Fire the Braves
A few Braves players had some words of wisdom to share with us after stomping on the musty old corpse of the Washington Nationals:
"It’s got to the point now where we’ve got so much faith in the team that no one wants to be that last out, or no one wants to be the guy that is responsible for the loss," said reliever Peter Moylan.
So I’m to take it that, for the first part of the season, everybody on the Braves was competing to be the last out? You were having some sort of high-powered struggle to make as many outs as possible in as short a period of time? You should have traded for this guy and this guy — they make a ton of outs.
"You’re just riding that wave of momentum we created for ourselves over the two weeks," said Chipper Jones, who had two infield hits and scored after both of them. "It’s big to be at home. We feel good about our chances. The Marlins coming in a little down, obviously, and the Nationals are not playing their best baseball, so it’s right in front of us."
Is Chipper the most diplomatic man in baseball or what? You see how he’s trying to let the Nats off the hook there? Actually, Chipper, this pretty much is the Nats’ best baseball. Because they’re bad.
Oh, also, Chipper? Watch your subject mismatch up there in the first sentence. Yow.
"We know that our margin of error is very small and if we lose a game or two, we’re more than likely done, but right now it seems like we do whatever we have to on a daily basis to get a win."
What the Braves need to do on a daily basis to get a win is: play against the worst team in baseball. Fortunately for them, fully half of their remaining games fulfill this requirement.
"Winning is all about confidence, I don’t care what people say," said starter Derek Lowe, who allowed three runs in six innings.
Well, I’m sorry to hear you don’t care what I say, Derek. That hurts. Will you still call? Even though I’m about to point out that winning has a whole shitload less to do with "confidence" than with "scoring runs" and "not letting the other team score runs?" Aww, thanks, Derek! I knew you would.
"What you don’t want to have happen is: 'Now we’re getting closer, let’s try to play differently,'" Lowe said.
I… agree. Do many teams do this? "Fuck, we’re winning — change the plan!"
Bonus content: Fire Jim Riggleman!
"It was a 3-2 ballgame almost the whole game," interim manager Jim Riggleman said. "I’m not stupid; you can play a lot of close games and be a bad ballclub. But the difference between us and the other clubs is not that wide a gap. … We just made some mistakes."
The difference between you and the other clubs is a pretty damn wide gap, James: to wit, the 857 runs you have allowed is 302 runs more than the league-leading Dodgers, 157 runs more than the league average, and — and you know I wouldn’t lie to you, James — 77 runs more than the next-worst total in the league (Milwaukee, 775). That’s a big difference. Your pitching is awful, horrible, minor-league crap. Your top five starters have a combined VORP of 17.1, Jim. That’s horrible. You could replace your entire rotation with minor-league callups and lose about a game and a half in the standings. If the Dodgers did the same thing, they’d lose fifteen more games. That is a big difference, Jim.
