A Max Fried Gem And A 7th Inning Explosion In Chicago

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Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to episode twelve of the Hammer Territory podcast. I am your host Brad Roland, coming to you deep into the night here on a Wednesday evening in late May and a more upbeat podcast this evening. We are part of the Foul Territory network and you will hear more about ag one by the way later on from Fould Territory Scott Braun and Eric Kratz. My usual colleague and co host Scott Coleman is still gallivanting around the continent of Europe right now to take you behind his soups a little bit here. I had another plan that kind of fell through this evening, so in short, you are stuck with me on this Wednesday night for a kind of a mini pod of sorts, a little bit shorter than usual probably on this podcast, but playing to discuss that I could not skip this evening because there is a lot to get to. So the Braves had lost five of the last six games entering Wednesday night, including a pretty brutal ten defeat on Tuesday. You should definitely catch up and listen to our previous episodes on this podcast that were by the way. In addition to subscribing to the show anywhere you might find podcasts, Apple, Spotify, et cetera. That includes sort of a rant session from last night on Tuesday from Steven Tolbert and Sean Coleman. Before that, I had a minor league check in with my guy Garrett Spain of Battery Power on Sunday, and then earlier over the weekend we had a visit from ESPN's Buster Only. That was really a lot of fun, a lot of great insight from that conversation. But again, Brigs and struggling right now, we kind of all acknowledge that, we all know that. But Wednesday's game ended up being a nine to two victory for the Braves, a pretty badly needed bounce back for all parties involved. That sets up a chance to win the series in Chicago over the Cubs on Thursday at the Resk one on Thursday afternoon. We'll get to the offense because that's obviously very important. It's been probably the biggest focus around the team in recent days. All the struggles there and a good reason to be sure, but we have to start with Max Free on this one tonight. Free was brilliant on this evening from his second complete game of the season, and he really just was tremendous across the board. He was perfect through five innings and we started to have a little bit some of those aggressive visions of what could be necessarily if he were to keep it going. He didn't allow a leadoff hit in the sixth inning to kind of remove some of the tantilization on that. It wasn't quite as close as the Brads being went out away from a combino hitter earlier this month, but once he settled back in, it was poosed outing from there. Obviously complete game. All in innings, he had nine strikeouts, zero walks, three hits, two runs. Only one of those runs was earned. There was probably some debate whether he would actually come back for the ninth inning. He had eighty sorry, he had ninety four pitches through eight innings, and they probably would have taken him out that there was any kind of trouble in the ninth inning. But there wasn't any trouble because he was really good in this game. He finished with one hundred and five pitches on the night, He got fifteen whiffs, like he was just brilliant from the outset. There were a little bit of a hiccup along the way, but like basically you couldn't ask for much more Max Freed in this game he looked like his actual peak self for the majority of the evening. It's been a little bit hit and miss for Max this season, but more hit than miss lately to be sure. He now has five starts this year which has basically been dominant to the point where he finished with at least six innings of work while allowing one earn run or fewer in five different starts. That also includes four of his last six outings, so basically he's been really really good lately. There have been some ugly outings, of course. The first two starts of the season were really rough for Max, and then he was not his best at all on Friday against San Diego, which he failed to make it out of the fifth inning, But all the way across the board here since the slow start, he's been really way tremendous overall this year. Max now has a three point three eight ERA for the season. His fips in line with that as well. His numbers is for a strikeouts for concern are down a little bit of previous years, but he's basically been normal since he arrived to the season essentially two starts late after that kind of rough start. You can't just remove those starts from his whole season line because that's a little bit of cherry picking and arbitration. But if you did that, his era is around two since those first two starts in about fifty to fifty plus innings. So Max Free has been Max Freed in capital letters for a little while now, and it's much needed. Obviously, the Braves have gotten incredible contributions from Ronaldo Lopez and Chris Sale. Charlie Morton has been rock solid so far. The fifth spot, and we'll back into a little bit later on this podcast, has been a little bit uncertain this year, but without Strider having Freed as the ace, and he still is the ace. I know Chris Sale has probably been pitching like an ace this year along with the Lopez as well, but Max Free is still the guy on this rotation, and he's looked like Max Freed in a lot of different ways. And look, I've said this before. In fact, Scott and I on our old podcast talked about this over the winter about how Max Freed he look at the numbers, has basically been a top ten to twelve pitcher in baseball for the last four plus seasons, says twenty twenty. Basically, he has been that kind of guy era wise, peripherals have been really strong, all that stuff. And again right now he looks like that picture again, so you want to get carried away. But he was absolutely tremendous to the point where we're leading with him on this podcast, despite the fact that the Braves woke up from their extended slumber offensively in this spot. Now we'll get to that in a second, I promise you. But first of working more guys that foul territory on the folks at AG one and here is Scott Braun and Aircratskrats.

