Tag Archives: Atlanta Braves

MLB Breakout Predictions: NL East

Leave a reply

Caption: NL East Teams

by Ryan Harless

Ryan Harless is a third-year undergraduate at BGSU from Hillsboro, Ohio. He is majoring in Sport Management with a Journalism Minor. Baseball and golf at all levels are his primary interests but he is also interested in combat sports, hockey, basketball, and football.

February 25, 2023

Welcome to part three of six of my series predicting the breakout stars for each and every Major League Baseball (MLB) team for 2023. In this series, I have already discussed the Central Divisions for both leagues which brings us to today’s topic, the National League East.

Finishing in last place in 2022 were the Washington Nationals. This team won the World Series just three seasons ago, well not this exact team as the roster has almost entirely turned over. However, this team has a pretty high ceiling with all of the young talent they obtained through trading their top stars.

My pick for their breakout star is MacKenzie Gore. Gore was the third player picked in the 2017 MLB Draft and was one of the major pieces in the trade sending Juan Soto to the Padres. Although his career is six years old to this point, Gore is only 23 at the time of writing as he was drafted right out of high school.

Gore has only thrown 70 innings at the Major League level and while he struggled with an ERA of 4.50, he punched out 72 batters. Through 250.1 innings in the minors, Gore notched 320 strikeouts while maintaining a stellar 2.91 ERA.

I predict that this season Gore will start to reach his potential and look for him to throw 150 innings with 200 strikeouts and a 3.40 ERA. MacKenzie should be a viable option for the ace of this Nationals’ staff.

The fourth-place finishers in the NL East last year were the Miami Marlins. This is another young team with a lot of potential over the next few years. There are a few different potential candidates for their breakout star.

Take, for instance, the cover of next year’s MLB The Show videogame Jazz Chisholm Jr., or even the returning Sixto Sanchez, but I think the player who will steal the spotlight is going to be Edward Cabrera.

MLB The Show fans already know what I am talking about with Cabrera as he has terrorized players for the past two years with his pitch variety and velocity.

In real life, Cabrera has a sinker that sits around 96-98 with lots of arm side movement as well as his 12-6 curveball that keeps hitters guessing. If everything goes right with players getting healthy, the Marlins could have Sandy Alcantara, Edward Cabrera, and Sixto Sanchez as the top three of their starting rotation.

I look for Cabrera to go 14-6 with an ERA under 3.00 and throwing at least 150 innings.

The next in the standings in the NL East last season were the Philadelphia Phillies. The Phillies really don’t have a lot of super intriguing young players on their team this season after their World Series visit. I’m looking for a relative newcomer to be their breakout star.

I think that Brandon Marsh will have a great season where he can finally shine. Marsh has spent his last two seasons sharing the outfield with stars like Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani. Now he gets the chance to shine in an outfield with Nicholas Castellanos and Kyle Schwarber.

I think if he is able to get his feet under him and play a lot of games again this year, he can become a very well-rounded outfielder. He is great defensively with his .990 fielding percentage, and will only improve with age.

I look for Marsh to bat .270 with 130+ hits as well as being one of the top defensive outfielders in the National League. His defensive play will really stand out being in an outfield with Castellanos and Schwarber who are both below average fielders.

Finishing second in the NL East last year were the New York Mets. The Mets spent a lot of money this offseason trying to make their way back to a World Series berth spending $500 million on free agents.

One of the Mets’ big acquisitions was star Japanese pitcher Kodai Senga, who I think will be a breakout star for the Mets. Over his 11 seasons in professional baseball, Senga has a staggering 2.42 ERA and a record of 104-51 with 1340.2 innings pitched. He has averaged almost 122 innings pitched during his time with the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks.

Japanese pitchers often struggle when they come to the MLB due to the change in the size and feel of the ball being different than it is in Japan, but I expect Senga to make an impact from the start.

I anticipate that Senga will throw 100 innings with an ERA around 2.75 and 125+ punch-outs in his first season in the MLB. I look for him to put up even better numbers than Masahiro Tanaka even though Senga is about five years older than Tanaka was when he entered the league.

Finally, this brings us to the 2022 NL East champions, the Atlanta Braves. I wouldn’t really say that this player will breakout this year as he won the ‘2022 Rookie of The Year award.’ But I still look for Michael Harris to continue his exciting play and keep improving on his already impressive numbers.

Last year, Harris slashed .297/.339/.514 with 19 homers and 123 total hits. Harris only played in 114 games so averaging more than a hit a game as a rookie in the very competitive NL East, is a feat in and of itself.

I look for more of the same from Harris in 2023. If he can get his strikeouts down and walks up, I’m predicting a .300/.400/.500 slash line from him. That, along with 25 homers and easily 20+ stolen bases, and with a little bit of good fortune, I think he can put up 30/30 years for many seasons to come.

Next time, I’ll be talking about the ever chippy AL East so be sure to check back in a few days for that!

Is Acuna Jr.’s Hustle a Problem for the Braves and Baseball?

Leave a reply

By Griffin Olah

October 13, 2019

Griffin is a second-year undergraduate BGSU student from North Ridgeville, Ohio. He is a Sport Management major and a Spanish minor. His primary sports interests are baseball and football, both collegiate and professional, but he is also interested in basketball, MMA, boxing and hockey.

