Tag: Atlanta Braves

The Baseball Codes

Carlos Gomez, We Hardly Knew Thee

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Carlos Gomez officially announced his retirement in Milwaukee over the weekend, and man are we sad to see him go. The guy played for six teams over 13 seasons, made a couple of All-Star rosters, had good speed and some power, played a solid outfield. But we loved him around these parts because there’s no player we covered more on the unwritten-rules beat.

Really, it’s not even close.

Gomez played with his own sense of panache, which in the days before on-field celebrations were common, tended to rub opponents the wrong way. Really, he was just ahead of his time. Also, he was frequently too fiery so for his own good.

His most notorious incident came in 2013, in in a game against Atlanta . Gomez, the game’s second batter, homered against Paul Maholm. This satisfied him for very particular reasons: About three months earlier Maholm had drilled Gomez in the knee with a fastball, which Gomez felt was intentional given that he’d battered Maholm to that point in his career. After hitting his homer, Gomez watched it for so long that catcher Brian McCann shouted at him to get his ass out of the batter’s box. This spurred Gomez to shout himself, at McCann and a number of other Braves, as he rounded the bases. Upon reaching third, he pointed at his knee. This was clearly all in service to revenge.

Thanks to that day, we now know that McCann harbors little tolerance for such shenanigans … and precious little patience. Rather than waiting for Gomez to cross the plate before lighting into him, the catcher planted himself about 15 feet up the third base line, completely blocking the runner’s path. When Gomez approached, he gave him an earful. It was a surreal scene.

From my post the next day:

McCann shouted [Gomez] down without ceding the baseline, players from both teams stormed the field, Reed Johnson landed a punch to Gomez’s noggin, and the ensuing scrum carried everybody to the backstop. Gomez was ejected shortly thereafter, and left the field without ever touching the plate. (The umps invoked Rule 7.06[a], which says that an “obstructed runner shall be awarded at least one base beyond the base he had last legally touched before the obstruction,” and allowed him to score.) Watch it all here.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my baseball career, whether it be the big leagues, minor leagues or little leagues,” said Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez.

It was a monster moment, completely indelible when it comes to that era of baseball. For Carlos Gomez, it was one of many. The guy set standards for home run pimping, and might have been the first big leaguer to dab while crossing the plate.

He spurred a clash with Pittsburgh by showboating on what turned out to be a luck-induced triple. (“If you’re going to hit a home run, you can watch it,” said Gerritt Cole, the pitcher who served it up. “If you’re going to hit a fly ball to center field, don’t watch it.”)

There was the time that Gomez nicked Joe Mauer with a bat flip after a home run, then, with his back turned, gave Mauer jazz hands when the catcher mentioned that he might want to be more careful in the future. Never mind that the homer came when his team trailed 15-0.

There was the time that Gomez heard from somebody in the Astros system … or from somebody who heard from somebody in the Astros system … that Collin McHugh wanted to drill him for some reason or other, and then, when McHugh threw an inside pitch (which didn’t come close to hitting Gomez), he got all puffy about it, spurring benches to clear.

Then again, before that point was an Astro himself, stirring up unnecessary friction with the Yankees.

Sometimes his confrontations weren’t even of his own making, such as the time that he yelled at himself in frustration, which was still enough to tick off Madison Bumgarner. Or when he slid hard—and clean—into second base after being drilled, which pissed off the Nationals. Or when he stole a base while his team led 5-0 in the eighth … after manager Ron Roenicke inserted him as a pinch-runner, ostensibly to do precisely that.

With all of that history, it is remarkable to think that the guy still had a sense of humor.

Carlos Gomez made this beat way more interesting than it might otherwise have been. May he have a long and satisfying retirement.

1
Protect Teammates, Retaliation

Some Thoughts About Retaliation, What It Means For Clubhouse Standing, And The Kind Of Guys For Whom That Matters

Posted on by Jason Turbow

We frequently talk about baseball’s unwritten retaliation rules as having become outdated, an artifact from another era. Which is largely accurate; guys intentionally drilling each other makes less sense today than it ever has.

But set aside that construct for a moment. Today, let’s view things from the viewpoint of a struggling pitcher, desperate to prolong his time in the major leagues. Let’s view things through Sean Nolin’s eyes.

