Nearly A Sweep And Nearly A No-Hitter

00:00:22
Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to episode six of the Hammer Territory podcast. I am your host, Brad Roland, coming to you on a Sunday evening, May twelfth, and I'm joined by Scott Coleman. Scott, it was a weekend of almost for the Braves, even if they had a successful weekend by wins and loss.

00:00:37
Speaker 2: Hey, Brad, I hope you are doing well. A tough one on Sunday night, for sure, a tough walk off loss. But we would be remiss to not say a belated Happy Mother's Day to all of the great moms out there. I know for a fact that we have mom listeners on this podcast, so a happy Mother's Day to you and yours. But overall, four in one week, even if Sunday night was a little tough, I think you have to take Yeah, I mean.

00:01:01
Speaker 1: Far be it for us to be overwhelmingly positive, but certainly you have to lean into that. It's usually good to take a little bit of a deep breath after a tough loss, which happened on Sunday evening. We'll talk about that in a second. But still a four and one week, a couple of series victories, and you can't really complain about that, just to plug this at the top of the podcast and also just encourage people to go ahead and subscribe to the show. We are still a new podcast that is trying to grow, So check us out and subscribe to the podcast on Apple and Spotify and overcast and all those places. But I did a show with Steven Tolbert, our colleague, on Friday evening, so we'll probably not touch too much on that game on Friday. If you missed anything on that, dive into that podcast. But we'll actually start on Saturday, which was going to be the big story. Maybe it still is. Despite the way Sunday ended in the close to a no hitter performance, it has still been about eleven thousand days, says the Breaths had a no hitter. They came within quite literally one batter since Ken Murker did in nineteen ninety four. It's the fourth longest drout of any baseball team in the league right now. And Scott it was so so so close, shades of Shelby Miller, like a lot going on there, but it would have been a combined no hitter, but it was.

00:02:08
Speaker 2: It was right there for it was very close, of course, one batter away and Iglacy has just left a fastball right down the pipe to JD. Martinez, who generally does not miss fastballs right down the pipe. But we were close. We were going to do an emergency episode and everything you mentioned. Almost eleven thousand days, thirty years since Kent Murker threw one in nineteen ninety four, and funny enough, you know, I'm a little young to remember the Kent Murker era in Atlanta, but he was also part of the last combined no hitter for the Braves in nineteen ninety one. And you know, Kent Murker, I looked him up a bit. I mean, he wasn't bad by any means. He had a career of on and off of about a decade, but he was hardly Greg Maddox or John Smoltz or Tom Glavin out there. And of course, none of that Hall of Fame trio ever recorded a no hitter, but was part of two, including a solo one. So of course, just one of those funny things about baseball. It seemed like we were going to get the no hitter finally after some close calls over the past few years, but alas we will have to wait another however many days until the braves get that illustrious no hitter because man, it's just it has been a long time.

00:03:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, you mentioned we've talked about this and more jokes about it in the past, like what would it take for us to record an emergency podcast in like April or May? And usually it's only bad news because trays don't really happened this earlier in the season. But I guess no Hitter would have done it because you and I really were prepared. We were talking, we had a document going, and then it was not something we had to do. I mentioned Shelby Miller that was the closest and recent memory. It was May seventeenth, twenty fifteen. He was one out short fulty minute close like it's there's been a couple of those. I know you mentioned this at one point, either online or offline. What do you make of the combined no hitter thing, because obviously it would have counted it, but it's not quite the same thing. I wouldn't say it's not quite as memorable necessarily.

00:03:59
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's a hot take or a medium take or a mild take, but the no hitter for me anyway, does lose some of the luster whenever it's a combined effort. I don't know where you sit on this, Brad. Regardless, it would have been very very cool to see the combined no hitter, I think, quite obviously, when just one pitcher goes out there and not only goes nine innings without giving up a hit, but also manages his pitch count was the big thing. I know we're going to talk about that for Max Freed here in a moment, but yeah, it's obviously anytime you get that close to a no hitter, the heart rate goes up a little bit. You really start locking into every single at bat. Apparently, Ryce I Iglesias said after the game that he didn't know there was a no hitter going on. I don't know if I necessarily believe that. I mean, maybe he's been pitching for a long time. Maybe he didn't know. It would have been funny to see his reaction to all of his teammates jumping up and down on the field if he really didn't know there was a no hitter. But regardless, a real bummer. I really we were going to finally get this after thirty years. But alas maybe one day soon we have gotten very close with Max Reed in two of his last three starts, He's come very close to putting together a combined no hitter.

