Was at the game the past two nights, our seats are right around where Freddie hit his first homerun on Monday night
Asked the same question to my lady friend when they showed him in the dugout. I think she was too in love to even answer.
Exact same thought, fuck you Bryce and your excellent use of product for a baseball game. And Teheran seems to be enjoying himself at first base after getting shit on
Freddie Freeman Is Now an Elite Slugger by Dave Cameron - April 20, 2017 Up until last year, Freddie Freeman was an example of just how good a hitter a player could be without top-shelf power. From 2013 to 2015, he was the only player in MLB to run a 140 or better wRC+ while posting an ISO below .200. He put up the same wRC+ as David Ortiz despite being out-homered by Big Papi 102 to 59, as his .351 BABIP helped him offset the relatively lower number of balls leaving the park. With a bunch of line drives and enough walks to keep the OBP up, Freeman became about as good a hitter as one can be while hitting 20 homers a year. Last year, though, Freeman found his power stroke, launching 34 home runs and running a .267 ISO, eighth-best in baseball. While he sacrificed a little bit of contact to get there, raising his strikeout rate to 25% in the process, he continued to torch the baseball even when it didn’t leave the field, allowing him to run a .370 BABIP that kept his BA and OBP up even while the strikeouts increased a little bit. His 152 wRC+ was the best of his career and tied him with Miguel Cabrera for the sixth-highest mark of any hitter in 2016. And after the first couple of weeks of 2017, that looks less like a career year and more like what we should start to expect from Freeman going forward. With another big day yesterday, Freeman has taken the top spot away from Eric Thames on the 2017 wRC+ leaderboard, and what he’s done the last seven days is nothing short of remarkable; he’s 11 for 17 with three doubles, three home runs, seven walks, and two strikeouts. His slash line over the last week: .647/.750/1.353. Yeah. While every conversation about the best hitter in baseball ends with “but Mike Trout“, Freeman is firmly inserting himself into the mix of the best of the rest. Here are the best hitters in MLB over the last 365 days, for instance. Best Hitters Over Last 365 Days Rank Player - PA wRC+ OFF 1 Mike Trout - 691 180 74.8 2 Freddie Freeman - 707 168 60.0 3 Joey Votto - 686 162 49.7 4 David Ortiz - 581 160 32.6 5 Miguel Cabrera - 688 155 35.7 From April 19th to April 19th, Freeman is the only guy even without shouting distance of Mike Trout, as he’s hit .322/.414/.615 over that stretch. That line puts him seventh in BA, third in OBP, and first in SLG. And if you just focus on balls in play, not even Trout has been better on contacted balls than Freeman over the last year; his 223 wRC+ on contact is better than Trout’s 214 mark, and ahead of J.D. Martinez, Nelson Cruz, and Kris Bryant, the only other three hitters over 200 during that span. The guy who was recently an example of how you didn’t need elite power to be a great hitter is now an even greater hitter with legitimately elite power. And there’s nothing in his batted ball profile to suggest the power is going back to where it was a few years ago. Freeman’s 95.3 mph average exit velocity is second only to Miguel Cabrera this year, and he’s fifth on exit velocity on balls in the air, so he’s not just inflating that by hitting high-EV grounders that don’t do a lot of damage. As Tony noted in his first base write-up over the winter, Freeman’s 2016 batted ball profile suggested that his breakout wasn’t a fluke. Freddie Freeman is emerging as the best offensive first baseman in the NL. Like Votto, Freeman is an absolute line-drive machine, cranking them out on an annual basis. His traditional numbers were held down a bit by his pitcher-friendly home park, but his combination of fly balls, liners and walks is a lethal one. I would expect the fly-ball rate to regress downward a bit, while his new home park gives him a bit back in return. He’s not an extreme grounder-puller, so he gets away with relatively light grounder authority. He’s a hit-before-power guy with lots of power, squarely in the prime of his career. For years, Votto was the natural comparison for Freeman, as both were liner-first 1Bs who were elite hitters despite not putting up huge home run totals. But the current version of Freeman looks a lot more like 2010 Votto than the more recent versions, when he launched a career-high 37 home runs and put up a 172 wRC+. That’s what you can do when you add top-shelf power to a lot of walks and an average-ish strikeout rate. We shouldn’t expect Freeman to run a 172 wRC+ this year — that’s above even Trout’s career average — like Votto did in 2010, but the additional power Freeman has gained doesn’t look to be going away any time soon, and Freeman was a power spike away from being in the very top (non-Trout) tier of hitters in the game. With this kind of ability to do damage on contact, and enough strike zone control to keep his walks up and his strikeouts down, Freeman is putting himself in the conversation for best hitter in the National League. Once-again-healthy Bryce Harper is, of course, also mashing up in Washington, Votto is still around, and Paul Goldschmidt is still very good, so Freeman isn’t clearly the big bat in the NL anymore. But this new Freeman — the guy who does all the things the old Freeman did but now also hits twice as many homers — is in that conversation. And while the Braves still have some other issues with their roster before they’re ready to win, their belief in Freeman as a franchise player has certainly paid off.
