Spencer Schwellenbach's Debut, Another Ray Kerr Start, And How Projections Change Without Acuña

00:00:21
Speaker 1: Hello everyone to walk to episode seventeen of the Hammer Territory podcast. I am your host, Brad Roland, coming to you deep in the night here on a Wednesday evening into Thursday. We are almost at the end of the month of May, and of course this podcast is part of the Foul Territory Network. Subscribe to the show anywhere you might find your podcasts. You can find us on Apple, Spotify, Overcast, and again anywhere you might find the podcasts. Also recommend checking out the latest show on our podcast feed from Sean Coleman and Stephen Tolbert on Tuesday evening into Wednesday, talking all things roll on Acunya, et cetera. A good conversation there, as always from Sean and Steven. I'll have more later on this week as well. On this podcast, I think of a mini pod today as I am still waiting for my usual co host Scott Coleman to return from his never ending European journey. But I promise you I'll be back in the near future. It will not be subjected to me too often in solo fashion, but it is late. There was some news that happened late tonight, so I went solo as a result of all of that stuff, but for one thing at the top of the show, borring emergency podcast between now and the end of this week that we probably don't want because emergency podcasts in May are generally not good news. This is goin be the last time that I personally podcast about the Braves in the month of May, and I would say good riddance to that. After a seven to two loss tonight to Washington at home on this Wednesday, the Brains are now twelve and thirteen in the month of May, and despite all of the team's overall success in the last several years, obviously repeated division titles, world series, etc. The month of May has been a relative house of horrors for the Braves. That's been referencing this podcast in different ways in the last couple of weeks, I'm sure, but just for some numbers, here again, twelve and thirteen this month in twenty twenty four, last month, sorry, last year in twenty twenty three, it was their worst month of the year. They're fifteen and fourteen in the month of May, so similar to this year. The previous year they were thirteen and fifteen in the month of May of twenty twenty two. It's what twenty one. Famously, they were not very good for a long time before getting super hot and winning the World Series. They were thirteen and twelve in the month of May, and then it was even their second worst month in twenty nineteen, so pre pandemic, all of those things. So long story short, for whatever reason, and it might be variants, it might have something to do with something and whatever, And I'm not saying it's definitely gonna fix itself. It's not where you should never assume the Braids are gonna suddenly be awesome again when they won the calendar flops to June. But for whatever reason, in the last several years, May has been the nader of the Braves, and that's been the case so far this season. With that said, they lost the game this evening, but there was a lot to talk about because of the debut of Besert schwallow Bach. So we found it out on Tuesday afternoon basically that the Braves were going to eventually call up Schwellenbach and it had to do with all kinds of things, but the news broke before they could actually make that move. They move ended up happening on Wednesday, and they optioned Jimmy Hergett to the minors. I record listening to the show that I did with Garrett Spain a Battery Power and Phja Prospects about ten days ago now on the same podcast feed. That's a good conversation about the minor leagues in general. I will always say this if you're a new listener. I am not a minor league expert. Neither is Scott, to be honest with you, but we always want to be up to date to some extent on min league stuck because it definitely matters. This is certainly a team that is in win now mode, so it's not quite the emphasis that it was around the team like it was during the rebuild when we started the podcast seven eight years ago, but still very relevant and Garret's an expert on that. So we talked about a lot of different guys, but that included Schwellenbacher. He was very high on his potential on that podcast. For some more background, Schowellenbach is the second round pick from three years ago towards twenty one. He'll be actually be twenty four later on this week as start. As of age, he's a top three or four guy in the system. By all accounts people that are smur than I am, and he's regarded as a guy who's quite polished and major League ready, despite the fact that he was coming from Double A before this. He had Tommy John before actually Raptter he got drafted, so he's only thrown sixty five total pro innings before this year, so definitely keeping an eye on his workload is probably a good idea, and the Bridge are probably doing that so far. So as a Spoilerlard, he looked pretty good tonight. I don't know if he'll be able to stick with a rotation and pitch the rest of the year if it goes well, because again that innings. I won't say cap but certainly they're gonna be careful with him after not throwing a ton of innings in a long time. But he started High A this year, made Cisco starts there. They