Frayed Knot

Edgy MD wrote: Now that Reyes is hitting consistently, do you still keep Conforto stapled in that leadoff spot? As I said before, I'm not all that wrapped up with where Conforto hits as long as he gets to do so every day unless and until he completely falls on his face. But given a choice, I think Reyes's sudden streak here is still probably a bit too short to go mucking things around and even 'hot' his OBP will probably fall short of Conforto's anyway.

On the Braves telecast: Chip Carey (to his partner): How many doubles do the Mets have tonight? Simpson: Seven Carey: That may even be too many for my father probably not for his grandfather though

I just figured with a name like Metropoulos, he might want to change the team name to the 'Supermen'.

For a team that seemed like it was trying to score as few runs out of many hits as they've done tonight, it's like they stumbled into a baker's dozen here.

deGrom's outing tonight turns the starting staff's most recent nine outings to: 43.2 IP; 42 RA on 57 hits and 21 BBs -- ERA = 8.65; WHIP = 1.90 On the positive side, the bats have scored five or more runs for seven straight games now, all without Cespedes.

A couple days after the Jeb/Jeter group was said to be the winner of the 'Buy the Marlins' sweepstakes, Rob Manfred declared that things were NOT necessarily over. And now it seems that a billionaire has popped his head into things and may well trump the earlier bid. Billionaire Charles Dean Metropoulos, whose buyout firm controls Hostess Brands, the maker of Twinkies, is interested in making an offer for the team, according to a source with direct knowledge of the situation. Worth $2.4 billion according to Forbes, he has long coveted buying a sports team for sons Evan and Daren.

Sheeesh ... 110 pitches just to get thru 5, and that was after he cruised through the 1st on just 9 pitches. Too bad that was almost certainly JdG's last inning, he may have been our best hitter tonight.

Does FFF ever NOT hit the ball right on the nose?!?!

And this was after both he and Reyes looked like they were going to continue their roles as the 'Pop-up Twins' when they (with help from Walker) killed what could have been a killer 1st inning.

Two out RiSP hits!!! Those are what we COULD have had earlier had the baserunners not decided that they preferred to end innings early.

It is, I believe, Georgian for peaches, although those in the ex-Soviet nation of Georgia might object to the association. 'Peeches' is also considered correct.

I'm sure some are going to seize upon the contradiction of Syndy (with the blond curls) suddenly going from not wanting an examination at all to now wanting an extra one, but that would skip over the fact that this is a different injury from the one that delayed his start for two days earlier in the week.

Those of you who are in town for the game tonight, be sure to pick up some of the state's signature fruit before you go. Although ... something seems to be missing from this particular stand. [fimg=400:1mifdmxc]https://farm1.staticflickr.com/578/32441307325_cbde22f9ca_k.jpg[/fimg:1mifdmxc]

On the post game show, Nelson Figueroa said Harvey had good velocity and had 4 different pitches working, but didn't have command of them. And he kept saying it over and over, like he is getting paid by the word. But one other thing he said that was interesting was that all of his pitches were on the outside half of the plate, he never went inside and the Braves were looking there every at bat. But he never questioned why the catcher didn't set up differently and kept calling for the outside pitches. All I know is that Freddie was right on every pitch Harvey threw. He fouled some off but even those were liners he was either a bit early or late on and he was spitting on those offerings that were off the plate. That his first AB ended in a long HR was the least surprising outcome of the night.

I'm not sure he'll get the chance to turn it around this time. Conforto essentially has to play his way Out of the lineup at this point, Cespedes plays everyday once he's back, Bruce is currently this season's best hitter, and Lagares quite obviously the best defender of the group. So it's tough to see how CG earns more than just occasional ABs once Ces is back - excepting of course if several other OFs get DL'd at the same time so, yeah, he'll probably be in there pretty much every day.

Over the last eight games -- two starts each by Wheeler, Gsellman, and Harvey, plus one from Syndergaard & deGrom -- the staff has racked up a collective: 38.2 IP, 37 Runs allowed (35 earned), on 49 hits + 21 walks. That's an 8.15 ERA and a WHIP of 1.81 Just twice during that span did someone go 7 innings (ZW & JdG - exactly 7 innings once each) and, of the other six starts, only in the last two nights has the starter stayed in long enough to even reach the sixth and those two wound up facing a total of five 6th inning batters and retiring one before being yanked. In all they've averaged under 5 IP/start (4.83) which, needless to say, has put a lot on the pen who haven't exactly responded either. We could do a breakdown on the relievers' sad-sack stats lately although the Sunday Washington game would grossly distort any attempt at analysis even if we were to filter out the "contribution" of Plawecki's outing. Bottom line is that our overall RA/G is the worst in the NL (by a lot) and is virtually deadlocked with Detroit for worst in MLB. The ERA is only 3rd worst in the league but that only shows that we're giving up a lot of unearned runs too. For some reason BB-Ref doesn't have the starter and reliever stats broken out correctly so the starters alone probably aren't that bad, but it's certainly not what we all "knew" was going to be the case coming into the season. And now we have to go forward with our 8th? starter as part of the rotation for the foreseeable future.

Nats lose ... so there's that.

Good thing we didn't spin off Bruce for the proverbial bag of balls during the off-season. We be practically winless without him.

Edgy MD wrote: Larry Vanover with the de rigueur terrible call at first. x2

Not to imply that the Braves haven't been earning their hits ... but do they EVER hit stuff at people? Everything they put their bats on, whether hard hit or not, is between fielders, in front of fielders, just beyond fielders etc.

We've been getting "Out-D'd" this whole series. Most recent series too.

HahnSolo wrote: Edgy MD wrote: He's still working? Is Bayless? Bayless jumped ship a year ago to FoxSports, where he is now basically hosting the same show with Shannon Sharpe in the role of Stephen A. Smith. Stephen A. is still on the show, now joined by Max Kellerman. I'll watch clips of their show online sometimes just to see the dreamy Molly Qerim. Yeah, it's kind of sad that when FOX Sports went to take on ESPN their best idea seemed to be to copy the most ESPN-ish things they did and as such decided to throw mega-bucks to lure away both Skip Bayless and Colin Cowherd, two guys whom they might have been able to pick up on the (relative) cheap had they waited until this recent bloodbath in Bristol. And now for ESPN, as they all but admit that they're now going to stop even pretending to cover baseball on their own and so will farm out all but the Sunday night coverage to outside vendors, they're picking up the most clownish of the MLBN shows to simulcast.

There's been no 'Granderson Suxx' thread this year. How can we possibly expect him to improve?

After get blown past by Brandon Belt in the race to be 1B for SFG, Brett Pill has been plying his trade in Korea for the last few years. Neither Pill brother, as far as I can tell, is any relation to Alison (talk about your swiping right) [fimg=250]http://www.hawtcelebs.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/alison-pill-at-newsroom-season-3-premiere-in-hollywood_1.jpg[/fimg]

So tonight, after our game ends, I flick over to 'Baseball Tonight' on ESPN to hopefully catch some highlights of other games (the Yanx got blow'd out tonight and I wanted to wallow in it). But despite the fact that the guide Said that BB2N was airing from 10 to 11, I was instead treated to a LeBron press conference because he apparently won Game 1 of a series which no one on earth thinks his team has even a shot at losing. Hey "Worldwide Leader in Sports", do you think that maybe your increasing insistence that there are in fact just TWO sports in this country might be part of the reason your subscriber base is plummeting?