Nolin is a left-hander who prior to this season has had three cups of coffee in the big leagues, each so short that he continues to maintain his rookie status. The last of those stints came in 2015.

The six intervening years have seen two seasons wiped out by shoulder issues, and time spent in Mexico, Japan and the independent Atlantic League. Nolin began this season with the High-A Wilmington Blue Rocks, in the Washington Nationals system. He is now 31 years old.

On July 30, the Nats traded Max Scherzer to LA, Jon Lester to St. Louis and Daniel Hudson to San Diego, opening some spots on their pitching staff. Nolin made his debut for them on Aug. 12.

Sean Nolin is not anyone’s idea of a star. Before yesterday he had appeared in four games for Washington, all starts, going 0-2 with a 5.71 ERA. Whatever impression he made did not include much in the way of mound dominance.

Yesterday’s impression was different. Yesterday he defended a teammate.

Let’s go backward for a moment to Tuesday’s game against Atlanta, when Braves closer Will Smith drilled Juan Soto. Atlanta held a three-run lead with nobody on and one out in the ninth when it happened, and there’s enough history between the two to make it appear intentional.

In August of last season, Smith was taking his warm-up tosses after entering in the middle of the eighth inning, when Soto, the on-deck hitter, sidled behind the plate to get a better scouting angle. Smith cussed him out for it.

Soto came to bat an inning later, at which point he blasted Smith’s first pitch deep over the left-center field fence. He watched it. Then he watched the pitcher. Then Smith said something to him so unkind that Nationals manager Dave Martinez felt the need to intervene.

Since then, Smith has faced Soto six times. The first five came in games Atlanta led by two runs or fewer. On Tuesday the margin was three—enough wiggle room for the pitcher to take some liberties. With his second pitch, he drilled Soto in the small of the back.

Literally one pitch later the game was over, pushing Washington’s response, should they choose to make one, to yesterday. The man to shoulder that burden: Sean Nolin.

There is nothing to indicate that Nolin was ordered by management to take action. Indeed, such a thing is quite rare in the modern game. There is everything to indicate that Nolin had much more to gain by standing up for his young teammate than he had to lose by risking an early ejection.

Sure enough, in the first inning, Nolin—playing by the ages-old adage, “You drill my No. 3 hitter, I’ll drill your No. 3 hitter”—threw his first pitch to Freddy Freeman behind the hitter’s back. With his second pitch he drilled him, and was subsequently ejected.

There’s an essay to be written about the part of baseball’s code that gives Nolin one chance to even the score, and that once he’d missed Freeman accounts should have been considered settled. (Indeed, Freeman said later that he told plate ump Lance Barksdale, “That’s all he gets,” after the first pitch missed.) There’s also one about the class Freeman showed by going to the Washington dugout to talk things over with Martinez, and about how he and Soto took their drillings with grace. Those aren’t this essay, though.

This essay is about the clubhouse standing of a middle-aged man looking to do whatever he can to stick around the big leagues for as long as possible. Nolin’s baseball ability has proven to be a marginal commodity in this regard, placing him squarely inside the realm of ballplayers for whom being a good clubhouse guy might carry outsized importance when it comes to securing his next contract.

In this age of fungible pitching staffs, where the bottom three guys in any bullpen are shuffled back and forth to the minors on a weekly basis, there’s value in having a reputation as somebody willing to stand up for teammates, of a proven willingness to throw the kinds of darts from which some pitchers might shy away. Bottom-of-the-rotation guys must feel the need to prove their value every day, in any way they can.

Sean Nolin knows this. He proved it yesterday. It’s strange to think that a start lasting one-third of an inning might be consequential to somebody’s career prospects, but that may well be the case here. Sean Nolin’s counting on it.

0
The Baseball Codes

RIP Hank Aaron

Posted on by Jason Turbow

“The best thing I could have done is play with Hank Aaron, and be with Hank every day.”
—Dusty Baker

The first person I thought of when I heard that Hank Aaron died was Dusty Baker. I never met Aaron, but I’ve spent significant time around Dusty, and it was obvious from the beginning how much reverence Baker holds for the man.

