Braves Struggle Against Nationals and Chipper Jones Sounds Off on Offense | Atlanta Braves Podcast

the Braves dropped their series finale to the Washington Nationals just hours after putting ronal Lopez on the iil and calling up Cavin bigio will'll break that down plus Chipper Jones's comments on the Braves offense on this episode of Braves today [Music] yes welcome on into this episode of Braves today for Thursday September 12th I'm your host lindsy Crosby you can follow me on Twitter at Crosby baseball he's Christian Ral you can follow him on Twitter Christian SRA R A you can find all of our written work at Braves today.com the Braves today substack and Christian we're gonna get to Chipper Jones's comments on Cory cl's podcast about Atlanta's offense we're going to get to the Ronaldo Lopez injury I want to real quick just close the book on this national series this short series wrapping up this 5 to one loss by Atlanta on Wednesday night and I did not get to watch probably about half of this game my daughter had her first soccer match of the Year first year playing soccer kind of had to be there right they won so that helps four nothing but from what I saw what I did see in the highlights that I watched the offense kind of looked like they were doing a lot of the the same stuff that we saw against Cincinnati and a lot of the poor performances and then Max freed didn't look quite like the max freed that we expect yeah that's basically a nutshell you should actually probably thank your daughter for having a soccer game on the schedule because you got to miss another frustrating game of the Atlanta Braves I mentioned this on the show yesterday are you excited about the offense it seemed like we get one peak in a whole bunch of other Valley so it looks like we're starting another value here Lindsay hopefully it doesn't last into the weekend but after putting up 12 runs 15 hits on Tuesday's series opener against the Nationals it was just non-existent offense once again Jake Irvin had the better of these Braves and we saw it coming because he's had such a good record against the Braves this season he retired the first 10 batters to begin the game until Jorge cair found his way on on base with a walk which is an underrated stat by cair I should mention and then we didn't get a single hit until the third time through the order until Michael Harris came up in the top of the sixth inning Jake Irvin was throwing a no hitter through the first two times through the order against the Atlanta Braves a team that should be in playoff contention right now but instead is one game behind the New York Mets yes a very frustrating game I'm not sure you can tell it in my tone Lindsay but yes I have a little bit of I I did not sleep well last night because I was digging into some data and a lot of it had to do with what is going on with this team yeah this is It's just you've had so many guys get hurt and obviously we're going to touch on this on the offense when we get to the shipper Jones stuff just hold on for that but we've had so many injuries and it feels like the guys who are remaining in the lineup whoever they are try to do a little bit too much everybody thinks okay it's not like last year where we have this continuity we have these same guys in the lineup every single day and my job is just to go out there and have the best at bat that I can so that we have the so that we can string together a bunch of hits score a bunch of runs everybody goes out there and feels hey this team is hurting we can't produce I've got to get the run in I've got to get the home run I've got to put the ball over the fence so that we can score a run and and it's just not happening and I do think a lot of that comes back to the injuries and and we don't I think we just all say okay yeah they've been hurt they've been missing guys but the impact of that I think is huge fun stat that I did yesterday for fun I like to track how many different lineups this team uses because they're always one of the lowest in baseball on different lineups used last year excluding the pitcher Atlanta used 41 different lineups and the most common versions of that lineup it was just the catcher was different and they used the I think it's the Sha Murphy lineup was 46 times the Travis darno lineup was 36 times this year you're already at 65 different lineups because of injury Replacements but the most commonly used lineups 14 times and nine times and it just shows that even when you have a stretch when guys are healthy they're playing next to guys that they haven't played before they're in different lineup positions they're in different spots they're not used to and it adds to the pressure of hey man you have to go out and perform because nobody else is because a lot of the guys who were doing it are either slumping or they're not in the lineup at all yeah and it's even worse than what it has been too and let me even give you a number to back that up you know this season the Braves have been really is terrible a good word for offense because they've been terrible this year on offense and they're averaging 4.27 runs per game that's good enough for 18 in all of baseball if you take out that 