Atlanta Braves
Home Fried Cooking
By: TJ Hartnett
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
After a travesty of a NLDS Game 1, the Atlanta Braves, behind a stellar outing from a flame-throwing Mike Foltynewicz, evened up the series with a 3-0 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals.
Now the Braves travel to enemy territory. They will need to win at least one of the two games to be played at Busch Stadium in order to keep their hopes alive of winning their first postseason series since 2002 and advancing to the National League Championship Series.
The Braves will be sending their ace and master of the road game Mike Soroka to the mound on Sunday to face off against the Cards’ veteran Adam Wainwright. That should make for a compelling match up, and one worth watching.
The hopes of Braves Country, however, rely less on Soroka’s pitching ability, that is likely to be on point, and more on whether or not he can pitch deep into the game.
The blowing of the 3-1 lead during Thursday’s Game 1 could arguably be attributed to Chris Martin or to Chris Martin’s oblique, which got hurt during his warm up pitches and forced him from the game in the 8th inning.
With that, the reliable Shane Greene/Martin/Mark Melancon triad was disrupted, and instead Brian Snitker brought in Luke Jackson, who promptly gave up a moonshot to Cards’ first baseman Paul Goldschmidt. Then Jackson allowed two more baserunners before Melancon came in and allowed one to score, tying the game up.
It isn’t really Chris Martin’s fault. Jackson was going to be the scapegoat no matter what happened, because he’s Luke Jackson; but Melancon hasn’t been a treat to watch either. He also allowed the tying run to the plate on Friday’s Game 2 before recording the save.
It’s a small sample size, but in the postseason when it’s life or death, a small sample size is enough. It might be time to rethink the way the bullpen is being used going forward.
Martin, unfortunately, isn’t coming back. Even if he heals quickly, taking him off the NLDS roster because of an injury makes him ineligible to return for the rest of the series and for the NLCS as well.
Taking his place on the roster is Julio Teheran. Teheran carried the team on his back for much of the year and also stumbled so mightily in September that his lack of inclusion on the DS roster was a shame but not a shock.
Unfortunately, that gives Snitker two guys, Julio and Jackson, who didn’t enter October on a high note as option from the bullpen.
Melancon hasn’t looked like the kind of shutdown closer that World Series winners tend to employ.
Max Fried has, though. Fried has now made two scoreless one-inning appearances in two games, with two strikeouts to boot.
At this point it’s unlikely that he’ll start Game 4 (it might be Julio, it might be Keuchel on short rest), and instead he’ll continue being a weapon in relief. Even though it’s not the role he thrived in all season, I think it’s time to go all-in on this notion.
Even if he doesn’t necessarily close games out, Fried should be the guy, along with Greene, to get the high-leverage situations.
He’s got a power arm and a sharp curve that can strike batters out with ease, as he’s already shown.
He’s not one of the mercenary relievers that the Braves picked up at the trade deadline, but in these desperate times he’s looking like the guy who can save – no pun intended – the Braves postseason hopes.
Jason Bishop Show With Kipp Branch August 10
Jason Bishop Show with Kipp Branch August 3
Jason Bishop Show with Kipp Branch July 27
Jason Bishop Show with Kipp Branch July 20
Jason Bishop Show w Kipp Branch July 13
Jason Bishop Show w Kipp Branch June 29
Jason Bishop Show w Kipp Branch June 8
Young Guns
By: TJ Hartnett
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
Going into Spring Training, the Atlanta Braves felt like they had two strong anchors in their starting rotation in Mike Foltynewicz and Kevin Gausman.
Both guys had a few years in the bigs under their belts and both had successful campaigns in 2018. Gausman’s success coming after he was traded to Dixie from the Baltimore Orioles, in particular.
It was the rest of the rotation that was covered in question marks. The loss of Anibal Sanchez to Sean Newcomb’s second half crash to the ever-changing consistency of Julio Teheran, the starting corps was less of a strength and more of a potential strength.
The talent was there. The Braves had built up a mountain of wealth in the arms department but there was no track record because a few flashes of brilliance from most of the prospects.
So, there was reasonable concern when both Folty and Gausman couldn’t make it to the finish line of Spring Training healthy. These were the guys Atlanta needed to lean on while the prospects and younger arms of the rotation were put to the test.
Flash forward to the June 1st, the season is two-thirds of the way done, and the Braves have two strong anchors in their rotation: but the twist is that the anchors are two of those same prospects the Braves weren’t sure they could count on in March.
Mike Soroka and Max Fried have been the stalwart performers of Atlanta’s starting rotation in 2019, leading the team in earned run average and wins, respectively, and each of them rank second in the category they aren’t leading in.
In fact, the question marks surround Folty and Gausman, who both returned from the Injured List and have been inconsistent at best (Gausman, for the most part) or just bad at worst (Folty, for the most part). They haven’t been able to secure wins for their team, going 3-8 collectively, and neither can boast an ERA under 5.50.
If there’s good news among the bad, it’s that both are talented enough to break out of these funks. In fact, both have had recent games that looked like a turnaround point only to have poor outings the following turn.
Soroka and Fried, on the other hand, have been consistently great. Fried has kept Atlanta in pretty much every game he’s started, as his 7 wins show. Finally, getting a chance to stick in the rotation (he made a total of 9 starts out of 23 appearances over the past two seasons), Fried is showing why the Braves coveted him so much when they traded Justin Upton to San Diego for him in December of 2014.
Soroka has been a revelation; picking up from where he left off last season before he got hurt and proving that he’s got the moxie to be a top starter even at the age of 21.
Soroka has been so good since joining the rotation that when he went eight innings in San Francisco against the Giants last month and only gave up one run, his ERA actually went up.
The kicker is that the last piece of the rotation puzzle, Julio Teheran, has actually been pretty good this year as well. He may have finally settled into the middle-of-the-rotation guy he was probably always destined to be anyway.
What this all amounts to is this: if (when?) Folty and Gausman figure it out, the Braves rotation will be among the most formidable quintet in the game today. And that’s thanks in large part to the teams two studs: Mike Soroka and Max Fried.
Jason Bishop Show with Kipp Branch June 1
