The Reverse Pennant Chase

skillet said:
Damn 6th win in a row. Couldn't have come at a worse time and frustrating as hell. Not only do we now have essentially no shot at the #1 draft slot, but it is very possible we could screw this up all the way to dropping to around the 5th or 6th pick and costing us several million in slot money.
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Welcome to the 2nd half 2016 Atlanta Braves. #FailingAtFailing
 
thewupk said:
So Ender was getting pretty unlucky in the 1st half and it's more or less evened out for the full year. I feel his 2016 year to date stats are pretty much what you can expect next year.
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"Expect" is probably too strong a word, but you know he's very capable of those numbers.
 
smootness said:
But I don't know what you think the answer is. We are starting Blair...and we're winning. Mallex is not a worse player than a guy like Markakis. We could sit Garcia for Ruiz, but Garcia's not that good; Ruiz could be just as good in the lineup. There just isn't a clear strategy beside 'sit everybody' that would guarantee you're going to lose games. I mean, the roster we're running out there is the same one that was easily the worst team in baseball for much of the year, it's not like we're running out a murderer's row.

And you can't have players thinking for a second about not winning a game. They just got hot at the end of the year, it is what it is. There's no way to guarantee yourself the top pick. We still have a pretty good chance to be #2, which is plenty fine.
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The answer is to play everybody you need to for development, winning, etc, but when you get to the sixth inning go to the most incidiary relievers you can find and let them undo all the fine performances. Cunniff, people like that.
 
I think this is a thing where what looks good on paper not translating to real life. You have no idea how demoralizing it is for players to lose games on purpose. It's like injecting poison in the club house. I don't think you can underestimate the difference finishing strong has on the players. We want them going into the off-season believing we can compete next year. Well some of us.
 
cajunrevenge said:
I think this is a thing where what looks good on paper not translating to real life. You have no idea how demoralizing it is for players to lose games on purpose. It's like injecting poison in the club house. I don't think you can underestimate the difference finishing strong has on the players. We want them going into the off-season believing we can compete next year. Well some of us.
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We finished strong last year, and how much did that help us to start this year? Lost the first 9 and were the laughing stock the first 4-5 months.
 
GovClintonTyree said:
The answer is to play everybody you need to for development, winning, etc, but when you get to the sixth inning go to the most incidiary relievers you can find and let them undo all the fine performances. Cunniff, people like that.
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You're just going to anger and deflate your players by doing that. Again, that works in MLB The Show, but I'm not sure it works in real life. There was nothing to suggest the team we roll out there game after game was anything but the kind of team you roll out there when you want to lose, especially the bullpen.
 
skillet said:
We finished strong last year, and how much did that help us to start this year? Lost the first 9 and were the laughing stock the first 4-5 months.
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But we were doing that with guys like Simmons, Pedro Ciriaco, Michael Bourn, Pierzynski, Maybin, Olivera, Swisher, and Castro. Freeman hardly even played the last week of the season.

I do think there's a difference this year, in that guys like Inciarte (hopefully), Swanson, Kemp, Freeman, Peterson, probably Garcia, etc. will be around at least next year and probably for a while. I think it helps them to build some positive chemistry and start to win together. I don't think it's a giant boost or that these guys will all play above their heads simply because we won some games down the stretch. But I think it's better in that sense than losing all the games and finishing the year miserable.
 
skillet said:
We finished strong last year, and how much did that help us to start this year? Lost the first 9 and were the laughing stock the first 4-5 months.
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Laughingstock? I think everyone in baseball is smart enough to see what the Braves are doing. A couple of bad years does not make a laughingstock because it is part of a plan. Not a lot of laughing going on, and there still won't be when we are winning again. What is happening right now just plants the idea in the heads of the players that the rebuild is working and better days are ahead. That attitude will pay dividends in future years.
 
Also who is on this team that was on last years team at the end of the year.

JT. Jace. FF. Adonis. Neck. Whisler. Folty. Viz. withrow.

I mean there is not a lot of pieces that were carried over. Not like it will be this year.
 
smootness said:
But I don't know what you think the answer is. We are starting Blair...and we're winning. Mallex is not a worse player than a guy like Markakis. We could sit Garcia for Ruiz, but Garcia's not that good; Ruiz could be just as good in the lineup. There just isn't a clear strategy beside 'sit everybody' that would guarantee you're going to lose games. I mean, the roster we're running out there is the same one that was easily the worst team in baseball for much of the year, it's not like we're running out a murderer's row.

