This post reminded me of one of my long running hot button issues: Hating Sean Marshall.  This guy kills the Braves, and it has caused me to dislike him on a personal level. He is probably a nice guy, but I am not going to read his biography and find out about all the charities he is into and his lovely family.  I am just going to assume he will walk 20 feet out of his way to kick an especially cute puppy at any time. 

Sean Marshall continued his streak of Brave-acide this week.  In three appearences in ths CHI-ATL opening series, Marshall compiled the following stat line:

 No, I didn't forget to put numbers in the middle four columns.  Brutal.

This week's demolition got me thinking about how we have NEVER been able to hit this guy.  It's his breaking stuff.  Sean Marshall has got an effective sinker and a nasty 12-6 curveball, and when he is on the mound every Braves hitter spontaneously turns into Pedro Cerrano from Major League (prior to telling off Jobu in the AL Championship play in game).  Bats no like curveball, bats are afraid.

And it is a Brave's specific phenomenon.  Here are Marshall's career stats vs. his performance against the Braves specifically.

 Ugh.

Here are the two games that gave me my Sean Marshall complex: 6/3/2007 in Chicago and again on 6/8/2007  back in Atlanta.  Over two games he fanned 12 and let in only two runs.  I remember watching both and we looked absolutely lost at the plate.   I always expected great things from Sean after that, but he has been middle of the road most of his career when he doesn't have the benefit of playing us.

So what is the point of all this?  At worst we see this guy once or twice a year, so it isn't a big deal.  But Marshall knows how to shut down our offense, and that bothers me.  There is something about his breaking pitches we can never figure out.   If they traded this guy to the Phillies we would be screwed.

First an apology... I got to the game today with my spiffy digital camera only to find out I didn't charge the battery. Fail.  So these pics were taken on an iPhone which kind of explains the low quality, and lack of action shots.  But you can get a decent flavor of what a lovely day at the park it was.

It was an absolutely gorgeous day for baseball, and the Osceola Stadium in Kissimmee is one of my favorite places to catch a game in the Grapefruit League.  Awesome food, good seats, the works. 

I recapped some of my thoughts on a fun game here in the comments section.
 

Today's lineup.  We got a pretty good lineup for a split squad, I am guessing Bobby wasn't gonna make the Vets take the long bus ride to Dunedin when Kissimmee is 10 minutes.  Obviously I would have loved to see J-Hey, but I will be going to 4-5 more games before they break camp.

They do it right in Kissimmee when it comes to food, son.  Way better then the Disney garbage.  I had one of these (with a liberal dose of hot sauce), and it was as delicious as the name is awesome.

I saw a ton of Francouer jerseys today.  I am just going to put this out there now:  You folks rocking the Frenchy jerseys need to pony up for a new player.  I understand we all loved him (for a while) , but this just doesn't fly right now.

I had pretty good seats right on the field, so I got the chance to briefly chat up some of the players and coaches.  TP did more autographs then anyone. Awesome dude.

 B-Mac love da kids

Chipper warms up.  In the presence of greatness.

The dude in the blue hat is Zach Greinke's dad.  Greinke played his HS ball here in Central Florida (Apopka), and is a bit of a local legend.  He knew alot of the Braves pitching coaches and some of the players.

Stupid no zoom on iPhones.  Like Gondee, the collection of high jersey numbers gave me a quick laugh.

Chipper on first.  This was about the point where I got frustrated of the iPhone's crappy camera quality and refocused my energies on drinking beer, so thus ends this album.  I'm going to a couple more, most notably Braves- Philles next wednesday, so I will charge the camera and try to give you folks something better.

Hey guys,

I need the TC community's help with something.  A while back in the comments thread of a post  someone posted some hilarious pictures / animated Gif's of classic Frenchy strike out fails.  I've searched Talking Chop all over and I can't find the thread, and they weren't on Google image search.   I need them for something I am writing up, and I was hoping someone could post them to this thread, or point me in the right direction to finding them.

Or you could just comment about your favorite Frenchy strike outs.  Mine is the time he struck out on the ball that bounced in the dirt a foot before home plate.  Ahh, memories.

Thanks and appreciations

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2010/02/23/report-sproles-wont-be-back-on-one-year-deal/

Per Profootballtalk, Sproles does not want to return under a one year deal.  They speculate that means he could hit the open market.

