It had that feel of a game that the Braves were going to squander. Top 2, Trevor Story, who was amidst a horrible start to his Red Sox career, connected with his 1st HR of the season.
2-0
In the 3rd, Jackie Bradley Jr. singles, then gets caught stealing, and that turned out to be a very important moment in the game as Rafael Devers doubled, then J. D. Martinez singled him in. If JBJ stays put, that inning could’ve looked very differently.
3-0
Travis Demeritte, whom I like very much, homered in the bottom 1/2 to cut the lead to 1, then Dansby Swanson walked (yes, it happened, I saw it), stole 2nd and came in on Matt Olson‘s towering double, which would’ve been a homer had the ball not been made out of Charmin.
3-3.
The score stayed that way as Ian Anderson danced around 7 hits, 3 of which were doubles and 1 a HR, but kept the team in the game. Honestly, the dude is playing a dangerous game and his 1.4 WHIP is going to start haunting him soon. The Braves bullpen (Colin McHugh, A.J. Minter, Will Smith, Kenley Jansen) were on point, throwing 3.2 innings of 0 hit, 2 walk, and 7K baseball to get the game to the bottom of the 9th.
And here’s where we get to talk about the hero of the game. Don’t deny it, when you saw Orlando Arcia‘s name penciled in as the DH over William Contreras, or at the least, over Marcell Ozuna in the DH and Arcia in LF, you were perturbed. I was. But really should we have been? Arcia hadn’t been bad. His OPS was in the mid .700s and his ABs weren’t 1/2 bad. Every night, baseball humbles some fan after screaming at the TV and last night was our turn. Orlando Arcia went 3-4, a triple short of the cycle, scored 2 runs, and walked it off last night in brilliant fashion.
And the best part of the walkoff isn’t caught in this first video, rather a 2nd angle, in which it shows Orlando Arcia high 5ing all of his coaches, then gives Brian Snitker a full-on hug. This is the reason he’s the Braves manager. The players love him.
Braves will host the Padres for a weekend series and it’s time to see what they’ve got.
Did you really write this one, Ryan?
Great game. More please.
Loved that for Arcia. We have a DH now and he’s a bench bat. He plays positions where guys don’t take days off. If you’re going to have him on the roster, you’re going to have to use him. So I didn’t have an issue at all with putting Arcia in at DH. Same with Thornburg coming in in the 9th the other day; if you have a quality player and he’s on the roster, eventually he’s going to have to find himself into the game, and it’s not always going to be when you’re up or down 10 runs.
The Braves just won their arb case against Austin Riley — he wanted $4.25 million, but they’ll only pay him $3.95 million. That feels like a really dumb way to save $300,000. Can we please just sign him to a long-term deal and buy out his arb years?
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/33898708/atlanta-braves-beat-3b-austin-riley-st-louis-cardindals-defeat-tyler-oneill-arbitration
The number of people on Twitter complaining about being unable to find the Braves game this weekend is going to be high. Friday night’s game is only on Apple TV Plus, Sunday’s game is at 11:30 a.m. and only on Peacock, and Saturday’s game is on Bally Sports and FS1, but is at 4 p.m. instead of the standard 7:15.
For the record, Apple isn’t requiring folks to pay for a subscription to watch games on that, but to watch the game on Peacock, you’ll have to sign up for their premium service at $5 a month.
@4 do you happen to know if MLB.tv is blacked out for those games?
If mlb.tv blacks those games out it is a crime
I’m not at all loving that 11:35 a.m. start time on Sunday…
From AJC:
Another adjustment for Braves fans this weekend is Sunday’s starting time, two hours earlier than normal for Sunday home games.
Peacock’s deal calls for its Sunday telecasts to start at 11:30 a.m. through June 12 and at noon after June 12. The early time slots appealed to Peacock because of the absence of competition from other MLB games around the country for the first 90 minutes to two hours of the telecasts, but may prove less popular with fans attending in person.
“Look, there’s not a lot of exclusive hours around baseball,” [Peacock’s Rick] Cordella said. “There’s a lot of baseball played each and every night, and trying to find where can you slot in an area where there’s nothing else going on for the baseball fan … was a key component of the deal.
“I credit baseball. We kind of came with this sort of crazy idea, and they kind of said yes. But it was always a big part of what we were trying to do.”
MLB.TV will not be showing the two streaming only games. I think they will be showing the Saturday game which almost everybody can get nationally anyway.
I guess this is one of those times where it’s good to be a radio weirdo.
If you do anything off a streaming device (Roku, Chromecast, what have you), the Apple one is pretty easy. I do understand that some people do not have one of those devices, though. The Peacock one, though, which is effectively a $5 pay-per-view unless you already subscribe to Peacock, does chap me somewhat. I’ll probably be recapping that game off of a box score and highlights.
FWIW, looks like Robinson Cano will join the Padres in ATL.
@7 – I hate the Peacock time slots for Sunday games. A lot of people in the Braves’ viewing market are in the Central time zone and many attend church. For me, I’m in the central time zone, attend church, and then go out to eat afterwards. I’ll miss most, if not all of the game.
That being said, I looked at the online schedule at mlb.com and it shows all Sunday home games starting at 1:35 PM EDT. Is the schedule incorrect?
To anyone thinking about watching Friday and Sunday, that will only encourage them.
@5 and @6 in my experience with watching out-of-market, the Apple TV games are blacked out out-of-market but the Amazon games are not; just my experience, though!
Does anyone know anything about Landon Stephens? The LF hit his 10th HR for Rome yesterday.
He’s 24 in High-A. So not a prospect I assume?
