 0-2, he dribbled the ball too slow for Donaldson to glove it. 63.4 MPH and a .200 xBA.
Adam Eaton: Hit a chopper that was so slow that statcast didn't even record any numbers on it. It's honestly the stuff that really makes me steam at all times.
Anthony Rendon: Hit a single that was just out of the reach of Markakis. This also had a .220 xBA.
It was like Luke Jackson had transferred to the mound for one inning in those sequences. You can't tell me that luck can be controlled. If it can be controlled, then Chris Johnson's 2013 would've continued, and it didn't.
There was something that I said in another one of my channels that I didn't say here though. The game plan was fairly clearly to me to throw a first pitch on the plate, then go to the off speed and get swings on them, and Nats batters kept taking it until the 3rd time through. That wasn't adjusted to until after multiple first pitch hits. Sadly...credit to them and boo us for not adjusting until too late.
Oh, and also to boot, I don't know if it was a missed spot and I'm not gonna look at the video of it for now, but while it was indeed hit hard, the Adams HR was hit on a low pitch that was on the corner. Be sure to keep the ball low it'll work to get batters out 9 times out of 10...something something.
Also, folks in my chat did help me cool off from being furious/hot (as I'm really not hating the kid at all), but they also said stuff that I can barely get. Soroka was good last year...and honestly unlucky then too at times. But he made an adjustment to his sinker that was key in the world of bouncy balls. He changed the spin on his sinker to where it breaks more horizontally. That's key for his HR suppression today in the new age of low ball hitters that can hit sinkers and low in the strike zone pitches in the air hard.
A ''sinker ball pitcher'' is a one trick pony. One trick ponies are going to have problems because they are easy to read.
Soroka has action on his pitches in every zone when he's on top of his game. Even within those zones he can cut them in or out with some combination of sinking action usually mixed in. That is why hitters were constantly off balance. It was almost impossible to have a good idea where the ball was going to be.
That and his calm was what drew my attention when he was barely 19 years old. I just hope he can regain that mastery of himself and maintain it.
One more point. If both teams stay on the trajectory of the past 2 months Washington will win The Eastern Division, it's math. I think they have a better than 50% chance of overtaking us if we don't make a move to bring in a very good starter and maybe a closer as well.
Washington has an excellent club - a good lineup and great pitching. Not surprising they are on a roll. We've hit a bump in the road. Baseball is a game of averages. They'll slow a little (hopefully - if not they are a truly great club) and hopefully we'll pick it up a bit.
picking any stat - advanced or otherwise - from a single game makes little sense. Next game that dribbler will be an out or a line drive hit right at someone. It's always been that way.