- 2 days ago
Chris Thomas and Grant McAuley break down the Braves' win over the Red Sox, focusing on Ronald Acuña Jr.'s grand slam and Chris Sale's dominant performance. They evaluate the roster's depth and the bullpen's continued dominance in late-game situations.
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00:00Grant, I mean, the proverbial monkey off the back, weight off the shoulders,
00:06you could feel it through the TV screen when Ronald Acuna Jr. absolutely smashed
00:12a grand slam over the wall in Boston, just his third home run of the year,
00:18but couldn't have come at a better time and in a bigger moment.
00:22Yeah, key time, big swing for him, and obviously something that among the people waiting for it
00:27has been Ronald Acuna Jr., who's had more trouble, I think, with fastballs this year
00:31than really any other time in his career, and it wasn't a thing last year,
00:35and it certainly wasn't a thing any year before this, but for whatever reason,
00:38that's kind of been what he's been off on, like just a kick behind, a kick off,
00:45a lot of foul balls on fastballs, kind of getting beat to the spot a little bit here and there
00:49as well,
00:49but yeah, you knew that Ronald Acuna Jr. has this level, has this button, has this switch
00:55that's going to get flipped at some point, and it can make you forget about a slow first six
00:59or seven weeks even to start this season, and like you said, it came at a very good time for
01:04him,
01:04one swing, four runs, big home run, just his third of the year, but again,
01:09Ronald Acuna Jr. is a special talent, and I expect to see many more special things from him this year
01:14than to have imagined him continuing the way things were going in the first couple of months of the year.
01:20Not his best start at all of the season, because he's been so brilliant,
01:24but Sale obviously was able to battle, picks up his eighth win of the season,
01:29and that just goes to show you, Grant, that even when he doesn't have his best stuff,
01:33he can still get you out in a variety of ways and get through a start.
01:37Yeah, I mean, I would argue that it wasn't a matter of stuff.
01:40Sometimes it's just the way that an opposing lineup goes up against you.
01:44Chris Sale averaged 97.9 miles an hour on his fastball and was, I think,
01:49at his most dominant velocity-wise in a game since, I think, early 2019
01:54when he was still a member of the Boston Red Sox.
01:56But you've got to give the Red Sox hitters some credit.
01:59They roughed up Bryce Elder in Game 2 of this series.
02:01It seemed like they had a pretty good plan to have traffic on against Chris Sale
02:05in pretty much every one of the five innings that he worked.
02:08But to Chris's credit, he was able to get the swings and misses when he needed to.
02:11He reached back and found some extra, lightened it up at 99 miles an hour a couple of times.
02:16So he had it when he needed it, and it definitely was a day that the Braves needed a starter
02:21to at least get them in position to win a game and have a big inning and take a series.
02:25And Chris Sale accomplished that and is rewarded with, as you mentioned,
02:28his eighth win of the year already.
02:30A couple of key points about positions that are, we'll just say, in flux right now.
02:36Grant, Hasan Kim getting a day off.
02:39Listen, we know he's struggling.
02:41There's no need to beat that dead horse.
02:43But why is he struggling to the best of your ability?
02:46What have you seen, and more specifically, not seen from him since he's come back?
02:51I mean, when you come in basically six weeks into a season with no spring training
02:55off of a rehab assignment that lasts a couple of weeks,
02:58I'm sure that there's a lot of different things that are going here.
03:01It's swing, I don't think, is really where he wanted it to be over that first week especially.
03:04It's looked better lately to me.
03:06He squared up a couple of balls.
03:08And I think that defensively speaking, yeah, he had that little blip down in Miami.
03:12But otherwise, he's been perfectly adequate, if not better than average,
03:16on the rest of the defensive side of stuff.
03:18But I think it's one of those times where if you're Walt Wise, if you're the Braves,
03:22and you're kind of trying to figure out how to score some runs,
03:25you've got somebody struggling this bad, giving him a day is not the worst thing.
03:28And Jorge Mateo hits well in Boston.
03:30He had another couple of hits today.
03:32So looking pretty good as an option that you can kind of mix in there if you need to.
03:36Still use Dubon in the outfield.
03:38Keep him involved.
03:39And that's kind of the beauty of this team is that you don't necessarily have to just look at every
03:43position
03:43and say, well, we've just got to play this guy through it because we have nobody that can give him
03:48a day off
03:48or nobody that we can use in a particular matchup or nobody that we can pinch hit when we need
03:53to.
03:54This, I think, is the deepest version of a Braves team, as far as position players are concerned,
03:58in about a decade and a half.
03:59And it's been a lot of that built on what Mauricio Dubon has done.
04:04But it's easy to look at some of the other contributors to this and start to realize, wow,
04:09the Braves are getting a lot of different guys involved, more so than you've seen at any time in recent
04:14memory for the Braves.
04:15And all of this, I think, is more so by design to give Walt Wise a little bit more opportunity
04:20to do some pinch running,
04:22do some pinch hitting, platoon, and play matchups if he needs to.
04:25But you also, as we talked about just right off the top, need your stars to contribute to really have
04:30this team
04:30humming the way it needs to, offensively speaking.
