Well, that was annoying. The Phillies were who the Braves thought they were, and they let them off the hook. The Braves took a game to extras and lost, but it required:
- One single evading Mike Yazstremski for a run scoring triple
- Yet another needless pickoff
- One double evading Ronald Acuña for a triple
- One single evading Eli White for a triple to set up a late tying run
- Playing the back half of the game in a rain storm with multiple lighting strikes near the stadium
- Placing Jose Suarez in a high leverage situation
When you step away from it, you are encouraged and appalled. The good news is that this stretch resembles their 26-4 run in mid-2023. They had to really do something dumb on the bases, have brutal BABIP, or make a poor bullpen decision to lose a game. The bad news is the losing-side of the bullpen and the back end of the bench are pretty
dreadful. We already knew early that parts of the bullpen weren’t great, but injuries make the bench look very thin right now.
The good side of the bullpen is impressive: Raisel Iglesias (when available), Robert Suarez, Dylan Lee and Tyler Kinley. Somewhere in the middle is Aaron Bummer. Outside of that is Carlos Carrasco, Joel Payamps, swingmen Jose Suarez and Martin Perez (perhaps Reynaldo Lopez as well?), and a host of unattractive options at Gwinnett.
The Braves’ left fielders are a combined .206/.294/.299 with a 70 wRC+. That’s ninth worst in MLB, and Mauricio Dubon’s 11 plate appearances are keeping it from being much lower. The Braves can jettison Eli White for his latest brain fart. But that would leave them with three outfielders (glares at Jurickson Profar) and Dubon, and the best of the Gwinnett lot is probably Ben Gamel with his career 1.9 WAR and no starts in CF since 2021. Once Sean Murphy and Ha-seong Kim return, the bench will start to look better, but right now it’s not great.
Things are great. The offense is crushing it and no game feels out of reach. The starting rotation is way better than it deserves to be coming out of Spring Training. So I’m gonna forget about Saturday for now and going to try to ignore the back third of the roster for now.