I think this is interesting, because I have gone on a record as pushing for Dexter Mccluster in the 3rd round to try to get some explosive playmaking into this offense.  If we were able to add Sproles, we could possibly reallocate that need to a D-Line project perhaps.

Of course, I am just spitballing here, and in all likelihood Sproles pricetag may be prohibitive.  Also, Mccluster is a much better recieving threat (albeit unproven at the NFL level, as opposed to Sproles).  Still, intriguing.

Hey guys,

I am looking for a little help from the Razorback community here.   Dennis Johnson unleashed two of the beastliest plays from the past week: 

1) The kickoff return where he dragged about 8 gators for about 15 yards, and then the kicker ran full speed and bounced harmlessly off him before Johnson fell forward with the whole pile.

2) That sweet left where Dennis Johnson broke something like 5 full tackles and ended up making a big gain out of the play.

I have been looking for videos online replaying these plays with no success.  Does anyone have any idea where I can find these vids?  Thanks!

ATTENTION: VERY LONG READ, LOTS OF NUMBERS, AND POSSIBILITY OF EXCESSIVE PROSPECT FAWNING AHEAD.  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

I think it is pretty safe to say that Jason Heyward mania is rising to new levels in the Braves community. Personally, I have gone from enjoying yondaime's excellent nightly Minor League Recaps, to them being required reading, to now periodically checking on AA Mississippi's live box score to see what J-Hey is doing.  If he gets a couple more XBH this week, I am going to instruct my girlfriend that I will only respond to the name "Heyward" going forward.  His torrid 2009 campaign has Braves fans asking two questions:

1)      How long does Heyward need at the minor league level to ensure that he has polished his game to the optimal amount?

2)      Based on his minor league production, what could we expect as far as big league performance if Heyward was needed for a playoff run in Atlanta this year?

This post explores the minor league careers of several other top prospects, and their level of success as young players transitioning into the big leagues.  The goal is to gain some level of perspective as to how much Heyward has accomplished up to this point in his career, and what we can reasonably expect from him next. 

Continue reading this post »

I had a couple of very interesting topics planned, and had almost finished a write up.   Then PWHjort put up his awesome FanPost that covered two of the topics I wanted to explore in depth, Braves Fielding performance based on UZR, and our Pythagorean win report.

Instead, I have a couple of short subjects that I will be supporting with my new feature, BravesGraphs.  Why graphs?  Because when I am making graphs it looks suspiciously like I am working, and not posting on Braves blogs.  So below are some quick hit topics.

Also the resolution is lower on these graphs then I would like, and they are also sized smaller.  If you want to see the info clearer, click on the graphs to expand.

Baseball Prospectus Playoff Projections

In Bronn's rather excellent FanPost several days ago, he brought up the Baseball Prospectus Playoff Forecasting tool, and went over some of our Braves projections.   Just a quick refresher: BP calculates the odds daily of any given MLB Club winning their division, taking the wild card, and total chances at Playoffs.  They do this by analyzing your current record, and then creating a projected "Win Expectancy %" for the balance of the season based on the Runs allowed / Scored ratio, and other information.

 This is the basic BP Playoff odds through this morning.  They are forecasting us a 22% chance of winning the division, 8% chance of winning the wildcard, for a 30% overall chance of making the playoffs.  At the all-star break, we were forecasted at 15% of making the playoffs, so this hot streak has obviously really helped us.  It is also interesting to note that BP is much higher on us winning the division then taking the wildcard.

 

 BP Offers a second set of forecast, that uses the PECOTA Model to calculate the teams future performance for the season.  This model LOVES us, relatively.  It gives us a 43% chance of winning the division, vs. the 22% from the regular model .  Along with a 15% chance of taking the wildcard, it has us posted for a whopping 57% likelihood to reach the post season, through this morning. 

What is interesting to take away from these graphs is how radically this recent win streak has affected our likelihood of making the post season, in the eyes of this model.  Another thing that Bronn covered, that I want to reiterate, is that projection models and Pythagorean W/L models like the Braves alot, and consider us a couple of wins better then our current record.  Very encouraging.  I am totally addicted to tracking this on a daily basis, and seeing what change each additional win/loss gives us.