04:32Speaking of stars, is there any indication when we get the next update for Drake Baldwin?
04:38And then when you look at the state of the catching position right now with Murph out at least another,
04:43you know,
04:54significant time that they could look to bring in somebody else?
04:59I don't know who you bring in, though.
05:01That's the thing is most teams are looking around and thinking, what do we have depth-wise?
05:06And I think if you had to go through what the Braves are going through, which was first the loss
05:10of Murphy
05:10and then losing Drake Baldwin for what they don't anticipate being an incredibly long amount of time,
05:15but let's be honest, any amount of time missing Drake Baldwin is something that is going to negatively affect his
05:21club
05:21from an offensive perspective.
05:22We'll probably hear something about Drake when the Braves get back home after the Cincinnati series.
05:27They've got the Blue Jays and the Pirates, I believe, coming to town after that.
05:30So maybe at some point during that week we'll start to get a little bit better indication of what Drake
05:34is able to do
05:35or if he's able to resume any of his baseball activities and start getting himself ramped up
05:39because at that point it will have been close to that 10-day IL stint
05:44and you'll start to at least know if he's been able to ramp up and do anything at all.
05:48But if Sandy Leone and Chadwick Trump are both capable behind the plate,
05:53you saw Trump get involved in a big rally for the Braves to win a game,
05:56and I think with Sandy, it's just a veteran guy that your pitchers trust.
06:00And when I talked to Drake Baldwin in spring training way before he made the club last year,
06:05he was quick to really give a lot of praise to Sandy Leone
06:08for helping him as a young catcher really understand what it's going to be like at the big league level.
06:14So having Sandy around, I think it means a lot to guys like Chris Sale,
06:17who he won the World Series with, and also just knowing that you've got somebody capable
06:21that's been there, that's done it all in terms of playing in the highest leverage moments
06:27and the biggest stage to come in and at least be that bridge to get you back to having Drake
06:33Baldwin
06:33hopefully on a regular basis.
06:35And Sean Murphy still going to be probably about a month, month and a half
06:38before we have any concrete timeline on when he could be back with that broken finger.
06:42Talking all things Bravos after a big 10-2 win.
06:45Ronald Acuna Jr. with the dramatic grand slam to put them over the top for good.
06:50Grant McCauley on the Sweet James Accident Attorney's Hotline.
06:53Make sure you check out From the Diamond here on 92.9 The Game,
06:56and of course wherever you get your podcasts.
06:59Grant, if I told you the Braves would have, in my opinion,
07:02by far the best 7-8-9 bullpen in baseball before the season,
07:07I think you would have told me that's maybe not a stretch.
07:09I could definitely see that.
07:11But in terms of just how dominant and how, you know, just assertive they've been
07:16in slamming the door shut in these games between Lee Suarez and Iglesias,
07:20even with a little bit of time being missed there,
07:23it's just been, quite frankly, amazing to watch.
07:27Yeah, and when you think about, you know, what the Braves have done as a pitching staff,
07:31I think Alex Anthopoulos knew that if you couldn't go out and find the starting pitcher
07:36that you wanted to make that deal for, and you could argue that maybe he dodged a bullet
07:40on some of these one-year deals that some of these other veteran pitchers signed later on.
07:44We still haven't seen Lucas Giolito pitch.
07:46At least I don't believe we have.
07:47Maybe he has, but either way, it hasn't been anything exciting.
07:50Chris Bassett hasn't looked good with the Orioles.
07:52Zach Littell, not really very exciting with the Nationals.
07:55And as I've talked about, even on my show, you know,
07:58the Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer nostalgia tours weren't really a solution
08:03that the Braves, I think, were even going to consider.
08:05So there's not a lot outside of if you wanted to go dump a whole bunch of money on Dylan
08:09Cease
08:10that you really could have done, I think, in the offseason to sign a free agent.
08:13Could you argue about a trade? Sure.
08:15But if all that's not going to happen, why not make your bullpen better?
08:18You bring back Iglesias.
08:19Some people might have wondered why you do that,
08:22why you give him the same amount he was making the year before.
08:24Or he's showing you why, because the second half last year was a better indication
08:28of who he's capable of being than struggling through the first three months.
08:31And then Robert Suarez was arguably the best reliever on the market.
08:35I know everybody looked at Edwin Diaz and said,
08:36OK, well, that's the bigger name and all the excitement that goes with him.
08:39And that has not worked out very well for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
08:42So I think the Braves knew that they had some strength in the bullpen.
08:46They knew they needed a couple of pieces to add to that.
08:48One of them being Suarez, one of them being the return of Rysel Iglesias.
08:52And I think they're getting good work from that pen and adequate work from the starting rotation
08:56in terms of covering the innings because of what Bryce Elder has done,
08:59what Chris Sale obviously has done.
09:01Spencer Strider being back certainly helps.
09:03Martin Perez has been a godsend to the Braves,
09:05kind of as a swing man who would start a bunch of games or help you out of the bullpen
09:09if you need.
09:10And they've been able to weather.
09:11Grant Holmes has obviously been involved with this as well.