00:05:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, speaking of which, which at least touch on this topic, Freed was obviously brilliant in the game on Saturday. You know, he had three walks. It wasn't like he was close to being perfect, but he was really dominant. We have to talk about this for a second, Scott. He threw one hundred and nine pitches in seven innings, which is a little bit less economical. You know, Max eve Ben said after the game like he wasn't hitting the spots. He didn't feel like he was bothered at all that he came out of the game. But of course there's always the segment of fan that's like, why is and he's staying in the game. People that were really angry, Like I saw some fire snicker tweets that were not joking, which I couldn't stop laughing about on Saturday night. I give you that stat about the pitches because Max's career high for pitches is one hundred and ten, and he was at one hundred and nine through seven innings, So it wasn't like he was going in the ninth with the one hundred and nine ins a hundred nine pitch. I have to say I've probably taken him at least one hundred and thirty pitches to finish no hitter, which was just not going to happen. I'm not even trying to make a value judgment here. I don't know if you want to weigh on that or not, but I'm just living in the practical world. Last year, the season high across baseball in pitches was one hundred and twenty four, and that would have been about as low as it possibly could have been for Freed, So I wasn't surprised. I had no reaction in a negative way. But anytime anyone gets pulled with no hitter, it always comes up. So what did you make of snick Er tacking about? Even with all that stuff.

00:06:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, there is always a very strong reaction I think in both ways whenever this happens. Of course, famously, Ian Anderson had a no hitter in Game three of the World Series and it was like all we heard about for twenty four hours from national and local, and I mean everybody had an opinion on it. My take, and I think yours too, is you just cannot risk Max Freed going one hundred and twenty one hundred and thirty. However, any pitches it was going to take until he either completed the no hitter or gave up a hit, you just cannot risk it. Maybe it's captain obvious, but without Spencer Strider, the importance for Max Free to throw one hundred and eighty plus innings this year is even more important than it was at the start of the season. Of course, you're going to need him deep into hopefully a long playoff run. You just cannot risk it. Right If Max goes out there and on pitch one twenty one he blows out his elbow, you talk about the season going down the drain in a real hurry. It's overall, man, it was. It's whenever he pulled him, I was almost afraid to look at Twitter because of the oh boy, the takes are coming. It is no longer nineteen seventy five where teams just kind of let their pitchers do whatever. Maybe if the Braves were thirty games under five hundred, and it was September and they were in the middle of a rebuild, you know, what the hell, why not let your pitcher try to do it? But to take that kind of unnecessary risk two weeks into the month of May, with what one hundred and ten undred and fifteen games to go, you just cannot do it. We are in lockstep there, And I do wonder if he had been through eight innings with one on nine, whether he would have been given the chance. We'll never know.

00:08:12
Speaker 1: That would have at least been closer, But I think people were kind of just forgetting how many more pitches that he would have had to throw, And yeah, it's just too risky even if it was September or whatever, but especially this early in the season for a valuable guy like It's a pretty easy decision for me. And look, I'm not saying that people are going to be mad about because they are and people think about different things. But I thought it was not a huge story, even if I saw the saw the car crash coming a mile away as soon as he started coming out of the game at the end of the seventh. Elsewhere in that game on Friday, we should at least acknowledge Michael Harris saved the no hitter with one out in the seventh on a absolute rocket shot. It would have been a home run in like a third of the ballparks in baseball, and he made a great play in center field. You know, Joe Mennez walked to guys like it was a little bit dicey the game actually wasn't he even over like they a glass came in on Saturday and the tie run came to the plate, like it was very interesting beyond the home runs to actually give up the no hitter, like it wasn't even like it was academic anytime the time one comes to the plate and the not thinning. It would have been crazy if they lost the game, I'll be honest, Like that would have been a really tonight was brutal doubt of anymores.