12 nothing Victory just the other day because right now that looks quite like an outlier if you take that away in the month of September they are only averaging 2.6 runs per game almost two whole runs less per game offensively uh in the month of September so at the point where you're supposed to step up your performance to get yourself into the postseason to step up your offense to make a a last second run to get into the Wild Card race you're dropping the ball yeah and last night Max Reed allows the four runs that is the first time that a brave starter has allowed four earned runs since early August August there you go uh SW and Bach had six over the weekend but only three were earned the rest were unearned um and that was the aiting that broke the streak of the record setting streak of 20-some games and here's the frustrating thing about Freed's last night the 11 hits were career-high it's only the third time in his career he's allowed 11 hits in the third inning I went back and watched these highlights here in the third inning the ntional scored two runs only one ball left the infield like it was just a lot of four of the three of the four hits in that inning were under 83 miles an hour and so that's another example it feels like of the luck not being on Atlanta's side because early in the year we talking about how many hard hit outs Atlanta had they'd Rock a ball at 105 and it' be caught at the warning track and then the flip side is you have things like this and Max freed admitted after the game like G was frustrating right he doesn't it's frustrating because they're trying to win games he doesn't care of how hard the ball's hit you want to get an out but it feels like it's insult to injury when it's not even hit that hard and not even out of the infield and they're still getting hits and they still getting runs so one that really one that really stuck out to me and it was in the third inning as well CJ Abrams had a really soft contact hit into the infield and Cavin bigio tried to make a really good play on it and and for what he could do it was a pretty good play the throw was just not in time to the first base and andcj Abrams he's got some speed he made it but the expected batting average of that hit was a 73 mile hour hit a single the expected batting average was a 080 for him to get on base and that started the beginning scoring for for the brave or excuse me for the Nationals right after Jacob young was hit by a pitch that's where the single happened Jacob young winds up coming in later on so yeah definitely Freed's Knight looks bad on paper but he wasn't terrible he had some he he definitely wasn't his best Knight but I don't think this is like where we need to look at and say should we be concerned about Max Reed I don't think that's where we need to be in this conversation there were so many balls hit down left field line the Nationals were just finding a way to hit him and but most of them were soft contact he did have lot some hard contact I will say that a lot of them were came down the left field line as well but it wasn't yeah I can't point my finger and say Max Freed's the reason why we lost this game can't see it he did have some interesting stats when you look at his Savant though he didn't throw the slider at all he went only with sweepers and that's a sweeper he threw the sweeper 30 times according to data that's only a pitch he threw 67 times before last night's outing so he already basically doubled that so really another interesting reason it looks like he's shift his Arsenal a little bit which is another interesting linday because he's been doing good so lately it's like he's trying to get ahead of the curve yeah it feels like the one struggle that Fred's had the uncharacteristic struggle is inine last night lefties hit 314 with an 827 Ops off of them and that's obviously a lot better than lefties normally get off of free and sweepers specifically are typically really good against s handedness hitters and they have some of the biggest splits in baseball against opposite-handed hitters so the I it feels like the idea there was I want something that is going to look like a strike and then take itself out of the strike zone away against lefties I haven't gone back and check stat cast I would be willing to bet that he threw 20 of them I think you said I'd be willing to bet 30 I'd be will to bet 25 of them were used against lefties versus righties but for an organization that puts so much work into getting their prospects to be better with sliders it's it's interesting to me how some of the major league guys like freed don't really use a slider that much just interesting kind of how that works they prioritize it a lot in the minors but not necessarily in the majors any final thoughts before we move on to Renardo Lopez on this unless you want to talk about it in the Lopez spot but desel Hernandez I thought made a good impact in his return back to the Braves Bullpen I know he let up a run at the end it was a unlucky bloop to the shallow right center but other than that I thought he looked great on the mound three strikeouts I I think he we're seeing the reason why many people wanted him to be called up in