00:00The Braves had a tough night against the Cubs. We are about to bring in our Braves insider Grant
00:04McCauley. Our conversation with Grant is brought to you by Mark Spain Real Estate. Get a guaranteed
00:09offer on your home at MarkSpain.com. Grant, obviously just not the Braves night last night,
00:14but you've got Pete Crow Armstrong to deal with. Four hits, four RBIs, his 40-second home run.
00:19How do you even plan for a guy like that? What do you do? Yeah, right now it's just kind
00:24of
00:25try not to let him beat you, but he's not really cooperating with very many teams with that here
00:29lately. He's been on a home run binge here in the second half. He's running amok, stolen
00:34base-wise. He's also a platinum glove level center fielder, so even if he doesn't get a
00:39hit or a home run or steal a couple of bases, he can still do things that affect the game.
00:44So he's really come on his own this year, and it's a big reason why the Cubs are where they
00:48are fighting for that top wildcard spot, and it was just kind of a night where, yeah, he
00:53was doing a lot of things, and unfortunately, as I'm sure we'll get into, we get to talk about
00:57more pitching injuries for the Atlanta Braves, which has unfortunately been a theme that
01:01will not stop following this club around.
01:04Hey, Grant, speaking of pitching, we were talking earlier about Martin Perez obviously
01:09goes tonight against Kevin Gosman, and Mike brought up his splits home and away with ERA.
01:15Let us down to the discussion. Do you believe that if playoffs get here, we got to start a
01:22series at home, maybe one of those three-game series, that there's a world we live in where
01:25Chris Sell starts one, and Perez starts the second game because you're at home, and you
01:31let Tyler Malley start on the road since Malley's been better home and away, and Perez has really
01:36been predominantly good at home?
01:38I think it's possible. I think a lot of it will depend on what happens in game one in
01:43some ways. I mean, I guess you'll put together your probable starters. Would you flip-flop them
01:47at that point? I don't know. There's no rule against it as long as you kind of let the
01:51other team know within a certain window of time, and I forget exactly what it is, but it's
01:55just a courtesy. You let the other team know who's starting, but I really feel like
02:00Tyler Malley is the Braves' second-best option, and I think that we kind of learned a valuable
02:04lesson with trying to play splits and different things in the 2019 National League Division
02:11series where Michael Soroka was waited until the road where he made one start in that series,
02:16and then you lose it in five, and he was arguably your best pitcher that entire year, and he only
02:21threw one time. Now, that wouldn't happen if Chris Sale is your best pitcher, which he is,
02:25and will be starting game one and potentially a game five if he needed him to as far as
02:28Division Series is concerned. If it's a wild card, I guess the point is moot, and you start
02:33deciding, all right, and what, you know, do we want to try to win it with Chris Sale in
02:37one and Tyler Malley in two, and we've got Martin Perez in waiting in game three. If that
02:41comes down to that, I think you'd be comfortable with that plan, but I don't know that there's
02:46really necessarily a right or wrong answer to it. We have known for a while. It's just what
02:51do you do after Chris Sale? Tyler Malley has been an absolute godsend to a rotation that
02:56is still somehow managing here in the second half to absorb more and more injuries, so
03:02whatever you do there with Perez, who has pitched immaculately at home, and obviously
03:07he did it again last time out against Tampa Bay, that could be some of the thinking, but
03:11I don't think it's going to drive the entire decision.
03:14Grant, I was curious to know about J.R. Ritchie and what Braves fans can expect tomorrow
03:19night when he takes the bump. Cubs, obviously, a very formidable offense. J.R. Ritchie, we
03:24haven't seen him in just a little bit. What has he been doing at the minor league levels,
03:28and what can we expect from him tomorrow?