00:09:22
Speaker 2: Well, and Friday's game was very similar to with a very deep fly ball that you know just early on it, but it was almost a game tying home run, and really that that's kind of been a theme, especially without Pierce Johnson in the mix. The back end of the bullpen has been a little shaky over the last week. We will, of course talk about aj Mentor on Sunday night. Ricelle was anything but perfect on Friday and Saturday, so thankfully they were able to get out of it. But you're right, it kind of went from this like, Wow, the Braves are gonna have a no hitter to ah man, we lost the no hitter. We were one away, and then it was like, holy smokes, if they really allowed us game to get away, to lose this game, and please, we're talking about a ninety nine percent win probability, probably ninety nine point something on the wind chart, and all of a sudden, everyone kind of had to regroup and focus. Thankfully, of course nothing bad came of it, but yeah, just a little extracurriculars, I guess to close out that game on Saturday.

00:10:18
Speaker 1: One more note from that game. In fact, Steven and I got into this on Friday night, and Stephen I believe was right about this, but we got a little bit of pushback. As you might expect. Steven talked about Michael Harris's struggles at the plate coming into Saturday, and he had been one of his last thirty two and of course he had all kinds of approach issues. I referenced that he had the worst chase rate in all of baseball, and Scott, in hilarious fashion, he went three for three and got on base four times on Saturday.

00:10:42
Speaker 2: Nothing.

00:10:42
Speaker 1: We don't want that to happen. We do want that to happened. It was just very funny and we got some I think most of it was good natured pushback on that because I think the points are making very very reasonable and obviously I've been very high on mach Larra's for a long time, but I thought that the timing was a kind of a chef's kiss after we talked about him on Friday Night to have been maybe as the season so far, maybe one of his best games in the season happened the next day.

00:11:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought it was a great segment from you and Steven. If folks miss that, it would be the Friday night episode on the Feed. Michael Harris, as much as we are fans of his, he has developed some really bad habits at the plate. And we're talking about a fairly small sample this season, but even in his first year and two thirds, he has been a free swinger. At times, he has not walked at a high level, and this season has just been gasoline on the fire where he had a stretch there he was oh for thirty one or oh for thirty two, swinging at everything. We want Michael Harris to be successful, and I truly believe he just has to cut down the swing rate. You and Steven again talked about it extensively. But if you look at the players who have the highest swing rates in baseball, they are generally not very good hitters and some of the best hitters in the game are far more selective and actually slit swing less than almost anybody else. So I think there's still obvious talent with Michael. I think he has another gear in his game. Hopefully he kind of comes out of this bunk. And as long Tame listeners of the podcast know, and it seems like right on cue anytime we talked about a player comes through and Hey, if that's what it takes, if that's what we have to do in order to get players back on track, then we're happy to do it.

00:12:18
Speaker 1: Yes, we'll keep doing that, I'm sure in the future, and hopefully it keeps happening that way. Before we dive into Sunday's game, there is a story from Sunday that is, I would say, more important than the game, and that's the Austin Riley left the game of the fourth inning with what the Braves called left side tightness. They said it's precautionary because it was an ESPN game. Brian Snicker talked during the game on the broadcast, and he said that Riley felt some tightness during batting practice before the game ended up playing, but it came back during the game, so they told him and they were trying to be of course taking it. Took every precaution and be careful with him. I gotta say, Scott, my reaction to that was not necessarily a favorable one. Not that you know it is what it is. We'll never know all the full picture. But for me, it's like, I know everybody loves to play, especially on this team, that guys will like the rest. I get it, but if one of your stars is feeling something tight and bad in practice, they can just sit. They're allowed to not play that night. It's really it's something that probably should happen more often. So I didn't love that problem. I mean, again, we're all guessing to some degree, but I didn't love to hear that. But he was kind of battling it before they gave even started.