September now he's going to make a nice run and I think he has a good chance assuming the Braves can make the playoffs for him to be on the playoff roster for the second straight season yeah through 40 pitches one and two thirds Innings he hadn't pitched in like a week so it made sense that they were willing to use him for multiple Innings and I imagine that if he wouldn't have given up that last hit he would have stuck around instead of having Aon bber come out to get one strike out there to end it but going to the Ronaldo Lopez injury we talked about this we broke it down on the show yesterday assuming he was going to go on I think this just illustrates like the thin line that Atlanta is having to operate we talked about that incredible streak of Atlanta about the starting pitching not allowing three or more earn runs or three runs period for the longest time and how the Braves have not won even 80% of those games because the offense is so slim and I think this is another illustrtion so now that we know for a fact he's out there he's not coming back the earliest he can come back is the final week of the year very end of September and the team has not said what his role will be when he comes back but I'll maintain I feel like if they make the postseason his role is going to be as a reliever simply because this will have been his second time hitting the iil we we talked about this yesterday we don't really know what it's going to look like as far as as far as far as rehab starts the ability to do that you you did point out the teams in Miami the same time that gwinnett's in Jacksonville he could go do Rehab start there and go back to the team but it feels like he's going to be a reliever any final thoughts on R Lopez going to the iil no I agree with you thinking that if he does come back he'll be a reliever I don't think we'll see him pitch at all again in the regular season even though there's a chance for I think two or three games left on the schedule I just don't think there's any reason to do that so I think the only time we'll see Lopez back is if we see him in the postseason yeah and and again that's a as of right now you are a game out so you're not even guaranteed to make the postseason now was is frustrating in there Cavin bio flip side of this plays last night we turned two double plays with him in the game I went back and watched all of his defensive opportunities I don't think he was bad I don't obviously he goes over for three at the plate two strikeouts I'm sorry no over for three one strikeout G orella had two strikeouts this is another situation of hey it's another guy who was DFA by another team he's batting under 200 on the season when he was letg go two teams have now gotten moved on from him he was traded from Toronto to La before he came here and it's I don't really know what we could have expected from Cav bigio it feels like this is just a Fillin thing until you get Aussie Al back I don't feel like there's any sort of long-term future here for Cavin bigio as far as once once Aussie's back it's either him or Luke Williams on the bench every day and I don't even know how much they'll play yeah he had a 96 mph popup other than that strikeout and then a 76 mph fly out neither of them were remotely close for expecting batting average none of them were good balls that were put in the play his defense wasn't bad I'll give you that but you need more performance from him I think Luke Williams was was better at the plate than what we saw from Kevin viio last night now again it's only one game it's a small sample size but we've seen what Cavin bigio has done over his career when he was platooning with Toronto and then what yeah and then what he did with the Dodgers before he was dfad I I'm with you I think he's just a small little Band-Aid until Maryfield gets back from injury and of course when na yai gets back as well yeah all right in just a second we're going to talk about this shipper Jones thing it's been running the it's been running around the internet recently everybody's talking about it we'll break down what chipper said and what it means next right here on Braves today welcome back to Braves today lindsy Crosby Christian raal here with you you can find all of our written work Braves today.com and so Chipper Jones had some thoughts right Chipper Jones had some thoughts about the Atlanta Braves about offense in general and I think we need to a lot of people have covered this I think we need to clarify what was actually what chipper was saying about Atlanta versus what he was saying in general because I think there's a lot of Confusion And A lot of people are thinking that chipper Jones is talking about the Braves and all of his comments so for those of you who don't know chipper went on Corey cubber's podcast retired MLB pitcher Cory clubber and he had some comments about why he's no longer working with the team why he's and and his frustrations he deals with when it comes to Modern Baseball he talked about throwing his flipflops at the TV and frustra and I think a lot of people misinterpreted this as him talking throwing shade at the Atlanta Braves and his son went on social media and clarified so chipper said