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Post by wncbravesfan on Oct 5, 2023 12:33:19 GMT -5
Mark Bowman @mlbbowman · 11m AJ Smith-Shawver? Kyle Wright? Michael Tonkin? A third catcher? 12 pitchers? These are all questions I pondered before compiling this NLDS roster projection (Spoiler Alert: this one includes Ozuna)
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Post by wncbravesfan on Oct 5, 2023 12:39:20 GMT -5
Atlanta Braves@braves · 1h Final day of Postseason Workouts!
Home: Acuña Jr. RF Harris II CF Riley 3B Olson DH Albies 2B Ozuna 1B d’Arnaud C Rosario LF Lopez SS - Vines P
Visitors: Pillar LF Murphy C Arcia DH Grissom 2B Wall CF Williams 1B Hilliard RF Shewmake 3B Waddell SS - Elder P
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Post by wncbravesfan on Oct 5, 2023 13:45:37 GMT -5
Jake Mastroianni@ShortStopBall · 35m I said the other day I’m leaning towards starting Wright in Game 3. If you’re only going to use him once in this series, then let him start and see how far he can go. And if you do that, is there a need for Elder? Would you rather have Tonkin or Elder in the bullpen? Quote Mark Bowman @mlbbowman · 1h AJ Smith-Shawver? Kyle Wright? Michael Tonkin? A third catcher? 12 pitchers? These are all questions I pondered before compiling this NLDS roster projection (Spoiler Alert: this one includes Ozuna) mlb.com/news/braves-2023-nl-division-series-roster
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Post by Fumbduckery on Oct 5, 2023 14:21:00 GMT -5
Matt Gelb @mattgelb · 11h Phillies have a decision to make with Game 1 of the NLDS. Zack Wheeler will pitch Game 2. Aaron Nola will have Game 3 back at Citizens Bank Park. WAT ABOUT MICHAEL LORENZENZ, TEH GOD OF ALL PITCHERZ EVAR???
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Post by PABraveFan on Oct 5, 2023 18:28:26 GMT -5
Not much respect for a team that won their division by 14 games.
All of which makes this a close one, yet we have enough concerns about Atlanta’s pitching -- a 4.76 second-half ERA, which ballooned to 5.61 in September -- and we like what the Phillies have done on the mound enough that we think they’re going to squeak this one out. The best team in the regular season isn’t always the one that wins a short season in October.
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Post by Fumbduckery on Oct 5, 2023 18:54:54 GMT -5
I think it’s vital that Strider be on in game 1. If he pitches a strong game I predict we’ll sweep this freaking series. If he throws 68 pitches in the first two innings and gives up 6 runs we may never get our feet back under us.
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Post by Hart's Middle Finger on Oct 6, 2023 7:36:58 GMT -5
Do you think getting traded lit the fire to prove the Braves wrong… all bat, no glove? I do. To me, he was the happy warrior (similar to Arcia’s situation) in that he was so psyched to be playing for this team, the Braves, that it either crushed him or made him angry and he used that emotion to work hard and prove everybody wrong. I really don't know what to make of it, I can see him being very motivated but it's possible too he just got someone to work with his defense that knew what they were doing. I'd like to know the story, surely somebody worked with him to some degree. I don;t think a guy can be so bad at catching that the team is looking for another position for him, then he goes to another team and he's suddenly the #1 rated catcher in baseball defensively. That's just crazy. I thought he was getting much better defensively while still here, and was shocked by the trade thinking we gave up too much for a defensive upgrade over a guy still getting better in that area. Then I got over it with Smurph's first half, but now I'm back in that unhappy place again.
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Post by Hart's Middle Finger on Oct 6, 2023 7:39:59 GMT -5
Murphy, like Olson, came to a new league… he may have a turn around season in ‘24, after this year of transition is behind him… hopefully. His season was phenomenal here until the second half. Usually those league transitional issues manifest themselves at the beginning.