made two starts Misissippi at Double A and it was completely dominant at the Double A level. Thirteen innings scoreless look fantastic. He became only a twenty fourth player in the Frenklise history to go form Mississippi to Atlanta, and by the way, the last four guys do that were Lawn Grisome, Michael Harris, Max Freed, and data by Swanson. Not a bad list. So tonight he threw five innings. The first four of them were scroreless. In the first he went one, two, three on eleven pitches. Looked fantastic through this disgusting slider for a strikeout. He got out of a jam in a second ding that in pretty impressive fashion. He pitched very well, and then he got got basically in the fifth inning by Lane Thomas. He probably stayed in the game a little bit too long. Of course, this is sort of that never ending philosophical argument that people want to have that I'm not going to do right now, necessarily about times through the order and whether you want to be more proactive than reactive. Everyone's always on different sides of this. I get that about whether a guy needs to like kind of show it or have some trouble before he comes out of the game. But it was fairly perceivable in my opinion. I don't know. My guy, Steven Toilbert was sweeting about this in real time on social media, of course, about the third time through the order being kind of maybe a danger zone for Swollenbach. He looked good until that home run, and that I would say, not even just a home run that ending, he was a little bit shakier, but regardless, he looked good, did his job and more. In this game he shortly showed a lot more than some of these other spot Star options have shown in the last couple of years, whether it's Wine Enns or Vines or DoD or whatever. He has a big fastball. He averaged about nine six miles an hour tonight with the fastball very solid there and a pretty much a wipeout slider. He had a couple of really nasty ones in this game. That's always been the rep that he has. By all accounts from what I have seen and read about and talk to people about behind the scenes, he got eleven swings and misses in this game. The slider was popping, I think, and in general he looked the part of a guy that you are not afraid to call up. And again I think that it's worth keeping in mind that yes, he jumped from double A, but essentially from what I had heard, he was maybe the most ready guy when it came to the pitching prospects that were not like the four A guys, not your vines, Winans types, but the lower end guys. People were asking why it wasn't Waldrop, for instance, and Waldrop's a lot more famous first round pick. I think the consistencity he has more upside from what I have seen and heard. But obviously the Braves. I think Geared got into this a lot with me ten days ago on the show. But basically the Bridge are trying to work hiptuff out with Waldrop. It's not that he can't pitch the majors right now, it's that they're not trying to rush him along too much. This does not mean that they believe schwallen Block is a better prospect than Waldrop. It means that they wanted him to start in this game, that's all it means. There's always this rush to be ordering guys or whatever. And you know, he was in the top three I think for pipeline and battery power, et cetera. Like he's a highly regarded player, but there was some surprise because he's not like a big name right now if you're not a prospect sigo. But I thought he looked really good in this game. We'll get into kind of the more of the fallout from this game in a second, But that was kind of the top line thought of this one is that you know, for it was a maddening loss that didn't play very well at The offense, is we'll get into in a second, has not been good at all this year for the Braves, at least it's the first couple of weeks of the season that continued tonight, as we'll talk about in a second. But the top line story I believe, even with a loss, is that the Braves might have found something at Schwallenbach. I'm not gonna get over my skis here. I'm not going to tell you that he's going to suddenly be in that spot all year long, or that he's going to be this you know, messiah figure coming back to save the rotation. Number one, THETII has been awesome for most of the season. But number two, it's one start. But when you talk about a guy with that pedigree, he looked the part. And yeah, Washington's offense not fantastic, but not an awful offense necessarily this year. So I would say, if you're looking very positive from tonight, and there aren't that many from a loss at home, that was a positive start from Schwallenbach, and we'll see if he makes another start the next time around any second, we'll get into more of the offensive stuff, but first little break dere from Mark Partner's on the podcast. All right, some most stuff from the game on this Wednesday. They were down three one and then NAT's got a two out, two run single on a literal checked swing, and I think again everyone's ready for May to be over. That was one of those signs in that moment. It didn't change the game necessarily, but it was a kind of funny and maddening in one of those cap predict ball things. Also have a stat for you, and I know Steven and Sew mentioned it yesterday, but now it's even more extreme. Stevens