09:14But they've been able to weather not having Spencer Schwellenbach and not having Hurston Waldrop
09:18and not having A.J. Smith-Schauver and Waldrop could be ramping themselves up
09:26to get out on rehab assignments when we get into the month of June.
09:29So what could that look like ultimately?
09:31But the back end of that bullpen, to make a long story short,
09:34building that up, having that strength is one of the X factors for the Braves being where they are
09:39because when they get a lead and they take it late into the game,
09:41you've got the guys you trust to turn it into a win.
09:44With that being said, do you foresee Didier Fuentes and Ronaldo Lopez
09:48staying in the pen for the rest of the year?
09:51For the rest of the year, I don't know.
09:52I still think there's a case to be made for Fuentes starting games
09:55because I think this has kind of been a bit of on-the-job training
09:59where Walt Weiss was, and I actually asked him about this with Fuentes,
10:03where exactly is he right now in the level of comfort at the big league level?
10:09And Walt basically pointed out that it used to be a thing to have young pitchers come up and work
10:15in the bullpen
10:15and get to know the big leagues a little bit more.
10:18And that's kind of what they're seeing the value in more so than running him out there
10:21just as a starter at the AAA level and just kind of waiting for him to develop there.
10:26But at just 20 years old, I think this is kind of a good thing to do for him,
10:30to build up that confidence and give him those big league innings and that experience.
10:35With Ronaldo, we're starting to see the velocity pick up.
10:37I won't say that he started his last game, but I'll tell you,
10:40if he can be a weapon in the bullpen, and he has been in the past,
10:44as far as a high-leverage arm and a bullpen,
10:47imagine adding another one of those to what you've already got
10:50and what we've already talked about.
10:51And he could make the same case for Fuentes.
10:53As far as arm talent, other than Robert Suarez,
10:56nobody has got better stuff on the staff than Didier Fuentes.
11:00And that is the kind of thing that you look to weaponize
11:02when you're thinking about how you put your pitching staff together.
11:05You don't want to look too far ahead in the crystal ball, Grant,
11:08but before I let you go, do you foresee any team in the division
11:12that's capable of making a run to get on the Braves' heels?
11:15It just seems like with the Phillies now going back up and down
11:20after that hot start with Don Mattingly and the Mets being the mess that they are,
11:26again, I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch,
11:29but this seems like if the Braves continue to play the way that they have been
11:32that another division title could be coming their way.
11:36It could be, but you're not going to catch the Braves looking too far ahead.
11:40I can promise you that.
11:41I mean, Walt Weiss is very much of the Brian Snitker, Bobby Cox school of thought
11:46in that we concentrate on today's game, we stack those up, we win series,
11:50we move on to the next one, and we don't look at the standings
11:52and start thinking about those kind of scenarios.
11:55So I think that's the right mindset, and as far as crazier things have happened
11:59in baseball than the team making a run with a hot second half.
12:04So have we seen the best of the Phillies yet this year?
12:06I don't know.
12:07They've got Christopher Sanchez, they've got Zach Wheeler back,
12:09they've got some big bats, a guy like Klaus Werber who's capable of putting up
12:13I think some big slugging numbers.
12:15Bryce Harper's still on that team, Trey Turner's still on that team.
12:18They'll spend money.
12:19Will they go out and get something?
12:21And then we know that if you get into the postseason, half the time,
12:24it seems like the division winners that have to sit around for four or five days
12:27might be at a disadvantage when we talk about Major League Baseball's postseason
12:31these days.
12:32So who's to say?
12:33You know, the division title will certainly be nice.
12:35It's what the Braves put on their goal sheet when they come to spring training.
12:39But they're not going to look too far ahead, and the way they're winning right now
12:42makes it feel like they've got everything going the way that they need it to.
12:46Need to get healthy, need to get some consistency from a couple of other players.
12:50But by and large, I don't think that even the most optimistic Braves fan
12:54could look at this season and have expected anything more than what the Braves
12:57have shown you thus far as they've marched out to a 38-19 record,
13:01the best in Major League Baseball, and they've lost a grand total of two series
13:05all year.
13:06And we're about to turn the calendar to the month of June.
13:09Grant, great stuff as always.
13:11When is the next time we can hear you on From the Diamond?
13:14I'll be on From the Diamond this Sunday for two hours of Braves and baseball talk.
13:18I'll have my buddy Scott Coleman from Hammer Territory joining me to talk a little bit
13:22about this first third or so of the season, a little bit about what's going on with Ronald
13:26Acuna Jr., Austin Riley, a couple of the hitters the Braves need to get going.
13:29And, of course, we'll size up how this road trip went and get you set up for the homestand
13:34for the Braves as they close out this month with the Blue Jays and the Pirates rolling
13:38into town.
13:39So that's From the Diamond here on Sports Radio 92.9 The Game on Sundays, wherever you get
13:42your podcasts and on the Odyssey app.
13:43Great stuff.
13:44I'll let you know when we get confirmation that the Acuna Ball has landed in the streets
13:49of Boston.
13:50Appreciate it, Grant.
13:51Sounds good to me.
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