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Post by wncbravesfan on Oct 6, 2023 8:27:44 GMT -5
Mark Bowman @mlbbowman · 15h Michael Harris' opposite-field homer in the first accounted for the only two runs Elder allowed over 4.2 innings. He allowed four hits and recorded a strike with 46 of 75 pitches. He'd have an extra day of rest entering his potential Game 3 start.
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Post by PABraveFan on Oct 6, 2023 8:38:34 GMT -5
Mark Bowman @mlbbowman · 15h Michael Harris' opposite-field homer in the first accounted for the only two runs Elder allowed over 4.2 innings. He allowed four hits and recorded a strike with 46 of 75 pitches. He'd have an extra day of rest entering his potential Game 3 start. I assume the other run that scored was via a walk. That would make sense.
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Post by wncbravesfan on Oct 6, 2023 8:55:48 GMT -5
Justin Toscano @justinctoscano · 5m Braves fans: You can hear @brandongaudin this weekend. He’s calling Sunday’s Falcons game for FOX. Our @dorlandoajc spoke to Brandon, who says in here he’s got a lot of faith in the Braves this postseason.
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Post by wncbravesfan on Oct 6, 2023 9:10:23 GMT -5
Mark Bowman @mlbbowman Nick Anderson is back and he's throwing 93-94. Feels like a later-round option. He allowed the most recent of the 45 homers Ozuna has hit over the past few days.
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Post by wncbravesfan on Oct 6, 2023 9:16:16 GMT -5
Is pressure on Braves? They face Phillies in NLDS after losing to them last October
David O'Brien ATLANTA — The Braves are a record-breaking offensive juggernaut that finished with a majors-leading 104 wins and enters the postseason as oddsmakers’ favorites to win the World Series. It would be their second title in three years if they can do it.
Do the Braves feel additional pressure entering the playoffs compared to years past?
It’s a question asked not just because they are World Series favorites and the focus of a lot of national attention, the likes of which they didn’t have to deal with entering the 2021 postseason when they won it all. There was also a good chance they’d have a division series matchup with a familiar foe, the Philadelphia Phillies, who swept the Marlins in two games Tuesday and Wednesday to win their Wild Card Series.
Read more: Phillies-Braves 2.0: Ready for an NLDS rematch featuring baseball’s best rivalry
A year ago, the Phillies upset the Braves in a similar situation in the NLDS, when Atlanta went in with two of its top starting pitchers at less than full strength and came out flat offensively after getting a first-round bye. The Braves had a five-day layoff between the regular season and the NLDS while the Phillies played a Wild Card Series.
First, the point about being favored to win it all this year.
“No, I don’t think it adds pressure,” said Braves first baseman Matt Olson, who led the majors with 54 home runs and 139 RBIs, the first Brave to lead MLB in both categories since the legendary Hank Aaron in 1957. “I mean, people are aware of the season that we’ve had. (Opponents are) always going to bring their best. But I don’t think it puts any sort of target (on us). Especially now, in the playoffs — anything can happen.
“It’s gonna be the best team, the hottest team. We’ve just got to put our heads down and do our thing.”
Olson is right. Anything can happen and often does in the postseason, where surging wild-card teams have won the World Series multiple times and prohibitive favorites have lost in the division series or league championship series. Keep in mind that the Marlins have won two World Series and still haven’t won a division title.
Read more: Phillies-Braves 2.0: Ready for an NLDS rematch featuring baseball’s best rivalry?
Those 87-win Phillies made it to the World Series last year. The 93-win Washington Nationals won the World Series in 2019. The 101-win Mets didn’t make it out of the wild-card round last year. And those are just examples from within the NL East. Out West, just last year the 111-win Dodgers also lost in the division series.
“We all know, baseball’s crazy,” said Braves third baseman Austin Riley, who had 37 home runs and 97 RBIs, one of a record four Braves to surpass 35 homers in 2023. “I mean, we had the best record in baseball, and Oakland beat us two out of three.”