Here’s the thing about that. Dusty is among the most charismatic figures I’ve ever interviewed, a man who commands the attention of a room simply by being in it. He would drop life lessons as a matter of course during his pregame press conferences while managing the Giants. I found myself in a constant state of wonder around him.

So to see a man like that in such obvious awe of somebody else—even a peer, which is what Aaron was to Baker, in addition to being a mentor—speaks volumes about the nature of Hank Aaron’s character. The sheer number of times that Dusty refers to lessons that Aaron taught him can be overwhelming.

Going through interviews I did with Baker for They Bled Blue and The Baseball Codes, a pattern quickly emerges:

  • “Hank Aaron always used to tell me to go out in the elements get used to them …”
  • “Hank told us no matter what you do, stay together …”
  • “Hank told me don’t bunt on Drysdale, don’t showboat, don’t dig in against him …” 
  • “Hank taught us not to clown or showboat …”
  • “Hank told me and Ralph Garr to work out during the strike …”
  • “Hank taught us to walk behind the umpire on your way to the plate …”
  • “Hank used to tell me Don Newcombe didn’t like you hitting the ball up the middle on him …” 
  • “Hank would to tell us all the time to keep the umpire in the equation.  If he was a shorter umpire, he was gonna be a low-ball umpire.  A taller guy would be a high-strike umpire …”
  • “I came from the Hank Aaron school, where you just run around the bases …”

See a pattern?

I’ve long harbored a deep admiration of Aaron, aided Baker’s unyielding appreciation. Baseball lost one of its brightest lights, now or ever, today.

I’ll close with something Dusty told me one spring training many years ago:

“I say ‘Hank Aaron taught me this,’ or ‘Hank Aaron taught me that,’ because it’s not right for me to say I thought something up when I didn’t.  People are always saying, ‘Dusty, what do you know on your own? You’re always using other people’s names.’  Well, I can’t act like the genius expert who invented all this stuff.  There’s not a whole lot of new knowledge—there’s just a lot of old stuff that people are trying to make new.”

Aaron had the good stuff, and Dusty knew it. He’s spent a lot of years making sure that we know it, too.

Rest in peace, Hammer.

4
Retaliation

Today’s Lesson: You Can’t Slow Acuña, But You Can Wake The Braves

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Ronald Acuña homered on the second pitch of yesterday’s Game 1 of the NLDS and pimped it, and the Marlins drilled him in response. How stupid is that? Let’s count the ways.

* Miami plunked Acuña with nobody on and one out in the third inning, while holding a 4-1 lead. It was still anybody’s game, and gave the Braves a baserunner with the heart of their order coming up.

* Plate ump Andy Fletcher warned both dugouts, which pissed off Braves skipper Brian Snitker, but more importantly seemed to fluster Marlins pitcher Sandy Alcantara—and almost certainly affected his willingness to work inside. Sure enough, two batters later, Marcel Ozuna doubled Acuña home. The next hitter, Travis d’Arnaud, doubled home Ozuna, reducing Miami’s lead to 4-3.

* With Alcantara still on the mound in the seventh, Acuña continued to be angry. With one on and nobody out, he singled sharply to center field. That ended Alcantara’s night and began a six-run rally that iced the game for Atlanta.

There is, of course, a history here. In 2018, Acuña homered eight times in eight games, including five straight—three of which came leading off against the Marlins. Miami pitcher Jose Urena responded by drilling him in the elbow. Earlier this season, Urena hit Acuña again, making five times in all that Marlins pitchers have drilled the guy. Nobody else has done it more than twice.  

Alcantara’s ensuing claims of unintentionality are believable (Snitker himself, “guarantee(s) he wasn’t trying to hit him”), but it comes with a caveat. To counter a guy who is hitting .318/.414/.645 with 17 homers and 44 RBIs against them—by far his best numbers against any team—Miami has taken to pitching Acuña consistently inside. In their view, hitting him on occasion simply comes with the territory.

That doesn’t mean that the Braves have to like it. Pitchers who play inside must have the control to do so effectively, especially during the postseason, when issuing free baserunners frequently ends badly. Acuña is clearly fed up with it, and while he had the presence of mind yesterday to avoid getting tossed from the game over it, there are sure to be repercussions.