Stevens is an undrafted free agent from Miami of Ohio which is not a baseball power. In his favor, his draft year was 2020 when it only went 5 rounds and he would have been taken in a normal year. A big kid, he is more mobile than you might think and more or less fights the outfield to a draw while he grades out as average at first.
Rome is now Hi-A so his current 900+ OPS is impressive, especially as he plays at Rome which suppresses power. Because of the lost year the average age at various levels has increased by about a year so 24 is old as a prospect — but not excessively so.
Unfortunately he strikes out at a 40% clip and that likely spells doom unless he can make better contact
In case no one else noticed it, the Braves approached Brett Gardner after the Rosario injury but Gardner said (again) that if he played it would only be for the Yankees.
RAJ out again tonight
#17
C’mon, Brett… relax.
Even Babe Ruth played for the Braves.
I get that some players — as I recall, Bernie Williams was another — played their whole career in one uniform, and they may fear to look silly in another team’s uniform, like Willie with the Mets.
Given your scouting report of what remains of Brett Gardner, Ububba, I’m glad he said no.
Yeah, I think Demeritte is doing a good job. Definitely better than toasted Gardner would have done.
That was a perfect throw by Profar. Dang. No chance Demeritte was scoring.
I don’t hate the Apple TV thing. It’s true 4K, and any broadcast without Chip is good with me. The Peacock thing, especially with the morning first pitch, is BS.
I love Guillermo Heredia.
@25
I don’t…over the top…as a Braves fan I’m embarrassed…this isn’t f’ing college football, wrong arena.
and…Olson continues to look like Charles Atlas at the plate -in his early days, bumming on the beach when nobody cared…
Demmerrite…yes please, more.
Contreras…I was SO wrong.
APPLE tv…ok so far.
So those of you that are watching was the Hosmer single against the shift?
Damn. Another strikeout with a man on 3rd and less than two outs. Geez.
Why can’t the middle of the order hit when the bottom on the order does??? Olson and Riley 0/6 with 3 Ks.
@26 No
The profar double before it was some bloop bs, though.
I am so tired of this season and the messed up balls already.
@28 I am tired of the fact that we play bad baseball. Fall behind hitters on the mound, inability to put hitters away with two strikes, can’t score runners from third with less than two out. It’s been a terrible fundamental year and while it’s early it won’t be for long. They need to get their sh*t together
Riley…I can’t remember a similar swoon from him after a vigorous start – heading towards the low 200’s which simply isn’t him.
So may we assume he has lost his good nights sleep to the newcomer OR…..
Are we in another Folty type sulk situation here after losing in arbitration. Surely not, say it ain’t so, with the bat, Austin.
@29 agreed
Just what is wrong with the offense? It can’t just be the balls, right? Everyone is reaching new lows, I’m curious to see if it happens to Acuña as well.
Timely hitting!
DANSBY
Atta boy Dans!
A class act…’when all around were losing their’s ‘
Well there ya go. I guess we don’t deserve nice things this season
We are learning what a miracle the playoff iteration of the “Night Shift” bullpen was. How Smith got through that postseason without giving up a home run, I will never know.
Yeah… you might almost think that the playoffs are a crapshoot.
Can’t remember the last time our closing brigade surrendered a 3 run homer when it really mattered – or at any time really…and weren’t they all fastballs?
They might Jonathan, but they would be wrong. A Bobby Cox ‘excuse me’.
If RAJ comes back tomorrow, isn’t time to give Ozuna a rest and play Arcia?
@37
Non sequitur. Pile on.
What fool though Mr. HOME RUN giver would not do it again? Two walks thrown in. Joke.
Duvall wanting $10 million at arbitration WOOF.
My bad. Was two hits not two walks.
Most players are way overpaid.
Most are barely major leaguers.
Celtics win.
@43 plus the 3 million he already got for declining the option.
Mmm… Demeritte on base for the 5th time tonight!
Riley has left 8 men on base tonight. Talk about woof.
Damn, this 6 weeks of baseball got me thinking fire sale.
Surely there is some reason Ozuna is in left field. But for the life of me I can’t figure out what it is.
@49 agreed! That route was atrocious!
Not a banner night for the bullpen.
Not a banner night for the bullpen.
Man, if it’s not one thing, it’s another.
Whatever. It’s a team game. At some point, they’ll all play well at the same time.
@49, 50
Ozuna has been a problem on both ends yet we continue to bat him cleanup and play him in the field. It is especially troublesome since Riley has also hit the skids with two black holes hitting 3rd and 4th. At least if we hit TDA 4th it breaks it up some and Demeritte could hit 5th and drop Ozuna to 6th or 7th
I have no problem keeping Ozuna in the lineup (whether at cleanup or not) until he figures out what he’s doing at the plate. But he’s never going to figure out what he’s doing in left field. So if you can’t DH him some day, for whatever reason, he shouldn’t play. It is, I suppose, vaguely possible that Contreras is a worse left fielder than Ozuna. But I don’t think you’ll know until you put him out there for a few games. And honestly, at this point I think I’d almost rather have an extra infielder and only two outfielders than keep Ozuna out there. (That is, of course, exaggeration, but not by much.)
As to where Ozuna hits in the lineup, if whoever is even in front of him or behind him isn’t hitting, that instantly becomes a black hole of an inning. So it really doesn’t matter that much where it is.
@54 I agree that Ozuna should never play the outfield, but now we are going on two years of him stinking it up at the plate and Arcia and Contreras are both hitting. Without RAJ today, we have semi recent black holes at 4, 6 and 9. That’s hard to overcome. Add Raj and Arcia in and mix it up a little and you have a really good lineup
Ozuna again blown away by 93. I wish we would cut bait