Indeed, the Athletics were 10-45 before beating the Braves twice in a three-game series May 29-31 at Oakland.
“I feel like baseball’s the only game where that can happen,” Riley said. “But I don’t think that’s going through our minds at all (entering the postseason). … I don’t think there’s any added pressure from that standpoint at all.”
The Braves had the first-round bye and layoff again this year. In a new wrinkle, they’ve been playing intrasquad games this week at Truist Park, with hitters facing real pitching, in hopes of staying sharp and avoiding a replay of last October. They secured home-field advantage throughout the postseason with their MLB-best record.
Some Braves say they get the sense that many teams have been especially motivated to beat them this season, that they get their opponents’ best shot. But as Olson alluded to, that’s a regular-season thing; during the postseason teams are just playing to win at all costs, regardless of opponent.
“I wouldn’t say it’s pressure,” Braves center fielder Michael Harris II said. “I guess because we have the best record, it seems as if teams would try even harder to knock us out because everybody’s chasing us, we have a target on our back. But I wouldn’t say pressure.”
Not even in their first postseason round, the NLDS, after losing in this round a year ago?
“Obviously you have to win, to get past that series first, to get on to the next one,” Harris said. “But we’re not pressuring each other, drilling stuff into each other’s heads saying ‘we have to win.’ We’re just going to go out there and try to do what we’ve been doing all year.”
But let’s be honest: If the Braves were to lose in consecutive postseasons to wild-card Phillies teams after totaling 205 wins and two division titles to the Phillies’ 177 wins over the past two regular seasons, and after the Braves went 8-5 against the Phillies this season including 5-1 in Philadelphia, needless to say, it would not be a pleasant offseason for Atlanta baseball fans.
Or Braves players, coaches and management.
But pressure isn’t something that manager Brian Snitker worries about with this team. He’s seen the Braves respond enough times to all kinds of adversity and believes they will again.
“These guys have experienced everything you can experience in the game — all the big games, the must-win games, all that,” Snitker said. “They’ve experienced everything. They’re all still young big leaguers in my opinion, and they’ve experienced everything that they could. So I don’t know that any situation is too much for them. They embrace it, and that’s why they work. I think they enjoy this time of year and having to win games.”
But the Braves again go into the division series with pitching issues. One of their top three starters, veteran Charlie Morton — far and away the Braves’ most accomplished postseason pitcher — will miss the NLDS with inflammation of his right index finger. The Braves anticipate having him ready for the NLCS if they advance.
Their ace and next most-experienced postseason pitcher is Max Fried, who, like Morton, ended the regular season on the 15-day injured list with an index finger issue. In Fried’s case, it’s a recurring blister that cropped up in each of his last two regular-season starts.
“We could be in a better spot,” said Hall of Famer Chipper Jones, the former third baseman and career-long Brave who now serves as a hitting consultant for the team. “I don’t think there’s much of a question as far as Fried goes. And we’ll cut and paste in the first series and hope that we get Charlie back. Hey, we’re in the tournament, we’ll see what happens.”
Jones added, “Bullpen’s got to do their thing. They’re gonna have to cover three or four innings every game. I mean, who would’ve seen what Will Smith did (in the 2021 postseason)? Nobody saw that coming, but you get hot at the right time.”
Fried pitched five innings in an intrasquad game Tuesday, wearing a Band-Aid for the last four of those innings as a precautionary measure, and Snitker said Fried should be fine for the NLDS. Pitchers are prohibited from wearing Band-Aids or any type of protective tape or covering on their fingers in major-league games.
Fried is expected to start Game 2 against the Phillies on Monday, with record-breaking strikeout pitcher Spencer Strider starting Game 1.
Strider has dominated the Phillies in his first two seasons, going 8-0 with a 1.90 ERA in eight games. However, in his only postseason start against them — Strider’s only playoff start — he was coming off an oblique strain and faded in the third inning of a Game 3 loss in the division series, giving up three hits and five runs in 2 1/3 innings.