One of them involves the Marlins being down a game in the series. They’ve been pitching Acuña inside for years, and he continues to pummel them. Maybe try something different in Game 2, Miami.

0
Celebrations

Break Out the Camera, MLB, It’s Selfie Time

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Last year I talked about a minor leaguer doing push-ups at second base to celebrate a double, and how it fit into the modern landscape of Let the Kids Play.

It was inevitable that, after the league office built a marketing campaign around celebrating players doing celebratory things, the envelope would get pushed. In the link above, it was a kid who didn’t draw much notice given that he was playing in the Single-A Florida State League. Yesterday it was Marcel Ozuna, who carries a somewhat more robust public profile.

Just a couple of years ago, somebody stopping in the middle of his home run trot to take a pantomime selfie, especially during the postseason, would have earned a brushback pitch—at minimum—in future at-bats. When Ozuna did it yesterday (and when half the Braves roster got into the act after Adam Duvall homered three batters later) … well, we’ll have to wait until next season for a response from the vanquished Reds, but anything they offer beyond a shrug of the shoulders will be a surprise.

Really, what else could we expect? This surely isn’t what baseball had in mind when it officially blessed on-field celebrations, but they must have known that when the outlandish becomes normalized, players will search for the next extreme. Now we have touchdown dances mid-trot.

Within that context, it’s difficult to argue with Ozuna. Or with Fernando Tatis … or Manny Machado … or Luis Robert … or Tatis AGAIN, all of whom did some celebrating of their own yesterday.

These guys and the rest of their cohorts are bringing life to the sport, and there’s lots of benefit to that. If an angry Reds pitcher decides to exact some revenge on Ozuna next season, or a member of the Cardinals takes some issue with Tatis today, we’ll deal with that fallout then. Chances are, they’ve already forgotten everything, in which case baseball will get along just fine.

It’s the possibility that a pitcher hasn’t forgotten that would throw the entire machine off kilter. Because how does baseball as an institution handle somebody feeling disrespected by a celebration that the league itself has tacitly endorsed? Suspension has always been the discipline of of choice (with the latest example coming just last week, against Robert’s White Sox), but the inherent tension between old-school pitchers behaving in traditional ways, and the new-school mentality telling them to just get over it, is not going away. (To be fair, some pitchers fully embrace swag of their own.)

MLB, of course, could easily legislate this level of celebration out of existence if that was truly its concern. But it’s not. The league likes the attention, not to mention that there’s nothing inherently bad about guys getting their fun on.

Which leaves the holdout ranks of red-asses to adapt or get suspended. Something will eventually give, it’s just a matter of when.

2
Retaliation, Showboating

Up 13-1, Cardinals Had Leeway To Respond To Atlanta However The Hell They Pleased

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Tensions are heightened come playoff time, which may explain why Ronald Acuña Jr.’s excitable response to his ninth-inning, two-run homer off of Carlos Martinez in Game 1 of the NLDS proved so annoying to the St. Louis pitcher. Acuña had absolutely smashed the ball—455 feet, as measured by Statcast—to close the Cardinals’ lead to 7-5, and gesticulated wildly toward his teammates in the Braves dugout as he rounded the bases.

This followed a notable moment in the third, when Acuña failed to run hard out of the box on what he assumed would be a home run, but which ended up as a single when the ball bounced off the wall. Acuña ended up stranded on base when he might otherwise have represented what would be a vital run for his team.

Acuña’s home run celebration was enough to shake Martinez to the point that he had to be calmed down by Yadi Molina. The right-hander then gave up an even longer home run two batters later, to Freddie Freeman, although he did finally close out what would be a 7-6 victory. Martinez was so upset after the game that he closed out the game by screaming at the Braves dugout, then said afterward: “I wanted [Acuña] to respect the game and respect me as a veteran player.”

And so we find ourselves back in the no–man’s–land of baseball celebrations, which have been officially sanctioned by the commissioner’s office even while a number of pitchers continue to bristle at them. Would Acuña’s antics have drawn notice had his Game 1 homer given his team the lead, rather than coming as it did with the Braves up, 3-1? Would Martinez have cared less had Acuña not already pulled something similar, with disastrous results, earlier in the game? Who knows?

