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Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Braves Insider

Before the season everyone predicted the Braves would be doing good to win 72 games. Now they're on track to win 96 and everyone wants to fire Snitker. They're in first place despite several imperfections. Acuna, Folty, Flowers, and others have missed time.

The Braves do need more pitchers, especially relievers. Teheran is Mister Inconsistent. Saturday's loss won on him. Snit may not make every decision perfectly (neither did Cox, and he's in the Hall of Fame). Hated it Friday night (Saturday morning?) when he used the last position player to bunt (Flaherty). A pitcher could've done that. Saturday or Sunday a pitcher (number 64) laid down a perfect bunt on the first pitch. Snit has to work with the pitchers the Braves General Manager puts on the roster (though Snit takes the heat more so than the GM). After Friday night the Braves called up a new pitcher, and Gwinnett phenom Evan Phillips will be called up soon.

I miss the good old days. Way too many relievers. Too many strikeouts. Everyone swings for the fences. The thing about bunting is that no one knows how to any more. But that pitcher had a great bunt on Sunday. Several times I hear the announcers wondering if a batter will swing 3-0. You'd think Freddie and Markakis might have the green light.

Had Friday night's game gone to the 16th inning, Sunday's starting pitcher Brandon McCarthy would've been called on to pitch the rest of the game. He was already warming up in the bullpen. Of course Phil Neikro appeared in several games as a relief pitcher.

The Braves had two off days last week, and a total of five in June. Would be nice to have that many in August and September. I hear several teams are not happy with the schedule. Off days by month:

4 April
3 May
5 June
3 July (plus 4 day All-Star break)
3 August
2 September

Old fogey me doesn't like all the white shoes players are wearing these days: Albies (who won last night's game with a walkoff home run - above), Dansby, Camargo, Acuna, Teheran, Newcomb, etc. They have rules about shoe color but the only guy who got in trouble is the Cubs Ben Zorbrist - who wears all black PF Flyer high top sneaker spikes. Speaking of shoes, our new neighbor works at Big Peach Running Company, a local shoe store.

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