tweeted this out tonight. The Braids, of course, as I mentioned before, are twelve and thirteen in the month of May. In the twelve wins, they have allowed two runs or fewer in all of them. All of them, they're twelve to zero when allowed two runs are fewer. In the month of May. In the thirteen losses, they've allowed three runs or more in all thirteen and they are owned thirteen while allowing three runs or more. That is crazy in its synergy. It makes sense given that while it was the way this team is built, they have been essentially cruising along or not cruising along, But staying afloat is better. It is probably the better word choice because the pitching has been so good for the most part of this month. Offensively, they have performed worse they had twelve and thirteen team, but they've pitched so well, and that's a great way to put it. Obviously, it's a little bit convenient that it's literally to thirteen versus twelve and zero, but that's just one way again to kind of point out how good they've been pitching wise and how bad they've been offensively. There you go, in this game, they're pretty much more offensively again, they had no walks in this game. The top four lineup was actually just fine. They had six hits out of the four of them, including all three of their extra base hits in this game. But the bottom of five lineup went two of nineteen at the plate. I've talked a lot about the top of the order guys being an issue all year long, and by the way, that is still true. I am not saying otherwise. The loss of Browny does matter of course, and the Braves unequivocally need guys like Riley and Olsen in particular. There are other stars who are remaining to be stars, and so far this year they've not been stars. Olsen showing some signs, Riley's been hurt, all that stuff. They've not been what they need to be moving forward. With that said, the bottom of the order has been wretched for a long time now. For instance, Michael Harris and Orlando Arcia, who are usually in the Botto half lineup. I know that our Harris is going to probably lead off some right now because of the way that that's all breaking down. But Harris Arcia both have ops's under five point fifty in the last thirty days, pretty rough. Obviously, there's been games where it's been Chadwick Trump he won't play a lot right now because Murphy's back. That's good. But the bottom of the order has not been In fact, it's been worse than top the order. So that's just something to keep in mind. I have to get the caveat here that offense is going to rise. It always does during the course of the season across the league. I mean, temperatures get warmer, the ball carries further. That's how it works. But offense is way down across the league this year, which is a good part of context around the Braves. Now, does that explain everything? Definitely, definitely not. But for instance, last year in the league, the league averaged four point six to two runs per game. This year is four point three to one. That's a pretty big drop off. Home runs are way down as well. Last year is one point two to one this year per game. This year it's one point zero three per game. And by the way, that's the lowest per game figure and home runs since twenty thirteen. That's a long time. League wide ops is now six ninety seven. That's down from seven to thirty four last year. It hasn't been below seven hundred for a full season since nineteen eighty nine. And again it's probably gonna go up, but really really rough. But the kind of point is, and look, I'm not gonna do this discussion all the way here either, but every time the brace have a rough game on offense, everyone wants to point out not everyone, A lot of people want to point out the strikeouts. Right, Let's say it's this never ending debate as well about putting the ball on play and small ball. All these six strikeouts are actually down across baseball this year. While offense is down. You would think that less strikeouts mean more offense. Not the case. So every time, and without fail, someone whether it's me or Steven or Sean or Scott or somebody else around the Braves tweets out something about hard hit balls or ex evelocity or bat ball profiles or whatever. Or tonight for example, there's a excuse me to run hit by the opponent. There's always people in the mentioned talking about you know, obviously exit loss does it doesn't mean anything whatever, put it to the side. But there is this year an inverse relationship. So I got through down. Offense is also down. Keep that in mind. But anyway, I'll say that to say offense across the leagues down, that might impact the Braves, Like there's been lots of talking about the balls, bat of balls in particular, like they're not juiced up right now. And given that the Braves are I won't say reliant, but they are certainly a power focused group. Saw that last year they might be impacted a little bit more. Again, not an excuse. You still have to produce and they have Gots's line up that certainly had not produced this year. But I feel like it's probably been a little bit underdiscussed how the lack of power across the league might have bitten the Braves a little bit more as far as the conditions are concerned than the rest of the league. Anyway, That's all I have for the game