00:13:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, especially when we've watched Sean Murphy take almost I mean, it's going to be basically two full months by the time that Sean Murphy recovers from his oblique injury, and let's hope for Austin it is just tightness and not something with the oblique. I'm guessing we will know more, maybe by the time folks listening to this podcast will have more of a definitive update. So far it is precautionary and left side tightness and no word of oblique, which is of course the real concern. Maybe Austin gets a couple of days off. That would of course be the real best outcome possible because without Murphy, and we know that this line up has been in a funk even this past week with a four to one week overall, it's not like the bats set the world on fire. And while Austin has not been great this year, you really cannot afford to lose another regular for any extended period of time. It was cold on Sunday night in New York. Maybe it was just he couldn't get loose, and then swinging the bat a few times, it just wasn't feeling great. At least he did come out of the game in the fourth inning. I guess that is, even if they didn't decide to sit him after batting practice. The fact that he did not play the full game and risk aggravating it even more. We're just gonna have to hold our breath and hope it's nothing serious for Austin, and he.

00:14:37
Speaker 1: Has been remarkably durable, you know. All it's of course jokes across the country about the Braves and how often their guys play, But since Austin made his full fledged arrival in twenty twenty one, this is his game's played per season one sixty one fifty nine and then this year he's played I believe in all, yeah, that he played it all the first thirty seven, so he basically ever miss games. So hopefully that's a sign of positivity that he won't miss any games here. If it is something to be worried about, he'll sit for a brief time hopefully. And I'm keeping an eye on Twitter as we're talking now, and we'll sort of update at the end of the podcast if something breaks from the post game. But that's where we are at the moment. On Riley and I just didn't I didn't love it, but it is what it is. And although it did pave the way for the debut of Zach Short at third base, I know you have takes deep down your inner soul about the infield swap.

00:15:29
Speaker 2: In this week's Gut the on base king Zach Short, who had two played appearances. He walked both times and scored two runs thanks to Marcelo Zuna. I don't care what the record is, Brad. Anytime as a hitter you can do something that nobody has done since Hank Aaron, it's pretty special. And that's what Marcello Zuna did tonight. Two more RBI. I know, RBI, it's accounting stat you have to have guys on bass, blah blah blah. But man, anytime you can do something since Hank Aaron, that's pretty cool. Our cell has been great, and I think Zach Short, I know the pod did a little bit of a talk about the infield swap of this past week, which was a little odd. Was probably my only real take. A little weird to shuffle the deck like that. But you know, Short, he does a few things well. He swings hard, he can barrel the ball if he gets contact. He's kind of the epitome of a backup infielder. But I think, as we always say of the backup infielders, in a perfect world, we are not talking about them very much, if ever, on this podcast, because it means the starters are playing well and are healthy.

00:16:33
Speaker 1: Yep, we are in lockstep right there. And Steven had me rolling with his his his unmoved nature on the on the swap of the infielders on Friday night, which was I think of a perfect reaction in some form or fashion. We wish always talk about the rest of the game that happened on Sunday. A lot of it was good. Jared Kellen Combert, again, you much know Zuna has been red hot. They probably should, probably should have tacked on maybe another run in the sixth they had first and I get no out before three strikeouts in a row. That that kind of hurt a little bit, you know, some as usual this year they've had. They had some batted ball, unfortunate breaks, a couple of hard hit balls. There's one from Olsen that was stung and had like a eight hundred expected batting average, et cetera, that it didn't fall in. What did you make of Ronald Cunea getting picked off twice in the game, Because I know our our old pal Chris Willis was battling. In the mentions, people were for some reason, like totally blind and raged by Ronnie get picked off. It wasn't great, to be fair, but uh, I didn't have a huge take on it other than it was just unfortunate.

