Atlanta Braves Totaled 14 Strikeouts On Tuesday, Shouldn’t Have Though

Braves Get Squashed Into The Ground By Red Sox

Tuesday’s matchup between the Atlanta Braves and Boston Red Sox started ugly and ended even uglier for the Braves.  The final score at Turner Field was Red Sox 11, Braves 4.  The Braves have now lost 16 of their first 20 games in the 2016 season.  This matches the first 20 games of the 1988 Braves team that lost 106 games.

AWFUL CALLS

Red Sox starter, David Price pitched terrific and totaled 14 strikeouts tying his career high.  But someone in the Braves organization must have pissed off home plate umpire Joe West.  The Braves struck out swinging on seven of the 14 strikeouts…yes, only half.  Meaning possibly Price had wicked stuff on Tuesday and the Braves hitters just didn’t know what was coming their way or something else was going on.

In the Braves pregame show, Kelsey Wingert did an interview with West and following the interview Chip Caray says something to the effect I hope he’s kind to the Braves behind the plate…I knew he jinxed us the moment he said it!

Take a look at the graph ESPN Stats and Info posted following the game.  It clearly shows pitches way out of the strike zone that were strikes.  These awful calls happened on Tyler Flowers twice, Jeff Francoeur and Daniel Castro (and possibly more).

“He really dominated the inside part of the plate against our right-handed hitters,” Fredi Gonzalez said after the game.  “We had a chance early in the game to get to him, but we didn’t.  He got stronger and better as the night progressed.”

Bottom Of The Lineup Hitters Be Hitting

The Braves totaled eight hits on Tuesday with six of them coming off the bats of the bottom half of the lineup.  Francoeur, Drew Stubbs and Erick Aybar each had two hits…both Frenchy’s hits came against Price. Adonis Garcia and Freddie Freeman had the two other hits for the Braves.

The Braves continue the streak of home run – less.  Atlanta hasn’t hit a homer since April 10th and only have three for the season.

“We’re going to stay with our approach, the approach is good,” Gonzalez said post game.  “We aren’t going to all the sudden be the Blake Street Bombers.  We’ve got a good approach at the plate at getting singles.  The home run stuff, you can’t teach that.  There’s nothing, no drill, no extra work for that, but I like our approach and hope the guys stay within that.”

Teeing Off On Our Arms 

Matt Wisler pitched a solid 2nd inning through 5th inning, but in the 1st inning he gave up a home run that may have just handed to Travis Shaw and four runs.  In the 9th inning, Ryan Weber decided to throw beach balls to the Red Sox hitters (a couple bloop hits here and there) and Boston added five runs.

Atlanta’s bullpen didn’t do a bad job on Tuesday (other than Weber), Hunter Cervenka came into the game for an out in the 7th inning.  His ERA continues to stay at 0.00 for the 2016 season.

Wisler falls to 0-2 for the season as he gave up five hits, five runs, three walks, a hit batter and had three strikeouts.  Two hits, a walk, the hit batter and four runs came in the 1st inning.

“That first inning was tough, but I’m proud of the young man (Wisler) that he gave us four solid innings after that,” Fredi told reporters.  “If it wasn’t for that first inning being such a long inning, he only had 78 pitches, we need him in the future for another 20 plus starts so we decided to go to the bullpen.”

Questioning The Questionable Answers From Fredi

These comments from Fredi during his post game interview made me scratch my head a little.  All the “Fire Fredi” comments may be getting back to Fredi’s camp and getting into his head.  He should really stay off twitter.

“There’s a lot of things that a manager can control and one of them is to play the game the right way and play it with energy and passion and these guys have that.  You scratch your head and come in every afternoon to figure out a way to get out of this, but it never crosses my mind to turn a table over, yell and scream because these guys give it all they have every single night.  It’s tough to get upset.  You do get upset, but it’s hard to get upset at the team because of lack of hustle and energy.”

“I know the schedule is tough, but I’m tired of hearing about the schedule being tough,” Gonzalez expressed.  “Shoot, it’s not going to get any easier.  We can’t all the sudden call Major League Baseball and change the schedule because it’s too tough on us.  Shoot, they are lined up to play us, the way we’re playing right now.”

Atlanta’s offense isn’t clicking yet, but we can’t skip over the pitching either.  Heck, this is a bad team…offense, rotation, bullpen, bench.  The front office will have to start calling up these prospects from the minor leagues to keep this fan base intact.