Official Braves @ Nationals Game Thread (April 16- 17)

[WashWiz54]

Who?
Braves (8-3) @ Nationals (3-9)

When?
Game 1- April 16 @ 7:05 PM
Game 2- April 17 @ 7:05 PM

Where?

RFK Stadium

Who?

Nats
C- Schneider
1B- Young
2B- Belliard
3B- Zimmerman
LF- Kearns
CF- Church
RF- Casto

Braves
C- Brian McCann
1B- Craig Wilson
2B- Kelly Johnson
SS- Edgar Renteria
3B- Chipper Jones
LF- Matt Diaz
CF- Andruw Jones
RF- Jeff Francoeur

Game 1- Chico vs. James
Game 2- TBD


Go Nats!

[WashWiz54]

Chico FTW! My boy Dmitri did a good job with the double.

lol.. I'm so talking to myself right now.

[WashWiz54]

John Smoltz, RHP (1-1, 3.15) @ Jerome Williams, RHP (0-2, 4.91)

Scouting Report:
Braves: Before surrendering a pair of one-out, eighth-inning RBI singles that led to his first loss of the year on Thursday night, Smoltz had little trouble against the Nationals. He allowed just two hits to Washington before running into the eighth-inning trouble. As Smoltz gains a better feel for his changeup, he should find better success against left-handed hitters.
Nationals: Williams will face the Braves for the second time in less than a week. On paper, Williams had decent numbers against Atlanta last Wednesday, but he made some crucial mistakes. The Nationals found themselves behind, 2-0, in the first inning when Chipper Jones took a 3-2 fastball from Williams and belted it over the right-field wall. While he didn't give up any more runs over the next four innings, Williams had a tough time finding the strike zone as he walked four batters.

For tommorow...

[Scabs304]

I'm glad Chico got the win. Could be a good momentum builder win. Lopez got a few hits and him getting on base could really ignite the offense of the Nats. He got picked off once this game but he won't get picked off that often and usually a hit by him will mean a man in scoring position and with Zimmerman with a crack at putting him home batting 3rd we could score a bunch of runs when he gets on base.

[jmrosenth]

I'm happy for the win, but Chico wasn't that good. No K's and 5 BB means he should be in AAA right now, but this is the Nats. It's good to see the offense start to show signs of life however.

[Lord Commander]

I'm happy for the win, but Chico wasn't that good. No K's and 5 BB means he should be in AAA right now, but this is the Nats. It's good to see the offense start to show signs of life however.

K's don't really matter. The guy was missing bats pretty good. He's got good stuff and made the Squaws look silly. Good win fellas....

[jmrosenth]

-= original quote snipped =-



K's don't really matter. The guy was missing bats pretty good. He's got good stuff and made the Squaws look silly. Good win fellas....

It's not so much the K's, but the K/BB ratio that I pay attention to. If you are a high walk/low-K pitcher, your chances at success aren't going to be very high a lot of the times.

[Ed Wood]

There are a few issues with the walk and strikeout numbers. To summarize, it's possible to be a relatively successful pitcher without managing even an average strikeout rate (meaning K/Inning pitched or per nine innings pitched). Two current examples of pitchers who have at times done so are Chin Ming Wang and Mark Buehrle. Generally pitchers who don't have the inclination or ability to retire batters by strikeout have to be exceptional in other areas in order to survive.

Pitchers who have pronounced ground ball tendencies, that is to say those off of whom many more ground balls are hit than fly balls, and as a result do not surrender very many home runs, can go as far as their infield defense and ability to keep the ball down will carry them. Derek Lowe has managed to be a very solid pitcher doing just that for a while now, and Brandon Webb is a pitcher who combines better strikeout numbers with his heavy sinker to overwhelm opposing batters.

Pitchers with excellent control can also carve out niches for themselves even without the ability to K many batters, though they have perhaps even less margin for error than their worm killing cousins. If a pitcher has great control but unimpressive stuff many major league hitters simply won't allow him to fool them with location and will instead look for mistake pitches while fouling off those offerings that are unattractive but within the strike zone. What's more pitchers who are hittable and also around the zone quite frequently almost always have problems with surrendering an unhealthy number of home runs. Pitching in RFK will help anyone in that regard but even so being consistently up in the strike zone is risky business. Consider this, the recently retired Brad Radke had almost supernatural control, statistically among the top three in the past three quarters of a century. And yet he wasn't an ace, even at his best, and he was susceptible to being hit very hard when his control wasn't absolutely perfect.

It's obviously bad to allow too many hitters to reach base via the base on balls, just consider Daniel Cabrera. If he could keep himself under control he'd be an absolute monster, but he can't and so he hasn't yet even proven himself to be a league average starter.

And, of course, there's the matter of the two in relation to each other. I've already been rambling too long so I'll just repeat that it's fairly important to strikeout significantly more batters than you walk.

[Lord Commander]

You guys are playing like you want to prove everyone wrong. Good game last night, you almost came back. I hope you keep giving them hell (not the Mets ).