00:17:32
Speaker 2: Yeah. I know that Ronald is a lightning rod with the way that he plays in all of that, and I am a proud defender of Ronald Acuna Junior, especially for some of the crap and the nonsense that he gets blamed for. Of course, there was the notorious play in Philadelphia where a ball hit like three hundred feet away from him, bounced and everyone was remembering. I mean, I don't want to we did the you know, rip the band aid. But anyway, you cannot get picked off twice in a major League baseball game. I don't care if you have eighty stolen bases or you've never stolen a base in your career, you cannot get picked off twice. Interestingly enough, CJ Natowski, who was not on the broadcast tonight since it was on ESPN, but CJ tweeted that it was actually a balk, a well disguised balk from Luis Severino. He of course, I think Ronald acknowledged that too. I mean the umpire didn't care, and the umpire seemingly missed it. But at the end of the day, balk or not, you cannot get picked off twice, especially when you were at the top of the order for a lineup that is struggling. It's a cold night offenses at a premium. You just can't do it. And I think Ronald would be the first one to tell you you can't get picked off twice in a baseball game, no matter what the situation. It was pretty frustrating. I tweeted in the moment that he should sit the bench the last couple of innings. I don't know, maybe I cooled on that take a little bit, but regardless, man, you cannot do that.

00:19:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think that's good without saying I think everybod would acknowledge that. You know, maybe you could frame it in the nicest possible way and say it's like, you know, if you had if you had tried to steal both bases and for nine second, when people have the same reaction. I'm probably not, but I think it's just it just feels worse for whatever reason, to be picked off then actually get thrown out a second. I don't know, I don't know why that is, but it really is kind of true.

00:19:18
Speaker 2: I guess.

00:19:19
Speaker 1: And yeah, I think if it wasn't Ronald, people would care less. And it is what it is, but I we agree it's something you can't do. Is that the reason they lost? No, But you know, they've probably a couple of different spots where they probably should have scored another run, and ironically those were not the endings where they probably should have done more. Maybe that was because Ronald was picked off and that kind of just burned out in those innings. But we'll leave it there. I just feel like we should bring it up because in a game where you use by one run, every little bit counts, and that would be something people remember, I'm sure. And if if baseball was a more nationally covered sport on the first takes and such, I wonder if they would get more aunt up on that. But I kind of doubt it other than just locally, it'll happen that I know.

00:20:00
Speaker 2: Sure, Brad, you don't want Stephen A. Smith to talk baseball every morning?

00:20:03
Speaker 1: I do not.

00:20:04
Speaker 2: I do not want that, and I wouldn't that be a treat for all of us.

00:20:09
Speaker 1: We was talking about Bryce Elder. We spent time on after his last start lamenting how poorly he pitched in I guesst the Dodgers, and he did pitch very poorly in that game. But at the same time, we did say, uh, as a podcast that's never been the highest on Bryce Elder, necessarily that it's important to keep your projections within reason for the fifth starter spot. And Bryce Elder responded and pitched solidly well on this Sunday evening five and third innings, did a lot of seven hits, but didn't walk anybody. And I know we've set us a number of times, dating back to our old podcasts other places, if he doesn't walk guys, he's okay and no walks, six strikeouts, give up two runs, and you know a lot of that was I think one of those was in the sixth standing off back to by Doubles, like he pitched totally fine, give him a chance to win. And through four starts this year, he has three very very reasonable outings and then the one and charitably you could say the one blow up was in LA against the other best team in the league. You would argue, so all things considered, through four starts, Elder's kind of been Okay.

00:21:10
Speaker 2: I think you can argue this might have been Bryce's best start of the season so far, especially against a pretty good Mets lineup. I know he had the good start against the Marlins a couple of weeks ago, but that is a barely functioning major league team at this point. But Bryce, he had command. You mentioned no walks. I really feel like that is just the thing with him. If he doesn't have command, and this is not exclusive to Bryce Elder, but when you have the kind of stuff that Bryce has, if you don't have that command, it's going to be really tough for him to get through innings. And tonight he did a great job. He kept the sinker down in the zone, he had good command of the breaking pitches. Really, he gave up back to back doubles in the sixth inning to allow a run. But besides that, it was a lot of soft contact, a lot of ground balls that just kind of found its way through the infield. So I was impressed with Bryce. He still has some limitations, and I think what we said a week ago still holds true. I think he's going to be mostly fine against the not as good lineups, and against the good lineups he's probably going to struggle. But if that's what the Braves have as their number five starter, at least for a decent chunk of the season moving forward, I think you have to take it and hope that Bryce is able to build off what he did tonight.