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Speaker 1: Go check it out all right, and we moved to the offense now on this kind of mini podcast on a Wednesday evening, and of course we all know this. I won't give all the numbers again, but the raislom was scored more than five runs once in almost four weeks. It has been really, really rough for the offense. We allkind understand that ap shribles of this podcast, you were aware of those numbers. That again tonight again the second time at about four weeks. The Braves not scored nine runs in a game until tonight. Since April fourteenth, that is almost six weeks since this has actually happened for the Braves. In one game. I gave a lot of stats on Sunday night when when I last recorded on this podcast, feed talked about how grim the numbers were from April twenty seventh until that point, especially when you compared that to the team's bat at ball data. That's kind of put to the side for now. The offense has been a little bit better than the underlying numbers recently, But of course then the real issue the last couple of games before today was that the Braves went a combined four of twenty nine with rounders of scoring position in the two losses. In the last three games, Steven and Sean talked about this extensively on the show Tuesday, which is worth listening to again. The Braves went oh fourteen over fourteen with friends scorings Pission on Tuesday and Sporting emphasizing again it was the most at bats without a hit with winners the score position for the team since May twelfth of nineteen hundred and ninety nine. I was in seventh grade. That tells you how old I am, and also tells you how long it's been. The brain is went that many plate appearances slashed at bats without a hit emergic SCRM position in a single game, so tonight they were only two of seven in that position. But they didn't actually need to be any better than that this time because the way they group things together, and that's been the opposite of what's been the case so far this year. The Braves have been objectively unlike unlucky, I would say, with how they've pulled their plate appearances and pulled their production together this year. And I will not do the entire debate on that right now. There's always a debate about unluckiness and bad at ball data and production all that stuff and approach, et cetera. Save it for later, But I think it's been pretty clear they've been a little bit unlucky, at least a little bit so far this year. And tonight they opened the game with six up and six down, and that feeling of here we go again was kind of creeping in a little bit on offense given the way things have gone in recent days. But then Adam Duvall homeward in the third inning and the Braves never trailed from that point forward. Now, it was still pretty close until the seventh and they finally had a big crooked number kind of ending that they badly needed, and that happened in the seventh inning. So the first two runs were generated without kind of bludgeoning the baseball. It was a walk hit by pitch, a sack fly, and then a really nice squeeze bunt from Zack Short and stasion kind of forgotten now because it was more of a upside of game. That was a fun play. I usually don't like bunts, but squeezes are better to me, and the sacrifices are and it's also reasonable with a guy like Zach Short of the plate versus one of your better hitters, more powerful guys. So plus it worked and there you go. But then the real Boppers came to the plate. Marcell Ozuna hit a three run home run and that Matt Olsen hit one right after him. Those who also went back to back on Monday, so a little bit of power from that spot always nice to see. Ozuna has been unbelievable. We kind of know that, but it's worth just emphasizing again. Fifteen home runs that leads the National League in home runs this season. He also has a fifteen game hitting streak active right now. He has been the one guy all year long on offense that's just been unequivocally good. In addition to leading the National League in home runs, Ozuna is second in the National League and percentage and WRC plus, trailing only some guy named Shoheo Tommy who happens to be an alien. So basically, Ozuna has been the best human hitter in all of baseball, or at least in the National League this year. Olsen was of course brutal on Tuesday, along with most of the roster, and he had a rough start of the season, but he's been notably better in recent days. By the way, Matt Olsen is now twelve of his last thirty six, has three thirty three, of course, with three home runs in like a nine game sample size, so max it's all small sample size in that direction. But given Matt Olsen's history, it's probably safe to say he's more this guy than the guy he was in the month previously. That so some signs there of him breaking out. And then the Braves did add another run in the eighth inning thanks to an air in a wild pitch, but most of the damage was done in that seventh inning. And again I don't want to overstate it. It doesn't mean that everything is fixed. They got to do it again on Thursday for anybody to be satisfied with what's going on. But the Braves are at least showing some signs offensively, and they had already been before tonight. It's just