In Nashville, MLB Network regional coverage is split between ATL/WSH and KC/TEX, so, naturally, I'm getting Royals/Rangers :/
Ender forgot what type of hitter he really is there. Wanted to end it with a walk off, and popped that thing up.
Rochester Redwings 0, Gwinnett Braves 3 Ozzie Albies, SS: 1-for-4, SB(6), .286/.309/.444 Rio Ruiz, 3B: 2-for-4, R, .241/.290/.310 Lucas Sims, SP: 7.0IP 3H 0R 0BB 5K, 2.70 ERA Lucas Sims rebounded from his shortest start of the season by working 7 quality innings and earning the win for the Gwinnett Braves. He’s limited the walks a lot more this season - seen by his BB% of less than 3, and it definitely helped him last night by allowing him to go 7 innings. Unfortunately I didn’t see anything particularly flashy about him yesterday, though his mechanics were on point, and his curveball rotated particularly tight. It was the same Lucas with his fastball however, which appeared to be rather flat - perhaps it was the camera angle. That said, he still gave up just a mere three hits, none of which were particularly hard hit, and threw a lot of strikes. Rhiner Cruz, Sam Freeman, and Jason Motte combined to give up just one single the rest of the way. That was Motte’s 4th appearance since the 11th, and he’s given up just a pair of singles, and walked once. He could find his way back in the majors sooner than later. Ozzie Albies extended his hit streak to 12 games, failing to get on base just one game this season. He also picked up his 6th stolen base of the season and is a perfect 6-for-6 on the season. Gwinnett went up 1-0 in the fifth following a single by Emerson Landoni, and Ozzie Albies reaching on an error by the first baseman. Landoni came around to score on a Mel Rojas Jrsingle. They added their final two runs in the 8th via fielders choice by Lane Adas scoring Matt Tuiasosopo, and a single by Blake Lalli scoring Rio Ruiz. Yesterday was Rio’s second straight multi-hit game and has raised his batting average from .200 to .241. Despite the early struggles with the bat he’s still looked good in the field and, especially if platooned, could provide some much needed relief for a struggling on the field and in the box Adonis Garcia. Lane Adams continued his fine work for Gwinnett - going 3-for-4 with 2 stolen bases and is now hitting .378/.383/.667 for Gwinnett. Mobile Bay Bears 12, Mississippi Braves 1 Travis Demeritte, 2B: 1-for-3, 2B, .260/.362/.440 Dylan Moore, SS: 0-for-3, .079/.222/.184 Max Fried, SP: 3.0IP 6H 6ER 4BB 2K, 7.59 Akeel Morris, RP: 1.0IP 0H 0R 1BB 1K, 0.00 ERA This was a game to forget for Mississippi and there isn’t much to talk about. Max Fried doesn’t look like he’s 100% healthy and appears to be plagued by that back injury a bit. He has much better command than what was on show last night and he missed high throughout his appearance. This is going to be a game where they throw away the game film because it really did seem like some kind of injury was plaguing him. Evan Phillips came in relief for Max and was not good - yielding 5 runs while walking 3 in his 1 inning of relief. After a strong 2016 campaign, Phillips has had an awful 2017 