00:22:21
Speaker 1: It's like the least sexy take of all time. But it was funny. I had people I just made a very generic tweet about how Brice did his job, and that's a very simple thing to say, but it's true, like he gave him a chance to win. People were like, well, bricelet was terrible. I'm like, well, guys, I mean I could tell. It was probably the same people that were yelling at me a year ago for saying he wasn't very good. It's probably the same thing. But yeah, I don't think that he's a great pitcher, but he objectively has done his job in three out of four starts this year, and the other one he blew up and they lost the game as a result. But I think he's a pretty acceptable fifth starter even if that is. And when it comes back to what we said a lot of different times about like what the baseline is certain positions, it's been a hot to horse of ours for years about like the ketcher spot across baseball is another example here, deep bullbend guys like you just don't have a roster of twenty six stars. That's just the nature of the beast here. And he's been.

00:23:10
Speaker 2: Fine, and you know, it's a bummer that the ninth inning did not go the Braves as way, yep, because this was very much settling to be a steal of a win for the Braves to sweep the series. You have your number five in Bryce Elder against Luis Severino, the Mets number one so far this year, who's been quite good. You apparently didn't have half of your bullpen available, and you have five big outs from Jesse Chavez and Dylan Lee, and then of course you did not have Rice Iglesias in the ninth inning available. I guess we could have a conversation over whether or not Joe Jimenez could have gotten the ball in the ninth inning, but he had to throw twenty five pretty high stress pitches yesterday. Maybe they were trying to stay away from him.

00:23:54
Speaker 1: Thirty I believe. I believe it was thirty pitches, Yester. Thirty, Yeah, that sounds right. I know a lot that's a lot of it's a lot of pitches. And by the way I look, if you look the way that Snid deployed the bullpen, I have a feeling Joe is unavailable. I don't I think that you don't go to jabez in Lee in a one run game if Hemanez is available.

00:24:13
Speaker 2: That's my guess. This was playing with house money. This was being up one hundred bucks at the black check table and you're playing with your winnings and you're seeing if you can get it to one fifty rights. It's a bummer. I know that man Aj minterter as good of a reliever as he has been his entire career. He just something happens in the ninth inning. I don't know if it's mental, I don't know if it's bad luck. I'm not sure what it is. But the fact is that Aj has just not been very good in the ninth inning when given a chance, not just this season and recently, but last season as well. He struggled a bit when given the opportunity. So he real bummer that he gave up the home run to Brandon Neimo, because this was shaping up to be a really nice stolen victory for the Braves, and you know, I guess that's going to happen every now and then.

00:24:55
Speaker 1: H yeah, that's that's appropriate. I think that you know, anytime you low lead gonna be really mad at the picture who blows the lead. It doesn't mean the aj is bad. He's quite good. Actually he's been quick good for a long time. There was a drag bunt, which like, you, what are you supposed to do with that? Jeff McNeil, who I think every Bravest fan does not particularly enjoy the work of Jeff McNeil, nor Run and Nemo, so that's kind of makes it even worse. But even you know, the first base runner is literally a bunt, and yeah the home run is the home run. Maybe that ties the game instead of giving up a lead or whatever it is. It wasn't great, obviously, but I don't My opinion does not change on edgem Winter. It's just the reality situation. To back you up, by the way his era and some of the peripherals in the ninth inning for his career, this is a huge champel size at this point. Is just it's worse than the other innings and I don't know what that means it's coming into the night. Was like his area is like in the mid forest in the ninth for his career, it's in the load, it's in the mid twes to mid threes and every other inning. So I don't know what that means, man, but it doesn't really matter right now because most of the time he won't be pitching in the ninth inning as long as the glacier says healthy and cooking what he usually does. But that's just what happened tonight and it went from basically I had a change the headline of the podcast, Scott, that's all that was.