that they were not sequencing very well, and tonight the sequence a little bit better at least than that one weren't actually matter and that's kind of it. For the game itself. It was kind of a breezy win. Obviously, the fact that Free was so good give you another talking point induition to the offense, but it was a ho hum win, and there haven't been a ton of those in recent days. So it's almost like the Braceyple had a lot of rocking chair wins in the last few seasons, not a ton of those recently, so nice to have that one on the Ledger on Wednesday. There's a little bit of news before we get out of here. Sean Murphy had the day off tonight in Gwinett after he caught the game on Tuesday in Gwinet. They're playing to dh him on Thursday. He could be back as soon as maybe this weekend. I don't want to say that on the record, but it's one of those things where he could be back pretty soon. He had a home run on Tuesday, looks the part, and obviously that'd be a huge, huge influx of talent when he can arrive. Austin Riley hit off the tee on Wednesday, but the first time since his comeback bid began. Obviously he has been out for ten days now and the Brace were playing a man down. It's very wild, but if there was ever a team to do it, it's this one. With how they handled their guys, play everybody basically every day. It'll have a ton of depth. So I think in a vacuum you would have obviously gone to the IL if you would know it was going to be ten plus days, but they didn't know that at the time. And Riley's getting slowly back, and I've said it before, I'll say it again. What matters there is that Austin Riley is back in one hundred percent when he's back, which is hopefully in the next week or so. So there you go. A quick peek ahead to Thursday, which is the season sorry series finale in Chicago, and the Braves have just announced as I'm recording this podcast, that it's going to be a J Smith Shaver on the Mound on Thursday. That is not a huge surprise because they optioned Bryce Elder this week. AJ is someone I've talked about a lot on the podcast on Sunday with Garrett Spain. He of course made to the Majors last year briefly, and he has been around, but he's still very young and he's very talented. I know Garrett likes him a lot. I think I like what I've seen a lot a lot as well. The Braves had to basically fill two spots in the rotation once they elected to option Elder, so Thursday and Friday were always going to be someone else from the minor league system, but it looks like it's gonna be a jam Thursday. TVD still as far as what they do on Friday, but again, give it a way. They sequ with this stuff. Unless there's an injury that we don't know about, Elder will be able to come back and they'll have to pitch somebody else from the miners on Friday. Could be Darius Fines, could be all kinds of names out there. It's opposite marriage, who pushed it one at this week, et cetera, et cetera. I'll let Shaw and Steve brig Get set down a little bit on Thursday evening, but we know this now. Thursday afternoon, it just missed Shauper is going to be on the mound a corner rite snicker and his first start of the season in the majors, and a lot of attention paid to that one. Again, it is a two twenty first pitch Eastern time on Thursday, so I'm sure some of you are listening to this podcast after the game has already started or has happened. That's the nature of an early afternoon game during the week, So my apologies there, but keep an eye on that one to twenty start and we'll have a full breakdown later on this week from Shawn Steven. That's at least the plan, and then I'll have another show usually at I'm aiming for our usual time slot on Sunday evening despite it being a more all day weekend. So as I signed off here, please please please subscribe to this podcast anywhere you might find your podcasts. I know this is a little bit of a shorter episode with just me, but most of the time, the vast majority of the time, you will have two hosts or more on this podcast, or was the host and a guest, but shouts to Sean Coleman, Stephen Tolbert, my usual guys, Scott Coleman as well. We're having fun on this podcast. If you we had great response from everybody that's been joining us, that's come over from Mattery Power, or if you're just finance for the first time, We definitely definitely appreciate all of that. So one more time, Apple Spotify, overcast ratings and reviews appreciated. And the best that you can do besides subscribing and download and clicking the podcast is to go ahead and subscribe, but also to share the podcast with your friends or your family, or a combination of both. Maybe even your enemies or coworkers or whatever. People that like the braves. Share it on Facebook, share it on Instagram, share it on Twitter, et cetera. We'd be very appreciated that as we sort of aim to grow the podcast and find some new listeners, So shouts to the guys from Tallow Territory. Check those guys out as well. We have a new show on the network. It's also accectually called north Side Territory that covers the Chicago Cups recently launched Daughter's Territory. It's a versioning network that we are happy to be a part of. So thanks listening everybody we're going to do, appreciate it, and we'll see you all next time.