Typically, the postseason is not a place to settle old scores. Even a remote possibility that an ill-timed retribution HBP can come back to bite you is enough to keep teams in line until stakes are lower. Sure enough, the series’ second, third and fourth games never saw either club with a lead of more than three runs.

Game 5, however, was different. St. Louis scored 10 in the first, one in the second and two more in the third, and led 13-1 when Acuña stepped in against Jack Flaherty with two outs in the fifth inning. Flaherty drilled him in the upper arm. Acuña slowly made his way to first base, chirping toward the mound all the while.

The evidence against the pitch being intentional: There was a runner on; it came on the fifth pitch of the at-bat, with three of those pitches being strikes (including a foul ball); it was a fastball, but not Flaherty’s fastest, the two-seamer coming in at just 90 mph.

The evidence for it being intentional: Apart from the history between the teams, it was mostly the Flaherty’s comments after the game. Via Jeff Jones: “It hit him. He took exception to it. That’s the guy he wants to be. That’s how it is. He’s been having all his antics all series. The guy hits a ball off the wall, he gets a single out of it. So he wants to take exception to it, he can do whatever he wants. He can talk all he wants. But we tried to go in, we talk, our scouting report is go in, we go in. So it got away, it hit him. He wants to take exception to it, he can do whatever he wants.”

Sure sounds to me like a guy with a grudge.

Flaherty denied intent as part of his diatribe against Acuña, but Cards skipper Mike Shildt seemed to feel otherwise in his postgame speech to the team after they finally put Atlanta away.

The primary takeway after a game like that is that with a 12-run lead, pitchers with malice aforethought have leeway to do whatever they think is right, even during a playoff game. The Braves have all winter to consider this, and how they might respond come next spring.

The Cardinals, meanwhile, now on to the NLCS, have more pressing matters on their minds.

0
Retaliation

That Time When Almost Everybody Got Tossed: A 35th Anniversary Padres-Braves ‘Desert Storm’ Retrospective

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Today is the 35th anniversary of the Greatest Brawl in Big League History, a donnybrook on Aug. 12, 1984, between the Padres and the Braves that resulted in six brushback pitches, three hit batters, four bench-clearing incidents, two full-on brawls that nearly spiraled out of control when fans rushed the field, 19 ejections, five arrests and a nearly unprecedented clearing of the benches by the umpires. Padres infielder Kurt Bevacqua later called it “the Desert Storm of baseball fights.”

The fight merited five full pages in The Baseball Codes. Rather than excerpt all 2,000 words here, I offer some highlights:

  • It all started before the game even began, said Padres pitcher Ed Whitson, when Atlanta starter Pascual Perez looked toward San Diego’s leadoff hitter, Alan Wiggins, standing in the on-deck circle, and promised to hit him with his first pitch. “Everybody on our bench heard it,” said Whitson. Sure enough, Perez sent his initial offering into the small of Wig­gins’s back, landing the first blow in what would be a long afternoon of retaliatory strikes, and setting San Diego’s dugout abuzz. Said Whitson: “By the time Dick Williams looked around at me, just as he started to speak, I said, ‘Don’t worry about it—we’ll get him.’ ”
  • Whitson went after Perez multiple times, during two different at-bats, missing him every time but leading to one benches-clearing dustup and ejections for both himself and Williams. The manager was prepared for this eventuality, and had already prepped his line of succession. “Until Pascual Perez got hit, it wasn’t going be finished,” said Padres infielder Tim Flannery. “Dick said to [coach] Ozzie Virgil, ‘When I get thrown out, you’re going to be the manager, and, Greg Booker, you’re going to hit Perez. And if you don’t get it done, Jack Krol, you’ll be the manager because those two will have gotten thrown out, and, Greg Harris, you’re going to be the pitcher.”
  • Booker ended up walking Perez, and then, after missing him with two more pitches in the sixth, was, as expected, ejected. San Diego’s next reliever, Harris, who had been acquired from the Expos less than a month earlier, inexplicably didn’t stick to the game plan, throwing a series of breaking balls to Perez, not at him, and getting him to ground out, at which point backup infielder Kurt Bevacqua started to berate his own pitcher at top volume from the dugout.
    “It got nutty,” said Flannery. “I volunteered to pinch-hit because nobody else was getting [Perez]. I told [Williams], ‘If I ground out or fly out, I’ll blindside him and hook him on the mound.’ We became crazy. We became nuts.”

