Playoff GDT 10/7/19: Braves @ Cardinals Game 4 - The Death Blow for the Dead Birds

He's an emotional guy who was super pumped. It's not like he literally meant he wanted to murder the Braves. Nobody takes that seriously. Now if the Braves want to use that to motivate them to do better in game 5 then good on them. Freddie's aw shucks professional act doesn't make me feel any better as a fan than Molina's supposed disrespect.

He was disrespecting Acuna and the Braves. Celebrating with his teammates wasn't enough. He had to take that swipe at the Braves. He's a punk who needs to catch one in the ear hole.
 
Freddie hit a 400 trillion foot homerun the other day. His elbow is fine enough to hit. He just is unfortunately in a horrible slump this series.

This. They are giving him junk away and he’s chasing.

It’s been tough to watch.
 
This. They are giving him junk away and he’s chasing.

It’s been tough to watch.

My thought is the elbow is requiring him to cheat and start his swing early to be able to catch up to stuff. This means he's committing to swing before being able to recognize that it's junk away. When he guesses right he can still hit the ball a long way. Problem is the Cards have been exploiting him guessing. That's what makes sense to me as I've never seen Freddie take more awkward swings on terrible pitches than this series.

However, he says he's alright so he's opening himself up to getting called out for choking.
 
If the game gets out of hand you drill Molina. If it's close, you wait until next year and drop him a couple times.

Why even take the chance? It's just dumb. Wait til next year if it's that important. Focus on winning and that's it.
 
This. They are giving him junk away and he’s chasing.

It’s been tough to watch.

You have to give the Cards credit for how they've pitched to Freddie. A lot of good changeups. It's the one pitch he has trouble with. Unless he is sitting on it.
 
Surely FF, Donaldson, and markakis are due a big game. Hopefully 2 of the 3 get multiple hits, and the braves win.

The only think Neck is due is a retirement. It's really painful watching him play this series. Duval needs to be starting.

If we can win tomorrow, hopefully we get some good news on Ender or Camargo for the NLCS. If Neck is gonna start, he needs replaced defensively after the 1st pinch hitter in every game.
 
It has nothing to do with the team being trash or losing a close game. This team hasn't won a playoff series in nearly two decades, and now we've lost two games to one of our hated arch-rivals who always seem to have everything go their way against us in the most ridiculous, cheapest ways possible. Now we get to watch another opposing team celebrate on our field for the 10th time in our last 12 postseason exits. It's ****ing frustrating and everyone here has a right to vent right now. If you want to mock then you can **** right off.

amen, brother.
 
has it been explained why teheran was added to the roster if he wasn't going to start?
jeremy walker seems to have been one of several better possible options.


also wasting fried and not having him available seems to have been a horrible decision. he is the bullpen at this point.


of course why take tomlin out at that point and just roll with it is another question, but i guess you have to justify those retarded bullpen end of season trades somehow.
 
I wanted to start this as a new thread but do not carry the posting seniority. Curious to get a sense from folks on how we've ultimately chosen to deploy our 4-man rotation this series and if its had a neutral, positive or negative effect on the series.

On the one hand you can make the case that the the way its worked out should have played out perfect even if it was mathematically not correct. We pitched Dallas in game one against a worse pitcher and were in position to win. Although Dallas did not pitch well, were it not for an injury Snit actually played the game nicely and we had a nice bullpen game that should have won it. We had Folty pitch the game of his life in game two, although putting Folty ahead of Soroka gives Folty the game 5 start. Soroka did exactly what we hoped in game 3 and intention was always that game 4 was the "get by game" and we actually executed it mostly to perfection and just had some bad luck. With a different order we probably win game one (Soroka probably carries that entire game), lose game 2 (assuming Dallas got game 2 start instead of Folty which you know we would have done), win game 3 (giving Folty credit for same performance as game two), and game 4 probably plays out worse as Teheran is forced to start, assuming Fried would not have been available.

If Soroka pitched game one we would not have brought him back on 3 days rest and so yesterday probably still becomes a bullpen game from the start. In that sense, part of thinking may have been Dallas is the only guy we'd feel good bringing on 3 days rest (taking into account injury concerns, etc.), and so you just hope you get good Dallas and take your chances.


The other big variable is Fried. I love the idea of him as a multi-inning bullpen weapon. But that is not what he's been. We got a single inning out of him for two games, 1/3 of an inning for game three and somehow unavailable for game 4. If he is not capable of being a highly stretched multi-inning option, I think there is a case that we F'd up not having him start a game. That said, we won game 2 and 3, and despite not using him yesterday got to our "Plan A" of Greene / Melancon in the 9th. So in that sense you can argue the only F up was pitching him only one inning after how dominant he was in game one.

Overall the above starts to sound like a ramble, but in short I just hate that we chose a strategy that gave Dallas two starts and limited Fried to 2 and 1/3 innings over the first 4 games, and Soroka to only one start for the series. I think we got too cute, I think had we won yesterday it pays off big time being able to open with Soroka / Folty in any order for NLCS but overall I'm not a fan. If you wanted to dumb it down to someone that knows nothing about baseball, we chose a strategy that gave our 4th best pitcher two starts, our best pitcher one start, our 2nd best pitcher 2 starts (counting Folty as 2nd best given how dominant he has been past two months), and our 3rd best pitcher zero starts. When you put it like that, have the Braves destroyed their own odds of making it?

Where do folks think this series would be if the Braves had gone Soroka, Folty, Dallas, Fried, Soroka, and lost the benefit of Fried in relief?