And you can't have players thinking for a second about not winning a game. They just got hot at the end of the year, it is what it is. There's no way to guarantee yourself the top pick. We still have a pretty good chance to be #2, which is plenty fine.
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We could use reverse platoon splits. Only play Ruiz against lefties.
 
**** everything. Look, I love watching this team be actually competent at this whole playing baseball thing, but it's going to be a serious gut punch when we end up picking 7th.

The one source of happiness I'd get from it would be the joy of watching both the Diamondbacks and Padres finish worse than us given all the win-now deals they made with us over the past 2 years.
 
smootness said:
You're just going to anger and deflate your players by doing that. Again, that works in MLB The Show, but I'm not sure it works in real life. There was nothing to suggest the team we roll out there game after game was anything but the kind of team you roll out there when you want to lose, especially the bullpen.
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Nah, I don't think so. You think, "if that suckbag weren't sucking it up in the seventh, we'd have won this game." But don't tell the press that.

Btw, I vaguely know what MLB The Show is, but have never played it. The basis of the idea was watching us do it for a couple months, as Viz and others were spotty and losing us games we should've won.
 
such a damn shame.

Look I'm not just trying to piss and moan, but I think the organization is pissing this away. There are ways to 'rest' and 'limit' your better/hotter players.

It's OK to try and punt a couple games to ensure a top-3 pick.
 
Snitker is managing to keep his managerial job, not what is best for this organization. For example, Ruiz was brought up a week ago and hasn't had a single at bat. This was a perfect time to give him a few starts to see how he fared and give him a taste of the bigs, yet he rots on the bench while Adonis continues to play. Why keep running Teheran out there and risk injury, shut him down. But no. Let some young guys get experience in high leverage/save opportunities, but no we keep using JJ. These wins could end up costing us as many as 4 to 5 slots lower in the draft, and for what?

Pick #1 - Unless we lose our last 8 and the Twins win their last 8 (ain't happening), this pick is gone.
Pick #2 - Reds now control this pick. Chances of us getting it are now slightly below 50-50.
Pick #3 - With 8 games remaining, we can now only do 1 game better than the D'Backs, or they get this pick.
Picks #4 and #5 - We can only do 2 games better than either the Padres or Rays, or either or both would get these two picks.
Pick #6 - We can only do 3 games better than the A's, or they get this pick.

It's even still possible to drop all the way down to the 10th pick, though even if we win out that probably won't happen. But picking anywhere from #2 to #7 is now very possible. That would be a big blow and a real shame to the future of this team if we end up losing all those very valuable draft positions here at the end of this lost season.
 
skillet said:
Snitker is managing to keep his managerial job, not what is best for this organization. For example, Ruiz was brought up a week ago and hasn't had a single at bat. This was a perfect time to give him a few starts to see how he fared and give him a taste of the bigs, yet he rots on the bench while Adonis continues to play. Why keep running Teheran out there and risk injury, shut him down. But no. Let some young guys get experience in high leverage/save opportunities, but no we keep using JJ. These wins could end up costing us as many as 4 to 5 slots lower in the draft, and for what?

Pick #1 - Unless we lose our last 8 and the Twins win their last 8 (ain't happening), this pick is gone.

Pick #2 - Reds now control this pick. Chances of us getting it are now slightly below 50-50.

Pick #3 - With 8 games remaining, we can now only do 1 game better than the D'Backs, or they get this pick.

Picks #4 and #5 - We can only do 2 games better than either the Padres or Rays, or either or both would get these two picks.

Pick #6 - We can only do 3 games better than the A's, or they get this pick.

It's even still possible to drop all the way down to the 10th pick, though even if we win out that probably won't happen. But picking anywhere from #2 to #7 is now very possible. That would be a big blow and a real shame to the future of this team if we end up losing all those very valuable draft positions here at the end of this lost season.
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Winning games with a young team (especially beating the teams we've beaten lately will have a bigger effect of the franchise's future than potentially picking 2 spots lower in a draft that doesn't have a clear top tier.
 
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