Craig Lefferts finally drilled Perez during his fourth at-bat of the day, in the eighth inning. With that, players streamed from both dugouts, and the first real fight of the afternoon broke out. From The Baseball Codes:

Atlanta’s Gerald Perry charged Lefferts and landed several blows. Padres outfielder Champ Summers tried to hunt down Perez, who was lying low in the Braves dugout. The highlight came when Braves third baseman Bob Horner, watching the game with the broadcast crew while on the disabled list, sensed trouble, predicted the fracas on the air, raced to the clubhouse to pull on his uniform, and rushed out—cast on his arm—to intercept Summers near the top of the dugout steps. (He was later suspended for fighting while on the DL.) “It was the wildest thing I had ever seen . . . ,” Horner said. “It seemed like it never stopped. It was like a nine-inning brawl.” When this round ended, Lefferts and Krol, San Diego’s replace­ment replacement manager, were tossed, as were Perry and Braves reliev­ers Rick Mahler and Steve Bedrosian.

When the Padres came to bat in the ninth, Braves manager Joe Torre went so far as to specifically instruct his new pitcher, Donnie Moore—on the mound in relief of Perez—to avoid further escalation. “I said, ‘Let’s not continue this bullshit, let’s just win this game,’ ” said Torre. “Then I looked him in the eye and I said to myself, ‘I have no chance. I’m talking to a deaf man here.’ I walked back to the dugout and he hit Graig Nettles. You can talk until you’re blue in the face, but it’s guys defending each other. That’s what it’s about.”

Again from The Baseball Codes:

As soon as Moore’s fastball touched Nettles’s ribs, it was as if the pre­vious fight had never ended. Nettles charged the mound. Reliever Goose Gossage sprinted in from the bullpen and tried to get to Moore, but ended up fighting with Atlanta’s Bob Watson (who, incidentally, later served as Major League Baseball’s vice president in charge of discipline). Five fans ran onto the field to join the fray, one of whom was tackled near third base by Atlanta players Chris Chambliss and Jerry Royster. Long-since ejected Gerald Perry, accompanied by the similarly tossed Bedrosian and Mahler, raced from the clubhouse to participate.

During the fight, Flannery, one of the smallest men on the field, was caught in a bear hug by Braves coach Bob Gibson, and pleaded desper­ately for his release so he could go after Gerald Perry, with whom he had already fought twice that afternoon. When Gibson finally complied, Perry quickly split Flannery’s lip open. As a coda to the entire event, when things finally appeared to be settling down and the Padres were returning to their dugout, a fan hit Bevacqua in the head with a plastic cup of beer, spurring the player to jump atop the dugout and go after him.

“The donnybrook . . . was the best, most intense baseball fight I’ve ever seen or been involved with,” wrote Gossage in his autobiography, The Goose Is Loose. “I realize it was the Sabbath, but guys were taking the Lord’s name in vain. Fists flew and skulls rattled. Unlike most baseball fights, which are more like hugging contests than real fisticuffs, guys on both teams got pasted. Ed Whitson came running out from the clubhouse completely deranged. He and Kurt Bevacqua went into the stands and duked it out with some hecklers. Stadium officials had to send out for the riot squad to settle things down.”

“Whitson was icing his elbow in the clubhouse without a shirt on, watching it on TV,” said Flannery. “Later, Dick [Williams] says, ‘The next thing I see, Whitson’s on TV, no shirt, he’s got a bat and screaming at the season-ticket holders, and Bevacqua was in the stands beating on them.”

Ejections included Gossage and Bobby Brown from the Padres, and Atlanta’s Moore, Watson, and Torre. To stem further damage, umpire John McSherry cleared the benches, sending all nonpartici­pating players into their respective clubhouses to await the game’s final outs. (“They locked us in there with big wooden beams before they would finish the game,” said Flannery.)