03:30He's been doing some pretty good stuff, and this is the last time that the Braves can bring
03:33him up, and they cannot option him down again, so he'll be riding it out for the final,
03:37you know, 11 games worth of the regular season if they were to option him again. He would
03:42go on the waivers, and the Braves are obviously not going to do that, and at this point, as
03:46we learned with Reynaldo Lopez going on the 60-day IL and his season being done, I think
03:51that J.R. Ritchie has an important role to play, but to your point, he's been terrific
03:55at AAA Gwinnett. Two starts ago, he had 15 strikeouts, set a striper's record there,
04:00and last time out, I believe he had eight, if not nine strikeouts, so he's really kind of
04:04dialed it up at a good time, and man, wouldn't you love to see just a strong six-inning start
04:09that helps you out? Your bullpen's in pretty good shape, thanks to AJ Smith-Shawber going
04:12five innings last night, so all things considered, there's nothing fun about a 7-3 loss, but
04:18your bullpen didn't get wiped out, and you are having to kind of scramble to really just
04:23put together a back end of your rotation at the moment, so I think if J.R. Ritchie could
04:27come up and deliver something competitive for Atlanta, that would certainly go a long
04:31way on Wednesday, but obviously Atlanta wants to get there through Tuesday and try to even
04:36the series up with Martin Perez tonight. We are joined by Grant McCauley on the morning
04:40shift. I do want to go back to Reynaldo Lopez, because obviously they had to pull him early,
04:44he's on the aisle, like you mentioned, dealing with the shoulder discomfort. He didn't have
04:47the best return to the Braves, though, so has this been a lingering issue for him?
04:53I think it has been, and he said as much, I guess, to the club last night, Mark Bowman of
04:59MLB.com,
04:59among those reporting that this finally came back up, and look, Mark Bowman and many reporters,
05:05myself included, are not the only people who've been wondering, all right, what's the deal with
05:09the 92-93? Is he okay? Then every once in a while, we'll pop 96, and then there's a bunch
05:14of 91s,
05:15like just what's going on with that shoulder? Does he trust it? He hasn't been incredibly sharp. He
05:19was in the rotation, and they put him in the bullpen to work some stuff out. Then he ended up
05:23on the IL, obviously, with the knee thing, which has nothing to do with his shoulder, but I guess
05:27in the world of pitching, everything is probably connected in some way, shape, or form, so maybe one thing
05:33kind of aggravated another because you're overcompensating, but honestly, you just have
05:38to look at shoulder injuries in pitchers and understand that once you start getting shoulder
05:42surgeries, you're probably never going to be quite the same, and I don't want to break any news here
05:47on the show, but pitchers pretty much are sore all year long. There is no, we just reset because we
05:54got
05:54four days, and now we feel 100% again. You're just kind of managing that workload, and you see a
05:59lot
05:59of guys go through it in kind of a dead arm period during the season, that sort of stuff,
06:03but after you've had surgery, your mind has to kind of, you know, wander to, all right, well,
06:08is this normal? Is this too much? Am I good? Am I not good? Should I, you know, push it
06:13a little
06:13bit further or not? I think he's probably been weighing that out all season long, and it just
06:18kind of goes with the territory. If you're a competitor and you want to be out there, you find ways
06:22to get
06:23out there and help your team, and I think Renaldo's tried to do that. I think Bryce Elder was trying
06:27to do
06:27that. I know this frustrates some people that, oh, well, if you're hurt, you shouldn't play at all.