Braves OPS Production by Time Period

Baseball is a weird sport.  Supposedly, baseball is the ultimate individual sport.  Every event that takes place in a baseball game is an individual event.  It is not like Football, Baseball & Soccer... everything can be described by a collection of individual performances.  Which is why it is so fascinating that on a club level, things can be so streaky.  Take the Brave's offensive performance, for example.  We seem to start hitting, and stop hitting, as a group.

 I have broken down this season into 6 Periods, in 15 game intervals (except for the "current period", which is approximately 20 games).  I then tracked our performance in the OPS category in these periods.

This is our total team OPS by period, correlated with our winning % over that same period.  As you can see they are pretty tightly correlated, with the exception of period three where we couldn't hit water if we fell out of a boat, but were still winning at a 60% clip.  The most important thing to note is the .846 OPS since June 29th.  League average OPS is .746, so have only been above that in the first period, and the most recent period.  But any time you have a team hitting .846 OPS as a group, you are going to be winning games.  Especially when your pitching staff is as gnarly as ours.

Let's look at some of our individual hitters:

Zooming in on this one is probably a good idea.  This represents the OPS over time of 5 of the guys who have had the most at bats for us this year:  Chipper, Mccann, Frenchy, Garret Anderson, and Kotchman.  A couple of the key points here:

• Chipper has been consistently excellent of course, but peep his 6/13-6/28 run.  Thats a .650 OPS over that 15 game period.  Ladies and gents when Chipper is that bad, then you KNOW the team isn't playing well.
• FUGA's and Kotchman's steady improvement.  FUGA's periods 1 and 2 were .551 and .405 respectively.  That kind of OPS makes Frenchy look like Albert Pujols.  But he has posted some very respectable numbers since then, including an .890 and .843 in the most recent 35 game stretch.  Kotchman is very similar, he has been aweful at times, but since 6/29 he has put up a .909 OPS.
• Mccann is awesome.  Moving on.
• Frenchy.  Hold on, let me stifle a giggle for a little bit.  He started off tolerable for Frenchy standards, with a .795 OPS in period 1.  Now lets get his next 5 splits: .660, .460, .523, .695, .667.  That is not major league production.  There are girls on my coed softball team  who could probably out perform that by just coming up and taking some goddamned pitches from time to time.  As everyone here figured out a while ago, this offense clicks alot better without that black hole.

With that out of the way, there is one more major at bat guy that hasn't been discussed:

That's right, we are all witnessing the ESCOPACOLYPSE.  Since the trade rumor time in mid June, during which he posted a .640 OPS, he has posted an absolutely blistering 1.180 OPS  since June 28th.  Holy f&#@* s*#!

Yunel is beating the ball like it owes him money.  He is hitting balls more then Ike hit Tina.  Keep in mind this 1.180 OPS does NOT include the home run he hit today, as I don't have todays data factored in yet.

He has been doing this while maintaining a positive UZR at a premium defensive position.  If he can keep any level of this performance up for the balance of the season, it is going to go a long damn way for this offense.

Chipper Jones: The man, the myth, the legend

Just a quick Chipper Jones anecdote to round out what is looking like a tough day in the ATL.

I went to college in Deland, Fl, which some of you may recognize as the birthplace of Chipper Jones.  Larry Jones Sr played baseball at my Alma Mater, Stetson University, and later on coached baseball there.  While he was at Stetson, he was also a member of my same fraternity, and actually lived in the same fraternity house that I did (albeit 30 years earlier).  We would routinely tell people that Chipper Jones was actually conceived in our house, even though the dates don't add up.  

Anyways, Chipper casts a large shadow in Deland.  Not too long ago he donated a boatload of money to Deland Little League, to build the Chipper Jones Family complex.  And you end up running into alot of older people who knew Chipper in his youth.

I knew a guy who had coached Chipper in basketball as a youth.   He always had awesome stories about Chipper's athletic prowess as a kid.  A couple of these:

• Chipper was the most ridiculous athlete anyone had ever seen.  He was the best in the region at absolutely any sport that he touched.  This guy thinks Chipper could have gone pro in 3 sports.
• Chipper could dunk a basketball at about 13 or 14
• Chipper was dropping 300+ ft bombs not far removed from Little League.

These aren't mind altering facts, but I think they illustrate a larger point: Chipper is awesome.  Nowadays we see an older, slightly injury prone Chipper.  But he was, and remains, a world class athlete.