Fried is 4-4 with a 3.62 ERA in 19 games (13 starts) against the Phillies. But he, too, had a rough ride last fall after entering the division series coming off a flu bug that cost the slender lefty about 15 pounds he couldn’t afford to lose. Fried was rocked for eight hits and six runs (four earned) in a Game 1 loss in that series. That was after going 6-3 with a 3.68 ERA in his previous nine postseason starts, including his famously stellar performance in the clinching World Series Game 6 win at Houston in 2021 when Fried pitched six scoreless innings of four-hit ball.
Does the memory of last year’s division-series loss to the Phillies add pressure for these Braves, most of whom were on that team?
“No,” Olson said succinctly.
“Not that I’ve noticed,” Riley said.
It helps that the Braves know they can slug, or out-slug, any team they face under almost any circumstances, something the Braves believe because they’ve done it all season. They tied an MLB single-season record with 307 homers, while the Dodgers’ had the second-most with 249 and the Phillies were sixth in the majors with 220. The margins were smaller after the All-Star break, when the Braves led the majors with 138 homers and 448 runs in 73 games, and the Phillies were fifth with 121 homers and sixth in runs with 395 in 73 games.
The Braves had four of the top seven NL home-run leaders with Olson, Ronald Acuña Jr., Marcell Ozuna and Riley, and five of the top 11 with Ozzie Albies (33) included. Albies also had 109 RBIs to finish third in the NL behind Olson and the Mets’ Pete Alonso (118), and the Braves tied an MLB record with five hitters with at least 95 RBIs.
The Phillies had the edge in pitching, with a 4.02 ERA to Atlanta’s 4.14 for the season. It was a considerably larger advantage after the All-Star break, with Philadelphia posting a 3.98 ERA to Atlanta’s 4.76. The Phillies’ bullpen is much improved and has been particularly sharp down the stretch, finishing with a 3.56 ERA to the Braves’ 3.81, but with more of Philly’s key relievers pitching at a high level in the last month of the season.
Atlanta’s 5.32 bullpen ERA in September was fourth-worst in the majors and more than twice as high as Philadelphia’s 2.74, which was fourth-best in the majors for the month.
The Braves will lean heavily on lefty A.J. Minter, who along with Smith and Tyler Matzek was part of the three-headed bullpen beast that helped carry them to the World Series championship two years ago. Minter started slowly this year but reclaimed his spot as one of MLB’s top lefty relievers well before midseason and has been the Braves’ most consistent bullpen arm.
Count Minter among the Braves who don’t think the pressure will be a problem.
“I think it brings the best out of both teams. It makes us play better,” Minter said. “Look, it’s the postseason, it doesn’t get any more stressful or hyped than this. So it’s just all about going out and eliminating the stupid mistakes and careless mistakes, and just keep playing like we’ve been playing all year.”
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joeyg39
Low A Farmhand
Go Phillies!
Posts: 963
Likes: 64
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Post by joeyg39 on Oct 6, 2023 11:28:52 GMT -5
Philly sports talk here can't wait for it to start. Talkin a ton of shyt. They say that the Phils are living rent free in Braves' head. That Strider has rabbit ears and will be unnerved at CBP. That they can match Braves bats. That Braves pitchers are nicked up... while Philly pitchers are at the top of their game. Not altogether untrue... but I hope not. Braves have to come out sluggin...
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Post by wncbravesfan on Oct 6, 2023 16:33:22 GMT -5
Philly sports talk here can't wait for it to start. Talkin a ton of shyt. They say that the Phils are living rent free in Braves' head. That Strider has rabbit ears and will be unnerved at CBP. That they can match Braves bats. That Braves pitchers are nicked up... while Philly pitchers are at the top of their game. Not altogether untrue... but I hope not. Braves have to come out sluggin... Strider & Fried are certainly imposing.
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