Atlanta Braves Morning Chop: Padres lose and whine about it

The Braves pulled off an incredible feat last night:  they won a baseball game played in California.  But to hear the Friars’ Faithful tell it, the Braves were lucky.

ICYMI:  the Atlanta Braves beat San Diego 3-0 last night.  It was the first major league win for starter Sean Newcomb, who found the solution for the lack of run support:  it’s hanging zeros up on the scoreboard and K’s on the railing.

Newcomb threw his seemingly customary 6 innings, gave up 6 hits, walked 1 (which itself was a bit of a squeeze) and struck out a career-high 8… though against this team, the K’s admittedly wasn’t as challenging as the rest of those numbers.

Yet, there were detractors… both from the Padres’ team and from their beat writers.

On one point, though, they probably had a case.

The Not-Homer

In the bottom of the first, Wil Myers drove a ball to deep right-center field.

Now it should be recognized that Petco Park underwent some changes a couple of seasons ago, and one of the main purposes was to pull the fences in.  This appears to be one of the places in which that happened.

This ‘wall’ consists of a regular wall, with advertising signs on the front and padding on top that closes the gap between the new wall and the original wall.  The original wall is concrete, which extends in height above that padding for several inches, but is located several feet behind the new wall.

There is not one of the customary taped yellow lines to aid umpires in the demarcation of the home run boundary.  Perhaps that should change.

Myers’ drive struck the top of the wall near a seam where pads were laid together.  Because it hit that seam – or maybe just buried itself deep into the pad itself – the ball found a vertical surface to rebound back toward the field.

The ball, dutifully obeying the laws of physics, then caromed back to Ender Inciarte, who fired it back toward the infield while second base umpire Jim Reynolds signaled something that apparently meant “it’s a double, not a homer”.

After a review – and Fox Sports showed a zoomed-in shot that seemed to confirm everything recounted above – the umpires in New York agreed with the call on the field.  As you’ll note below, this wasn’t even a case of ‘not enough evidence to overturn’.  They confirmed this ruling.

They probably shouldn’t have – that ball was a homer.  Myers ended up being stranded at second base.

But wait, there’s more…

Read Me The Tweets

If you’d like to see the entire episode, video of it is available by clicking through this tweet below.

So that’s what they ruled… but what should they have ruled?

While there was a bit of discussion after the ruling between manager Green and the umpiring crew, Green failed his team by not immediately declaring that he would play the game under protest.  This seems to be a clear case of a misapplication of the park’s ground rules.

At least that was my first thought…

But this next part was more puzzling:

I honestly don’t get this.  Just because replay review exists now doesn’t mean that other provisions in the rule book – namely the right to protest games – go away.

Now even had the Padres filed a protest, it’s pretty likely that it would have failed.  Two reasons:

• Major League Baseball frankly tends to close ranks around their umpires and backs up their rules interpretations.  Braves fans should know this all too well.  In this case, it would be about their interpretation of the somewhat ambiguous ground rules, as noted by AJ in the tweet above.
• How many protests have ever been upheld?  This site notes 15 times, the earliest dating to 1913.  So that’s 15 games over 114 years, or once roughly every 9 seasons.

Meanwhile, More Whining

He’s good at that, no doubt.  But Andy Green‘s team has also K’d the 3rd most of any club in the majors this season, so that part is hardly on Tyler Flowers.  They are also hitting a majors-worst .226 (next closest team:  the Cubs [!!!] at .239).

Never mind that Sean Newcomb’s 12-to-6 curveball is nigh unhittable, no matter who’s standing in the box.

Speaking of boxes…

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

I added a couple of unusual columns to the pitching line:

• ‘Ctct‘ represents the strikes from contact.  All balls put in play – fair or foul – are counted as strikes.
• ‘StS‘ – that’s Swinging Strikes.  Newk had 14 of these. Chacin had 7 in his 7 innings of work.
• ‘StL‘ – Strikes looking… the called strikes.  This represents players taking, fooled, or… the Flowers Effect.  25 is a pretty good number, though Chacin had 21.

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Next: So it's Rumor Season, I Hear

In short?  Newcomb held San Diego at bay all night, and the Braves took full advantage of a poor Padres’ team… despite a credible effort by former Brave Jholys Chacin.