itself. From there, there is some new notes to get to before we get out of here. So the one newsy itum I would say is that the brave sign Ramon Lariano. He said a minor league deal. He's not gonna be in Gwinnette. About to be thirty years old. He was once quite good as a outfielder in Oakland along with Sean Murphy Old Powell. He had a four win season in twenty nineteen. He was a reasonable player last year, about a one win player according to Fangrafts. This year he was bad in about thirty one games for Cleveland and he was waved. But there was some positive comments made by Brian Sticker about Loreano. I'm not saying that change your life, but a guy like that for free on a minor league deal makes some sense, especially in the wake of the Ronnie News. I talked about a lot on the last show that I did with Grant as well as the Emergency podcast. But it seems like, and so did Shawn and Steven talk. It seems like the Braves are going to roll with this Kellnick, Harris Duval outfield for a while. And that's not a shock, nor should it be. I think Kelnick and Duval are both like reasonable starting out at this point in time, a reasonable guys to throw out there. I'm always behind Duval Kelnic. I always get the appeal of him, et cetera. But if it doesn't work, you want options and Lorianum maybe nothing. He may just wash out and be gone, but they can find something in him that again, he's not old at this point, he's still twenty nine. He was really good, like as of true for years ago. So just a guy that you take a low cost flyer on, basically no cost flyer on, no risk flyer on, and if it works, it works, and that would be pretty impressive and very very helpful, I would say, if it were to come together. One more note here on the non news front, but also kind of topical. Dan Senborski of Fangrafts, who also created zips, which is a famous and I think very good projection system. He wrote a few interesting things in the last couple of days about how the Braves project with out wrung mcunya and how they compare it to the Phillies. In particular, his numbers basically saw the Braves have about like a ten percent dip and their division odds just by taking Ronnie out of the lineup, which is in a huge surprise, Ronnie is excellent. It might be a three, four or five win dip depending on what you were projecting, just by taking Hi out of the lineup. Dan also published a projected stayings update as of Wednesday, and that had the Braves finishing four games back of the Phillies at the end of the year. Granted, that would have meant at that point in time that the Braves would have still been better than the Phillies the rest of the season even without Ronnie, because the Braves were at the time of the simulation five games back, so they would have only been largely better than the Phillies, but better the rest of the way. But obviously the deficit matters, which talking about two months in baseball at the end of May, yes it's still early in the season, but it matters that you're now cis games back as the recording this podcast, so it would make it the better team. But it's notable, and with out a couna that the projections and the betting and market in particular have also now swung pretty solidly to Philadelphia when it comes to the division. Now does that matter? You could argue either way that was not a so the case a few days ago though, even with the Braves behind the division. Yes, the ads have changed this preseason because in the spring the Braves were huge favorites to win the division with good reason. It it narrowed. But now I would say the combination of the week play this week so far and also the Accoton injury more importantly, things have leveled off a little bit and now the Braves have the underdog for the first time in a while on the division. Now it remains early and I should not remind anyway listening to this podcast if you're a Braves fan of Brave Sticko found the show. First of all, thank you for being here, subscribe to the podcast. But also the Braves have had some comebacks, especially the one notable one against the Mets where they were down a big, big, big, big margin, came back and won the division. So it's early. Philly has been playing great baseball, but just want to keep that in mind. Every once in a while check in with some projections, and to the surprise of no one, the systems like the Braves less now than they did a few days ago because Ronnie's no longer there. But also, the division deficit is six games as we're heading towards the month of June, and that is notable to me. And nothing else. Last thing, a brief look ahead to the game on Thursday. For one thing, the Brands are playing a game on Thursday that's a night game, despite it being a getaway game for Washington that's often a day game. I'm not sure what the quirk is there. I'm not saying it's never a night game, but that's the one that I thought was interesting. It's a seven to twenty game in Atlanta. But there was a little bit of a surprise as I'm recording this podcast having a little bit about an hour ago. Now it's midnight or so, but the Brads are going to start ray Kerr on Thursday instead of Renald of Olympes. So immediately the question was is something wrong with Renaldi Lopez. The answer is no, According to Justin Toscano, the