After Atlanta finally closed out the 5–3 victory, a disgusted Torre took the unusual baseball tack of comparing Dick Williams to Hitler, then called him an idiot—“with a capital ‘I’ and small ‘w.’ ” Padres catcher Terry Kennedy was a bit more clear-headed. “It would’ve been a lot sim­pler,” he said, “if we’d hit Perez his first time up.”

To commemorate the moment, The Sporting News just published a piece on the event from the perspective of some batboys. Also, you can buy a truly spectacular t-shirt commemorating the moment:

[H/T @Beauty of A Game]

2
Celebrations, Let The Kids Play

Key, Late-Game Homers Let Braves, Reds Provide Contrast In Ways To Celebrate … Or Not

Posted on by Jason Turbow

So I don’t much mention bat flipping much in this space anymore because the bat flip is becoming so thoroughly integrated within the fabric of baseball that calling it out within the context of the unwritten rules is akin calling out curveballs or double plays — things that happen as a standard part of baseball practice.

Sometimes, however, a flip just cries out for attention. With that, feast your eyes on Ronald Acuna Jr.

This is fun on a few levels. It was a two-run shot that tied the game, 3-3, in the ninth. Also, he hit it off of Amir Garrett, spurring some obvious jokes, after last week’s events, about Garrett going after Acuna in response. Also, it gave us a clear distinction between the Let The Kids Play generation and the kind of non-celebration for which old-school fans continue to pine.

That’s because Acuna’s blow wasn’t actually a walk-off. The Braves couldn’t push across their necessary fourth run until it was too late, and lost in the 10th when Cincinnati’s Tucker Barnhart hit a three-run homer of his own … and did this — which is to say, not much — to celebrate:

(For a better look at Barnhart’s non-pimp job, go here.)

There are a couple of things to consider. Barnhart’s blast may have been close enough to the wall that he had initial doubts that it was gone. Plus, the game was in Atlanta, negating any desire to celebrate in front of the hometown fans. Also, like Acuna’s homer, it wasn’t a game-winner; the Reds still had to close things out in the bottom half of the frame.

Still, Acuna is only 21 years old, falling well within Elvis Andrus’ delineation that the Kids we want to Let Play be under 30. Then again, Barnhart is 28, so who the hell knows about anything anymore?

Ultimately, Acuna’s celebration left nobody worse for the wear: He was happy, the fans were happy and his teammates were happy, at least for a while. And the Reds were so unaffected by it that they came back to win the damn game. Seems like we’ve reached some semblance of balance in baseball’s new celebratory order … until another red-assed pitcher decides to get grumpy about something or other and we have to have the same discussion all over again.

0
Retaliation

Braves Wait Nine Months For Retaliation, Then Miss Their Man

Posted on by Jason Turbow

On Friday, we were reminded of the sustained vitality behind the long-established baseball concept of waiting for retaliation. In the big leagues, it’s what you have to do sometimes when you see a given opponent only every once in a while, and even then you must wait for an appropriate moment to minimize the chance that drilling somebody will cost you on the scoreboard. Ultimately, revenge fantasies can prove logistically difficult.

Okay, enough with the generalities.

Remember last August, when Jose Urena drilled Ronald Acuna Jr. for being awesome? The Braves do.

Atlanta hadn’t faced Urena since then, apparently not even in spring training. So when the Miami pitcher stepped into the box against Kevin Gausman in the second inning of Friday’s game, Gausman built up some clubhouse goodwill with a first-pitch fastball that let Urena know unequivocally that his act of cowardice had not been forgotten by the guys in the visitors’ dugout.

Gausman missed his mark, Urena leaning toward the plate as the thigh-high pitch sailed behind him. The target was clearly intentional; the miss was likely accidental. Plate ump Jeff Nelson tossed Gausman immediately.

This type of thing is hardly unheard of.

During the 1998 NLCS, Padres catcher Jim Leyritz was drilled by future Hall of Famer Greg Maddux one pitch after asking the plate umpire to check the ball for scuff marks. The Padres waited until the following May for retaliation, when Sterling Hitchcock planted a fastball into Maddux’s hip. (As it happened, Leyritz was Hitchcock’s personal catcher.) “It’s just baseball,” Leyritz said after the game, even as a coach on his own team, Davey Lopes, joked to him that “some guys hold a grudge a long time.”