giving up (14) runs in his last 4 appearances and now has a 25.20 ERA, and 3.40 WHIP. Opponents are now hitting .520 against him and a demotion seems likely. Mississippi’s lone threat was in the 9th inning when Travis Demeritte doubled to lead things off, took 3rd on a wild pitch and scored on a Carlos Franco double. Florida Firefrogs 3, Fort Myers Miracle 8 Ronald Acuna, RF: 2-for-5, 3B, SB .229/.275/.396 Austin Riley, 3B: 0-for-4, .233/.303/.367 Alex Jackson, DH: 1-for-4 HR, .304/.328/.607 Touki Toussaint, SP: 5.0IP 7H 7ER 1BB 3K, 7.20 ERA The game started off promising with Ronald Acuna getting on base, stealing 2nd (his 7th stolen base), moving over to 3rd via an Austin Riley pop up to the first baseman, but was stranded at 3rd after Alex Jackson popped up as well. They then quickly fell behind when Touki gave up 3 straight extra base-hits (triple, double, double) allowing the Miracle to score 2 in the 2nd. Florida fired back when Alex Jackson hit his Braves MiLB and Florida State League leading 5th HR of the season. Things quickly unraveled in the 6th as Touki Toussaint had 5 straight batters reach off of him (2B, HBP, 1B, 1B, 2B) where ultimately 5 runs were scored off of him and McLaughlin. That’s now back-to-back tough starts for Touki where he’s given up a combined 12 earned runs, though he still has only walked 3 batters over 3 starts. Jonathan Morales went 3-for-4 with a double and is now hitting .304/.360/.391. Carlos Castro continues to hit - going 2-for-3 with a walk and an RBI. The first baseman is now hitting .380/.436/.420. Rome Braves 6, Greenville Drive 1 Derian Cruz, SS: 0-for-5 R, RBI, .191/.250/.277 Cristian Pache, CF: 3-for-5, R, RBI, SB(3) .260/.288/.300 Juan Yepez, 3B: 0-for-4 RBI, .321/.339/.500 Brett Cumberland, DH: 1-for-2 2R, HR, 2RBI, .171/.341/.343 Lucas Herbert, C: 0-for-4, .143/.167/.229 Joey Wentz, SP: 5.0IP 4H 1ER 1BB 3K, 3.86 ERA Wentz has found his groove in Rome with back-to-back starts at least 5 innings and yielding just 1 run. Against a good Drive team, he needed just 76 pitches to make it through 5 innings while giving up just one extra base-hit (2B). Jon Kennedy pitched 2 scoreless innings and now has 5 scoreless outings to start his 2017 campaign (0.00 ERA, 1BB, 9K, 0.50 WHIP). Rome was actually down 1-0 into the 5th inning when Marcus Mooney lead off with a single. He was then moved up by Randy Ventura, and made his way to 3rd following an Anfernee Seymour single. Mooney scored when Derian Cruz reached on an error by the pitcher. Cristian Pache then singled and scored Seymour to put Rome ahead 2-1, and Juan Yepez hit a sacrifice fly to extend the lead to 3-1 in the 5th. Rome extended their lead in the 6th inning after Anfernee Seymour, again, hit a bases loaded single that scored Brett Cumberland. Rome then tacked on the final two runs via a Brett Cumberland 2R HR that scored Cristian Pache. Brett Cumberland has now reached base in 7 of his last 8 games in which his batting average has risen from .077 to .171. The 21 year old C/DH seems to be dealing with a timing issue, though his timing was just fine today, as he’s struggled a lot with fastballs.