AJAC, he confirmed quickly that Lopez is healthy. There's no issue with Ronaldi Lopez whatsoever. So it's going to be very interesting to see why that is. But I think logically, from what the Beat guys have said, and you know, beyond that, it's going to be pretty logical. I think. So Lobez only pitched on four days rest, so exactly four days rest once this year and would have been a second time this time. People hate this and I understand that, but Lopez has not thrown more than six or six innings in a season since twenty nineteen. He's been a reliever for a long time now. It makes all the logical sense in the world for the Braves to take it easy on run all of lowpets, even more so than Chris Sale who's always had injury issues. But workloads matter. And I know there's this like theme always about like guys just throw out there so they're whatever, But being proactive on a guy who's been awesome so far this year makes sense. Ray Kerr was in the bullpen on Wednesday in case it seemed that Schwellenbach might blow up and have a short outing, and if that had been the case, they would have used Kerr and probably started a Lopez tomorrow or not something else. But they seemingly like Kerr as a potential starter. And I know he was not very good in his last outing, and I saw some of the reactions to that. There was, look, it's one it's one start. I'm not gonna tell you he's good because I don't know yet about about Ray Carr as the starter. But I have personally no issue at all pushing Ronaldo backa day, having him be on extra rest as much as possible. He was never gonna throw two undreneting this year. That's not what's going to happen. There's no reason why he would have. And if they think that this is the best course of action to handle him, he's been really good so far, so no complaints. Does that mean they're gonna do this all the time. I don't know. Maybe we'll get more information. But they did not announce until after they were already kind of done for the night, so there was like snit talking about this. He'll talk about it on Thursday. And I'm sure Sean and Steven will talk about that more on their next show. But that's why that happened, you would imagine, And there you go. The Braves are also facing the Nationals again. They're throwing triv Williams in the game. He's been just kind of a guy in his career, but he was pretty brutal last year. He has been very good this year. However. He actually has a two point two ninety e or a in ten starts, pretty strong peripherals, So curR versus Williams tough spot for the Braves, you would imagine in some respects. But I will say the Braves are still I believe favored. As I'm looking at this podcast as a start, as a record of the podcast, I'm looking at the odds page as talking right now. Make sure that I'm right, but I believe that I am. Yes, the Braves are still favored pretty solidly in the game port of Betty Market. So does that mean they're gonna win. No, But it does mean that even with a suboptimal pitching matchup, the Braves are seen as favorites in the game on Thursday. One more note before we get out of here, Owen Murphy one of the Braves prospects. It's hay Timy John. That's a little bit of brutal news, so unfortunate stuff there. I don't have much like analysis there. It just kind of stinks, obviously for anybody to have Tommy John. You never want to have that. But Murphy's a guy who's certainly one of the more prominent prospects the Braves have in terms of name anyway, for sure on pick in twenty twenty two for instance. So there's that. We'll have more on that in the future, I'm sure. And you know, that's all I have for the most part on today's podcast. So big picture, a nice debut for Schwrollenbach. The offense is still maddening. We've done so much on that, and we'll probably do more in the future, but it's been frustrating, to be sure. And then Roman Lariano and there you go. So that's all I have on this mini podcast. Please subscribe to this show. I know we say it all the time, and every podcast tells you to subscribe. I'll be the first to admit that, but it really does wonders for us if you would subscribe and auto download the show on your podcast platform choice, whether it be Apple or Spotify, overcast podcasts. We should be anywhere. If we're not, let us know. We'll get that fixus to as we possibly can as the part of the Folatar to our network. But thank you for listening to the show. We do appreciate that for sure. Ratings and reviews definitely appreciated. Listen to the ads. Support our sponsors, that's also huge, and please please please do us a favor and tell your friends about the podcast. We're trying to get in front of some new people as much as possible. That's in the nature of the business, of course, but hopefully you have someone in your life that's a BRAVECE fan that has not found us yet, and it would be a huge favor to us if you go ahead and do that. So thank you for listening to the podcast. Hopefully next time you hear my voice it'll be alongside my guy Scott Coleman as he returns from his neberanding journey. But in the meantime you will definitely hear from Sean and Stephen in the between then and now probably alwayst that's the plan at this point in time, so stay tuned, subscribe to the show. We'll see you all next time.