working with the Braves these past few years it's very frustrating and his son clarified he's not talking about Atlanta he's talking about MLB in general and chipper Point that he's making and please go watch the go listen to the podcast it's it's well done it's a good podcast I don't know who the co-host is with Cory clubber I don't know who that is it's a Well Done podcast but Chipper's frustration is that too many guys now in baseball are willing to give up outs they're not very good at situational hitting they're not very good at moving the runner over they're not very good at stringing together consecutive hits to bring guys in and he said like a runner on third in less than two outs it drives him nuts when a dude doesn't get you know a Fly ball to right and get that guy in whereas so many guys now will swing for the fences trying to hit a home run I've got thoughts on this what give me your thoughts on what chipper said and his takeaways from that interview yeah I think ours are going to align quite closely but I'm with him I agree I think that this the league has taken a different approach and I don't think it's for the better for baseball as a whole it's the flip side of what pitching has done with high velocity and how they've treated pitchers with high velocity for batters they're pushing them to saying it's okay if you strike out if you're slugging percentage is is higher as long as you can get those extra base hits and they're not more worried about small ball or ball or however you want to refer it to you're starting to see certain teams some smaller clubs go back to that small ball a little bit we just saw the Oakland a bunt three times the other night in a row to get yeah and that's great I'm sure chipper flip-flop stayed on that time but you're right though you're seeing these guys where you obviously have runners in scoring position 10 years ago this would be an easy sure thing let's get a sacrifice fly let's get one of the runners in because one run is is very important and how many times have we discussed not just the Braves but any baseball game when you look at the standings now if you go to MLB standings and you go to the advaned tab there is a spot now next to the road record the home record there's a spot for record in one-run games why do you think that's important Lindsay so why do you think that we should go back shouldn't go back to the point where you are focusing on getting runners in scoring position getting runs on the board because I'm pretty sure that's the way you win ball games don't quote me on that one see I have a little bit more of a Nuance take I think and some of it comes from me digging into and really being a fan of the advanced analytics and data and things like that I think that chipper is right when it comes to situational hitting and there's been times just even this week when I have yelled at the TV because Shawn Murphy is swinging at crap or Orlando Aria goes up with the runner on third base and swings at three pitch out of the strike zone and Strikes Out the inning's over uh so I agree that situationally I don't feel like this team specifically and the league as a whole in general is good enough at settling for putting the ball in play and making and requiring the defense to make a play right I I agree with chipper there I do think that like a lot of former players it's it's possible that he maybe doesn't fully realize how much harder it is to hit in the modern game than it was when he was playing and the fact that there's so many teams who obviously have massive analytics departments and they tons of data and how they've all independently concluded the best way to score runs is to hit homers and it's because stuff is so much better across baseball especially from the bullpen and I feel like even in Chipper's age your goal was to work that starting pitcher get him out of the game and get into the bullpen so that you had an opportunity to put up runs right like your goal foul a bunch of stuff off get past that starter and get their Bullpen whereas now there's times when you don't want to face the bullpen cuz every dude in that Bullpen throwing 98 miles an hour with sliders that break two feet stupid looking curveballs and it's almost easier to hit off of a starter if you can get him in that second and third time through the order it's almost easier to do that than it is to hit against a bullpen and it's more not say it's easier you're more likely to have you know maybe somebody get hit by a pitch or walk and then hit a two- run Homer than you are to string together three or four base hits to bring in those same two runs and so I think he's half right I I think Chipper's right in that you're a lot of these teams and I think the Braves this year are one of them are not really good at situationally making sure hey we got a runner on third and one out no matter what this ball has to go into play and this ball has to be in the air to the out field or in a gap or something so that guy comes in I feel like too many situations you see a guy strikes out there and he's not incredibly pissed that he struck out right that's the worst possible outcome in that situation is a strike out but I