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Comments
It takes time to develop a roster full of very young pitchers. You'll have an occasional phenom who steps in at 20 years old and never struggles, but those are rare. We're working with so many guys who are still figuring it out it would have taken a near miracle to not have quite a few bumps in the road. Also, not all of these guys will pan out.
I've said for a couple of years Soroka is my pick to be the best of the bunch if he can stay healthy he looks really special. Folty has already had his breakout year, I just hope changing pitching coaches doesn't stunt development with some of these guys.
Soroka was sharp again last night. Hopefully his bumps will be fewer than most. Freid looks like a keeper as well. I'm feeling better about our pitching now...the starters at least. The bullpen...yikes...it scares me to death. I like our fielding and the offense has been productive. Donaldson is starting to earn some of his 23 million. Fingers crossed.
I am wondering if young Ozzie would be better served to just hit right handed. I recall reading a book by hitting guru Charlie Lau's son where he said unless averages from both sides are pretty equivalent, players should stick with their best side. Albies is young but has always, even in the minors, I think, been a good bit better from the right side.
The Braves do not deserve fan support if they aren’t willing to reward it by signing Craig Kimbrel. This bullpen is ridiculous. I have no idea what is going on behind the scenes, but if this doesn’t get done and the Braves flounder away the entire year because of blown leads late in the game then I will not jump back on the wagon train when they get things righted the way I did in 92 after I had ditched them for trading away Murphy. This is pure crapola by the Braves.
Note: I will not debate the merits of trading away Dale Murphy. He was my childhood baseball idol. Emotion trumped production for me.
@WCDawg your concern about changing pitching coaches and stunting development is meritless. These guys change pitching coaches every year as they move through the minor league system, often several times in one season. Choppy was no miracle worker.
The Athletic has a good article on Ozzie and his switch hitting. The beginning of the season he was doing well and going opposite field when batting left handed. He's cooled off a good bit, but he's still young and has time to adjust and improve, which he's showing he can do. Also, when you've been switch-hitting your whole life, he could be lost seeing a RHP while batting right handed. He hasn't seen a ball come at him from that angle ever, that could lead to a worse BA batting full-time right handed.
Was reading an article about Culberson, and knew he hadn't played much, but he's only had 12 at bats all season, and just 2 1/3 innings in the field. He's 5 for 12 with 2 doubles, 2 HRs, and 6 RBIs.
Might be time to let him play over Camargo (who's first off the bench now and first to get spot starts, but is batting .230), at least a start here and there for Culberson would be nice to see.
Donm. I get Lau's argument...sort of. If a switch hitter bats .350 against righties and .270 against lefties should he bat righty against lefties if he hits them at a .240 clip ? The other approach would be to sit a player when the team faces a right handed hitter if the player is weak against righties, but that would open up a whole set of issues with roster management.
It gets weird if you start to platoon guys when you don't necessarily need to. If a guy is good against righties but couldn't hit a LHP if he put the ball on a tee, then maybe you go there.
Not to open this can of worms again, but Dennis Lewallyn has really been the "guy" for the Braves really as the finishing school pitching coach if we're going to give credit to any pitching coach considering that not much time is spent in AAA by most big prospects. I don't remember full details because of how bad my memory is, but just as an example, Touki took off when he got paired with Lewallyn starting back in 2017 and as an even funnier example, although he's a meh guy if anything as a SP, Lucas Sims was bad in 2016 unless he was paired with that guy. There's good reason that he was one of the guys that they kept in the organization despite the mostly cleaned house on the pitching side. He's really good.
Bank. I strongly disagree. young pitchers in the grad school portion of their development like Soroka, Newcomb, Folty and others had Hernandez as their pitching coach for 2 years. There was both individual and team improvements year over year. Team wise the gains were enormous. It was silly at best to change pitching coaches for the supposed reasons GG mentioned. Just because there was a plan from 2017 to replace somebody doesn't mean it made sense in 2018/2019.
I need somewhere to be angry. With a guy on first with no outs and Matt Joyce batting, why the bleep wouldn’t you bunt? Joyce isn’t exactly a masher. Instead, he strikes out and Snit sends Culberson to get thrown out at second. Flowers strikes out, game over. It pissed me off last year too, but our aversion to bunting is abhorrent. I like Snit, but he can’t manage high leverage situations.
Except Joyce is a masher (I don't consider good average bats mashers here, I consider guys that can hit the HR at a good clip to be) and in today's game, nobody looks to bunt in that situation, with me even HEARING a national announcer saying that bunting, unless you're the pitcher with 1 man on is not improving your probability to score straight up. It's not just a Snitker thing, it's an every manager thing in MLB today. Every single one of them. Old school baseball is as good as dead and gone. If you want to see old school baseball, you'd have to watch Japan or college baseball.
Charlie went on his own there, to boot.
To boot, I think Snitker did look for the bunt a lot when he was first manager, but he was likely shown stats that show it doesn't actually help as much as the old school thought is, and now he doesn't bunt. Even in the case where it'd actually be a good choice (1st/2nd nobody out).
Is there an unwritten rule about bunting when the shift is in play? Don’t understand why guys don’t do it more often. A little off topic but it bugs the $ht out of me!
Teams would very happily take the power hitter taking the weak single instead of going for more.
i had a longer post but it's late and my tablet acting crazy deleted it.