00:26:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think right now we are feeling the squeeze of no Pierce Johnson and so many close fifty to fifty games that the Braves have played lately. It's really a it's real benefit when you can give your bullpen basically a night off and either coast to a win or if it's a loss, losing blowout fashion to give everybody a breather. Seems like every night, other than basically one game against the Dodgers, for the past couple of weeks, every game has seemingly been fairly close where you can't just coast. I think we're feeling that effects right now, and hopefully the Braves get back to scoring, because you're just you're not going to get a perfect performance from the pitching staff every single night.

00:26:49
Speaker 1: A couple of injury things you mentioned Pierce Johnson. There was a positive update on him over the weekend. He might be back as soon as Friday. According to Snicker today. He's through on Sunday and it went well, so that would be a very nice help, especially after what it could have been. Anytime you have an elbow elbow issue, the fears are real, but all positive indications so far on that. And as I'm looking right now to update our previous discussion on Austin Riley, he apparently didn't tell the Braves that he felt something during during BADY practice, So that was my why he played Scott because he didn't because no one knew that he felt something in BP today, so that would be why. That'd be why, I guess. And by the way, according to Mark Bowman, our guy, he also didn't come out immediately after he felt it during the game. He stayed in from never ending. I guess he felt it in the third according to what I'm seeing from Bowman on Twitter. So let me just amend my previous statement. There's nothing Stick can do if no one tells him that he's hurt, We'll see nothing else beyond like it doesn't believe to be serious according to what just just Tano of the a JC has just said. But they'll check on it tomorrow and TBD on whether he'll have an MRI or not. So not out of the woods at all, but some relatively upbeat comments from Austin post game. But I wanted to at least circle back on that before we get out here because I didn't want to miss that considering what I said earlier.

00:28:05
Speaker 2: Yes, let us all hope that Austin is going to be okay. We cannot have another star player go down with injury. The Braves have had there more than enough of the fair share of injuries early going. I supposed to have to hope maybe Austin takes a couple of days off just to be safe. I kind of hope they do that, just to be absolutely sure that it's not going to be anything else. But that's great news about Pierce Johnson potentially coming back on Friday. We know how good he is and just give everybody else, or rather give Brian Sticker another option with everybody else down there, because right now, as we talked about at the time of the injury, the back end of the bullpen is a little thin.

00:28:42
Speaker 1: Right now it is, and we'll circle back on that as we need to. All right, Scott, Well, it was a positive week despite the Sunday night loss. There is a joke to be made that I'm sure our listeners will make about you and I and Sunday nights and how things often go when we talk on Sundays and how they were better on Sundays when we war doing the podcast. Our apologies. I think it's random, but maybe it's not. Maybe it's our fault in the.

00:29:06
Speaker 2: End, win and out blame the podcast.

00:29:10
Speaker 1: It.

00:29:10
Speaker 2: Longtime listeners will note that the Braves on Sundays during this great run have not played super well on Sunday. So what do they do but have a walk off the loss at what ten to fifteen pm on a Sunday night on Sunday night baseball? But the last four and one on the week is really good, especially against a pretty solid Red Sox team and a pretty solid Mets team. You take that and hopefully the Braves can keep it going against a pretty tough week ahead with a couple of teams who are projecting to make the playoffs if things continue the way they've been going.

00:29:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, So before we sign off here, a couple of home series this week. They play the Cubs for three beginning on Monday. No dan Fis Swanson Old Palell is on the IL, so he will not be playing against the Braves this week, but the Braves do see show to Imanaga on Monday, and he has arguably been the best pitcher in baseball so far. It's a small sample size seven starts, but he has a one point zero eight ERA with forty three strikeouts and five walks in his debut season. That's all pretty good, I would say, so, a nice little challenge on Monday.