In 2001, Barry Bonds homered against Russ Springer—and, as was his way, watched the ball fly—in the pitcher’s final game before losing more than a season to rotator cuff and labrum injuries. The next time Springer faced Bonds, in 2004, he drilled him. The next time he faced him after that, in 2006, he drilled him again. The latter HBP was noteworthy because Bonds was sitting on 713 career homers, one away from tying Babe Ruth.

Or go back to 1971, when Chris Speier homered off of Pittsburgh’s Steve Blass during the National League Championship Series. The next time the two squared off, the following June, Blass hit Speier in the ribs. “I was thinking, ‘Well, what the fuck was that for?’ ” said Speier later. “I had no idea, so I asked him the next day. He said, ‘You remember that home run you hit off me?’ I said, ‘You guys won the fuckin’ World Series! Whaddaya gotta drill me for?’ ”

As pertains to Friday’s incident, the real question is whether the second inning of a 1-1 game—during which Gausman had already given up a single, a walk and hit a batter—was the right time for the pitcher to do what he did. There were two outs, and by passing up the chance to retire a weak hitter like Urena, Gausman forced himself to face the top of the order with the bases loaded. Not smart.

That last part was only conceptual, of course. Because Gausman missed Urena, he did not load the bases, but in getting himself ejected he did his team no favors. Touki Toussaint relieved him with a 1-0 count on the batter, and proceeded to walk Urena on three more pitches.

Ultimately, it didn’t matter. Toussaint escaped trouble by striking out Curtis Granderson to end the inning, and the Marlins are the Marlins, so a tie game in the second inning is nearly as good as five-run lead against them in the ninth. Atlanta ended up winning the game, 7-2, and the series in a clean sweep, during which time they outscored Florida 19-5.

Hopefully, this beef is over. The teams next meet in June, which is when we should know for sure.

Update 5/7: Gausman’s been suspended five games.

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Retaliation

Timing Matters When It Comes To HBPs, As The Guy Hitting After Bryce Harper Can Attest

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Hoskins drilled

Baseballs slip from pitchers’ hands all the time, inadvertently contacting batters as a matter of accident. When it’s cold and windy and grip is poor, this is especially true. It was certainly true Sunday night in Philadelphia, as the Phillies and Braves combined for 15 walks and three hit batters.

When the timing of one of those hit batters is questionable, however, every mitigating factor flies out the window. Which is why the Phillies were so angry at Braves reliever Shane Carle.

When Carle drilled Rhys Hoskins in the seventh inning, it followed a Bryce Harper and subsequent celebration with his teammates just outside the dugout. It might have been that Harper’s homer put the Braves into a 4-1 hole after they’d already lost the first two games of the series while giving up 18 runs. Nobody could blame them for frustration.

The other source of Philadelphia’s ire was that the pitch came in nearly head-high, eventually striking Hoskins on the shoulder.

The rest is details.

Never mind that Harper and Phillies starter Jake Arietta said that they didn’t think it was intentional, sentiments echoed by Braves manager Brian Snitcher and catcher Brian McCann. Carle had drilled Philadelphia’s cleanup guy right after being taken deep.

Hoskins got up yelling, clearly furious. It was the third time in two games against Atlanta that pitches had come close or actually hit him. Plate ump Rob Drake agreed, ejecting Carle.

After the game, Phillies manager Gabe Kapler unloaded.

“It really pisses me off when balls go underneath Rhys Hoskins’ chin,” he told the media, referencing the fact that Hoskins wears a C-flap on his helmet after having his jaw broken by a fouled bunt attempt last season. “It really bugs me. … He’s one of our leaders. He is, in many ways, the heartbeat of our club. It really bothers me when it happens.”

This matters less in a one-game sample than it does when considering that these teams—each of them hoping for full resurgence after long fallow periods—play each other 16 more times this season. Should Braves pitchers take liberties with the inside corner against Philadelphia, even without trying to hit anyone, they have to know that they’re playing with fire. The same can likely be said for members of the Phillies staff.

Here’s hoping that nothing comes of it, but boy it’s gonna be fun to watch.

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