A separate topic that also just hit me. Pitching Teheran yesterday with the intention of getting Melancon in a save situation also seems really dumb. Let's play this out - Teheran pitches a scoreless 10th, Braves take lead in 11th, bring in Melancon. What happens if he blows it? You maybe pitch him a 2nd inning for 12th and then you are literally out of pitchers. On the other hand, if you put Melancon into the 10th, you give yourselves better odds of getting another inning and preserve your long-man for a long game. Effectively Snit would rather have his better pitcher pitching where we can afford to give up a run and would rather pitch the worse pitcher when a run loses it. On top of that you effectively burn your long-man for one inning if you take the lead which is highly risky.

On the topic of Fried not being available do folks think this was insurance if Folty doesn't have it in game 5 to have Fried available for 4-6 innings? At this point Fried should have no limit on his innings in game 5.
 
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I wanted to start this as a new thread but do not carry the posting seniority. Curious to get a sense from folks on how we've ultimately chosen to deploy our 4-man rotation this series and if its had a neutral, positive or negative effect on the series.

On the one hand you can make the case that the the way its worked out should have played out perfect even if it was mathematically not correct. We pitched Dallas in game one against a worse pitcher and were in position to win. Although Dallas did not pitch well, were it not for an injury Snit actually played the game nicely and we had a nice bullpen game that should have won it. We had Folty pitch the game of his life in game two, although putting Folty ahead of Soroka gives Folty the game 5 start. Soroka did exactly what we hoped in game 3 and intention was always that game 4 was the "get by game" and we actually executed it mostly to perfection and just had some bad luck. With a different order we probably win game one (Soroka probably carries that entire game), lose game 2 (assuming Dallas got game 2 start instead of Folty which you know we would have done), win game 3 (giving Folty credit for same performance as game two), and game 4 probably plays out worse as Teheran is forced to start, assuming Fried would not have been available.

If Soroka pitched game one we would not have brought him back on 3 days rest and so yesterday probably still becomes a bullpen game from the start. In that sense, part of thinking may have been Dallas is the only guy we'd feel good bringing on 3 days rest (taking into account injury concerns, etc.), and so you just hope you get good Dallas and take your chances.


The other big variable is Fried. I love the idea of him as a multi-inning bullpen weapon. But that is not what he's been. We got a single inning out of him for two games, 1/3 of an inning for game three and somehow unavailable for game 4. If he is not capable of being a highly stretched multi-inning option, I think there is a case that we F'd up not having him start a game. That said, we won game 2 and 3, and despite not using him yesterday got to our "Plan A" of Greene / Melancon in the 9th. So in that sense you can argue the only F up was pitching him only one inning after how dominant he was in game one.

Overall the above starts to sound like a ramble, but in short I just hate that we chose a strategy that gave Dallas two starts and limited Fried to 2 and 1/3 innings over the first 4 games, and Soroka to only one start for the series. I think we got too cute, I think had we won yesterday it pays off big time being able to open with Soroka / Folty in any order for NLCS but overall I'm not a fan. If you wanted to dumb it down to someone that knows nothing about baseball, we chose a strategy that gave our 4th best pitcher two starts, our best pitcher one start, our 2nd best pitcher 2 starts (counting Folty as 2nd best given how dominant he has been past two months), and our 3rd best pitcher zero starts. When you put it like that, have the Braves destroyed their own odds of making it?

Where do folks think this series would be if the Braves had gone Soroka, Folty, Dallas, Fried, Soroka, and lost the benefit of Fried in relief?


I asked a similar question a few days ago and I'm not sure anyone commented on it.

Was Keuchel as the Game 1 starter the ideal set up for the Cardinals or anyone else? He's not the Braves best pitcher and he certainly didn't have splits advantages against the Cards. Maybe there is something else in the underlying numbers that suggests he was a good matchup, but I'm not sure I've seen it.

For all that, I don't think that starting pitching has really been a significant issue for the Braves in this series. I suppose Keuchel on short rest was a failure and now the season rides on I guess Folty which ... who knows how that will go. so I guess there is still a chance for a lot of second guessing.

I just wonder if maybe there was a better plan for ordering the rotation. I would tend to have rather had Fried start Game 4 than give one inning of set up relief in the first three games. I suppose with the Martin injury that Fried was the most logical person to shift to a set up role, but pitching a guy who needs precision on short rest with a platoon disadvantage seems not to be ideal.
 
The one point below that I agree with is its hard to blame the Braves choice when we've gotten to the 8th inning of every game having allowed 3 runs or less. In that sense, no matter how you skin it our pitching has been great and the offense has simply let us down.

Its unfortunate because this one may go down more than any other series I can remember where the offensive under-performance cost us. Our pitching has overall been incredible and short of game one 9th inning heroics, we have not been able to score more than 3-4 runs which is really disappointing.

I don't mean to be a downer but I just don't feel good about game 5. I think 1st inning will be critical. Need to make Flaherty work hard early. Maybe the overwork and getting to 130 pitches in game one will play dividends. Overall though, its hard to not feel we let it slip away and are now relying on winning a tough match-up. Anyone have the probability assigned to Braves winning game 5?
 
Keuchel at this stage seems like someone who more than most would be disadvantaged by facing the same team twice in close proximity. Any option that avoided two Keuchel starts seems like a better option in hindsight, although also in hindsight, he didn't really get bombed and we easily could have won both of his starts. But these results against this lineup inspire exactly zero confidence moving forward, if there's even anything to move to after tomorrow.
 
Keuchel at this stage seems like someone who more than most would be disadvantaged by facing the same team twice in close proximity. Any option that avoided two Keuchel starts seems like a better option in hindsight, although also in hindsight, he didn't really get bombed and we easily could have won both of his starts. But these results against this lineup inspire exactly zero confidence moving forward, if there's even anything to move to after tomorrow.

I'd probably rather Soroka throw twice, than DK.
 
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