00:30:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a great pitching matchup with Rinaldo Lopez, who has been almost as good in terms of eray. I believe Ronaldo's ERA is one point five on the season. So a great couple of pitching matchups this week. The Cubs are good. They're twenty four and seventeen. They have built upon what was a nice season for them a year ago. You mentioned No Dansby Swanson, which is a bummer won't get to see him play. But with Lopez and then Chris Sale and Charlie Morton, going Braves have a chance to hopefully win the series again. I think if as things stand, the Cubs for me anyway, are pretty clearly the favorites in the NL Central. I guess the Brewers could have something to say about that. But Chicago's a good team. They hit well, they pitched pretty well, and yeah, I mean one point eight ERA in seven starts with forty three strikeouts and five walks. It's pretty crazy.

00:31:01
Speaker 1: It is so a nice little showdown. You know. They're on Monday and then Sale, then Morton for the Braves on Tuesday and Wednesday. They have Thursday off and then as we'll get to later on, we're still doing three or four shows per week on this podcast feed. But they have a very strange four game series against the Padres over the weekend. That's all normal and itself, except for it's a Friday to Monday series. The finale of the series is Monday after Newton, so I'm not sure why they did that, but they did. The Padres are okay, they're five hundred ish team, right now they are hot. Recently they went eight to the last eleven. But aside from the scheduling, not too much to add right now. We'll see who ends up pitching. I assume Elder will earn another pitch, another outing. I should say, there was some question about where he would start this week, and he pitched pretty well tonight, so I expect him to be back in the mix and they'll kind of be on schedule. But that's a series to kind of just circle and look ahead to. The Padres are talented, and we'll see how that one goes.

00:31:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, no days off for the Braves with this early season schedule. Cubs are capable team. The Padres are very talented. They've, like you said, eight out of eleven wins that they're playing better. Just acquired Luisa Rise from the Marlins in that bizarre early season trade. In case folks missed that one, the reigning batting champ in the National League. Padres are talented. Cubs are talented. The Braves really just have not gotten a softer bit of schedule. I guess they had the Marlins twice, which is about as favorable as it gets, and then the White Sox for two games. When it was like thirty degrees outside. But besides that, man, it feels like every series so far has been a challenge, and let's hope the bats continue to wake up. I think this past week was a step in the right direction. They hit for more power than they've been doing. That was a good sign, a lot more home runs than they were doing previously. But overall, this lineup still just is not hitting the way we're expecting them to, and hopefully the pitching staff can keep it going. And you know, seven tough games on the horizon, it'd be nice, especially getting back to trust, to get back to winning after a pretty rough game on Sunday night.

00:32:58
Speaker 1: That's right, And even with the offense play and not that great of a fashion, the Braves are twenty four and thirteen and all is pretty decent with the world. So that's it for us on a Sunday evening. Again, we want to encourage everybody subscribe to the podcast. We're doing a lot of content on this feed, including Scott and I doing more individually because we were only doing mostly once a week on Sundays and now we're doing Sundays and another big week show. We've got Steven We've got Sean, We've got guests coming, et cetera. So subscribe, Scott, anything to plug before we get out of here.

00:33:28
Speaker 2: Nothing here, Brad, take care of yourself. I know it is a busy weekend for you with baseball coverage and the Atlanta Hawks for the for the hometown fans, the number one pick in the lottery.

00:33:38
Speaker 1: The Atlanta Hawks the team I cover, probably even more than the Braves. Scott's a lifelong fan of the Atlanta Hawks, and he's really deeply invested in what happens with the Hawks. Now I'm kidding, but yeah, that caused some consternation today. So thanks for being flexible, Scott and I could have used a non seven o'clock start tonight, but alas here we are.

00:33:57
Speaker 2: Won't somebody think of the podcaster will not grinders out there, they will not. But hope we're doing well. Brad. Again, Happy belated Mother's Day to all the moms out there, and we'll be back soon here on this podcast.

00:34:10
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening everyone, would we do appreciate it again one more time? One more plead from us to go ahead and subscribe, rate and review, and please please please tell it friend or Femine member. Tell your mom about the show on this Mother's Day if you want to spread the good word about our podcast. And with all that said, we see everybody and next time, Santa Su