also feel like it is so much harder to do what Chipper Jones wants you to do which is go up there hit a single to the opposite field and then Play Station to Station to bring that run in then what teams try do now because if that was legitimately the easiest thing to do or the better and more reliable thing to do teams would do it more teams would do it and so many teams understand that's not the modern game anymore am I off base for thinking that he's half right but he's also a little bit not no and I think you backed it up with that as well and I'm going to go back to what you said at the beginning there and saying you know how people at the plate aren't making the proper adjustments and you discussed how Murphy was making bad pitches out of the Zone things like that we just saw that yesterday yeah in the seventh inning we got two two Braves in scoring position with only one out and then you couldn't get any of them in because you had a terrible strikeout from Shawn Murphy and then you had a weak fly out by Cavin bigio even if you had that fly out beforehand it was so weak that you wouldn't have been able to get a run scored you is that right there a good reason to say that pitching is is tough is too tough to to get a run in or is that that just showing poor execution because I know the Braves offense hasn't been very great where do you have to point the finger on improving here is it is it a manager expectation to make sure that their the strategy is better in those kind of situations we have more data as you mentioned uh than any other time in this league ask Jorge Solair uh he has access to iPads they're either broken or they're working but he has access to them where is where is the right way to point these singers to make sure that you're actually executing what need to happen and in the half right portion of Chipper Jones and you have a guy on third base and you have less than two outs you find a way to get him in yeah I think some of that I feel like they were at I have not pulled these stats Yet full disclosure I feel like Atlanta was better last year at hitting with Runners and scoring position I do think some of that comes back to my point from the first segment about there's been so many injuries that guys feel like they have to do too much Shawn Murphy granted he's a guy who every single swing is a gck he is threw his shoes on every swing but it never felt like his goal in that at bat specifically I'm not trying to single Shawn Murphy out all these guys have done this but it never felt like his goal in that at bat was to hit a line drive and put a ball in play it felt like his goal in that at bat was to hit a home run and so I think that there's a mix of guys feeling like maybe a trying to do a bit too much maybe the coaching staff not making a big enough empasis on hey we don't need you to hit a home run here we need you to put this ball in play so we can score that guy from third I feel like it's probably mixed blame there I do feel like if Atlanta does not have it's not literally decimated with injuries this season you don't see as much of that because that mentally that does affect These Guys these guys do feel the pressure of hey we've got to go out there and get these runs in and that's what I'm like hitting the Home Run is what want to do because they think okay hey we're down I think it I think in the seventh it was four to one so I'm I'm fully believe Shawn Murphy says hey if I don't hit a home run here Cavin bigio is probably not gonna do it GI orell is probably not gonna bring it in I've got to get the home run here because I don't have the faith and conf and they'll never admit to this I don't have the faith and confidence that both of those guys can get base hits so that we can get the three runs and tie the game up that's my belief that's a good point no that's a good point I think that you being half right or saying that he's half right and room for interpretation uh for the rest of it is a good way to to say it because there's not one correct strategy in baseball if that was the case then we would see everybody doing that we probably wouldn't see the Chicago White sock with 113 losses yeah yeah let us know what you think I'm really curious this has been all over the Internet obviously a lot of people have talked about this and done some really good content on this let us know what you think in the comments down below if you're on YouTube if you're on audio you can always tweet at us I'm on Twitter at cby baseball he's on Twitter at Christian s ruh and Braves today Braves today on Twitter you can also email us contact braves.com let me know if you have a good comment I'll read it on the show tomorrow we'll talk about it we are tomorrow's show we are going to break down this Dodger series we have the pitching matchups like we predicted yesterday they're going to move Max freed up on regular rest for the series finale on Monday that'll be against yoshinobu Yamamoto G to be a great thing there uh going to be a good weekend of baseball reminder Friday night's on Apple TV plus Sunday night is on ESPN Sunday Night Baseball so be ready for both of those but until next time this has been Braves today [Music]