06:31Well, you'd have a whole bunch of guys just sitting around on the injured list if everybody's
06:35everything landed them on the injured list because they just didn't feel 100%. Yeah, that argument only
06:41depends on how that person plays. If they play good, they're a hero. If they don't, they're a bum
06:46and selfish. All right, I got to ask, I know two-part questions are not what we're supposed to do
06:53in
06:53radio, but I'm going to ask you a two-part question. Robert Suarez update, and behind that,
06:58I want you to talk about what A.J. Smith-Shauver's role could be in the playoffs based on how
07:02good
07:03he looked to me coming out of the bullpen last night. Well, Robert Suarez has been facing hitters
07:08still in live batting practices. Those were the final step towards him going out on a rehab
07:13assignment. As we do the math here, 11 games left, and Robert had told us a couple of weeks ago
07:18his goal was to be back the final week of the season. I would imagine here soon, if there was
07:24nothing coming out of that that would create any question about how healthy he is, he'd be heading
07:30out to start pitching in some minor league games there for AAA Gwinnett and then try to get him
07:35back in and get him a couple appearances before you get to the postseason, whether that's wildcard
07:39or division series. You just want to have Robert Suarez back in there, and he is trending in that
07:43direction. To that end, A.J. Smith-Shauver, at least before the Reynaldo Lopez news, the discussion
07:50was, well, he's just not really going to be in the starting plans, but we do want to map out
07:54a role
07:54for him because it's a guy with a superbly talented arm, and if he can get the fastball splitter
08:00working out of the bullpen, he can be effective. And then he goes out last night and throws, I would
08:05say, his probably best all-around performance. Even Pete Crow Armstrong's home run had a 200 expected
08:10batting average on it, so it's not exactly like he was getting tattooed even when he gave up the
08:15two-run shot. Now, they all count the same. The box score tells us that, but I was encouraged by
08:19the
08:20way that he was pitching, and I know that in between every outing, he's just trying to make those
08:24adjustments and just get back to being the best version of himself that he can be. And after Tommy
08:29John surgery, command and control is the hardest thing to kind of reestablish. But an appearance like
08:35last night certainly is encouraging to me that this guy with that arm could play some kind of role
08:41because as you lose a Ronaldo Lopez, and you may not have a Bryce Elder, who I did see in
08:46the
08:46clubhouse this past week, he's walking around after that knee surgery just fine, was going out to play
08:51catch. So he said three or four weeks. Maybe he'll be back in three or four weeks, but that's a
08:56lot of
08:56maybes and ifs and buts that are going into the planning of this rotation and this pitching staff.
09:01You'd love some guys to kind of answer those questions. Robert Suarez is a huge one, but AJ Smith-Shawber
09:06could be kind of an x-factor in how the Braves cover some innings, especially if they don't feel like
09:12they can press, you know, a Tyler Malley or a Grant Holmes or a Martin Perez to the normal level
09:18that they
09:18would push a starter because the postseason, it just changes the whole equation.
09:22Grant, we've only got about 30 seconds left, but I do want to get your opinion. Last week when we
09:25talked to you,
09:26we talked about the struggles of Matt Olsen. I thought we had kind of cleared that hurdle over the weekend,
09:30three-hit day Sunday, a couple home runs. Last night, though, looked as bad as he had before.
09:35I'm curious where you sit on him and kind of what you think about him moving forward the next couple
09:40weeks. I think last night was just a bad matchup for him. I mean, even when you're going well,
09:44you're going to have some bad games. It was a lefty-on-lefty thing. David Peterson, who had
09:48kind of been knocked around and had been great this year, just had himself a night against the Braves,
09:53who have kind of an aggressive approach on the offense, and I talked a lot about that on my Sunday
09:57show. So if you want to hear more about the Braves and their early count swinging ways,
10:01you can find From the Diamond wherever you get your podcasts. But Matt's been swinging it a lot
10:05better lately. I do feel encouraged about him, and I'm interested to see what he does down the
10:09stretch because you need to get him going. Ronald's been swinging the bat well. Drake Baldwin's looking
10:13good here lately. Michael Harris has had a great year pretty much all season. He's just been right
10:18in the middle of stuff. Those are the four guys I think you can really count on. Then you want
10:22some
10:22contributions from the other five spots in the order. And if they get that, I think the Braves can
10:26cobble together enough runs. If they can cobble together the pitching staff to cover the innings
10:31to win some important games. Yeah, we're certainly hoping for a different outcome tonight. Grant,
10:35as always, thank you for the time. We'll talk soon. All right. Look forward to it. Thanks, guys.
10:40That is Grant McCauley, our Braves insider. You can find him on all the socials at Grant McCauley
10:44and catch him on the postgame show every Sunday with Mike.
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