Game 1 of the NLDS between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Atlanta Braves was entering the bottom of the 7th with the Braves up 3-1. The first game is always among the most important, and the Braves had the ability to add to their lead. Ronald Acuna Jr., the Braves’ young phenom and leadoff hitter, stepped into the box. He worked the count to 2-2, and then unleashed a long fly ball off of Cardinals pitcher John Brebbia. The ball flew down the right field line, nearly leaving the confines of Sun Trust Park and extending the Braves’ lead. However, it came up short and careened off the wall. 

After watching the ball, Braves fans willing it to stay in the air and go over the wall, and seeing it land just short of a home run, attention turned to the bases. There, Ronald Acuna Jr was inexplicably on first base. After launching a ball 331 feet down the right field line, Acuna was stranded at first. He moved to second on a groundout by 2B Ozzie Albies, and was then doubled up after a Josh Donaldson lineout. 

It’s easy to see that something went wrong on the base paths with Acuna, though. While the double play was bad, it was almost inevitable. The real issue was his single to lead off. Acuna hyped up his long ball, as usual, but this time it came up short of the fence. Acuna stood in the box, his bat raised to the sky in celebration, for two seconds as the ball was in the air. After that, he jogged to first only for Cardinals OF Dexter Fowler to play the ball off the wall and fire it into the infield. If Acuna came running out of the box as soon as the ball left his bat, he would have easily made it to second. He would have then moved to third on Albies’s groundout and the double play would have been much more difficult to turn. Acuna could have scored. 

After the game, the Braves were understandably frustrated. Veteran 1B Freddie Freeman pointed back to when Acuna was benched in August for not running out a foul ball, believing you only need to “have that conversation once” (West, 2019, para. 4). Albies believes that Acuna “probably scores that inning if he’s on second” (West, 2019, para. 8). Acuna was a problem for the Braves in that moment, but what about the rest of baseball?

Media attention on Game 1 revolved around Acuna’s lack of hustle, much like it did last season with Manny Machado’s lack of hustle and possibly dirty play in the playoffs for the Los Angeles Dodgers. This time, however, the actions of Acuna are perceived as more representative of the entire league. New outlets point to Acuna’s hustle as evidence that “the game has changed” into something selfish and immodest (Mushnick, 2019, para. 10). While people in the game – GM’s, managers, coaches, players – have excused the actions of players like Machado and Acuna, the media feeds off of it and turns it into something it’s not. Is Acuna not hustling a problem? Sure, he might have cost the Braves a key run that would have factored heavily in the 7-6 loss. Is Acuna’s hustle emblematic of baseball as a whole falling into bat flipping ruin? No, it probably isn’t.

The traditional media – old players, managers, and GMs sitting in broadcast booths – like to talk about how baseball as a whole is changing into some unwatchable mess of strikeouts, home runs and bat flips. Former pitcher Goose Gossage said of the sport “it’s not baseball. It’s unwatchable,” (Nightengale, 2019, para. 7). Hit king Pete Rose said the game has turned into a “home run derby every night” (Nightengale, 2019, para. 14). And former manager Lou Piniella derided the shift, claiming he “won a few games without having to shift” (Nightengale, 2019, para. 14). While that is up for debate and interpretation of each person watching the game, Acuna’s hustle is not some overarching issue like the media is making it out to be. It’s a key mistake in an important playoff game, but not some egregious pattern of error that needs to be corrected. With this miscue, the focus on Ronald Acuna Jr. has shifted from his near 40-40 season and his 1.579 OPS in the Postseason so far to his inability to hustle and his selfishness (“Baseball Reference,” 2019). Acuna put together an amazing season, shouldn’t the focus be on marketing one of the league’s best young players instead of his relatively small faults?

References

Baseball Reference. (2019). Ronald Acuna Jr. Stats. Baseball Reference. Retrieved from https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/a/acunaro01.shtml

Mushnick, P. (2019, October 5). Braves’ Ronald Acuna is doing his part in ruining baseball. New York Post. Retrieved from https://nypost.com/2019/10/05/braves-ronald-acuna-is-doing-his-part-in-ruining-baseball/

Nightengale, B. (2019, August 19). MLB lifers decry the state of the modern baseball: ‘Unwatchable’. USA Today. Retrieved from https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/columnist/bob-nightengale/2019/08/19/mlb-baseballs-old-timers-decry-state-modern-game/2047025001/.

West, J. (2019, October 4). Braves critical of Ronald Acuna Jr. for lack of hustle in NLDS Game 1 loss. Sports Illustrated. Retrieved from https://www.si.com/mlb/2019/10/04/ronald-acuna-jr-lack-hustle-braves

Braves Ban “Screaming Indian” Hat

Leave a reply

BY LORI RAUDIO

In December, the batting practice caps for  MLB teams were unveiled on the website Uni Watch. Most teams did simple variations on their logos and colors, but the Atlanta Braves’ new logo caused some controversy. The team chose to feature a “screaming Indian,” which many people felt was offensive to Native Americans.

This logo was retired in 1989, along with mascot “Chief Noc-a-Homa,” who wore traditional Native American tribal dress and paint. It is unclear what made the Braves want to bring back the logo, but they have since changed their position. After two months of controversy, the Braves announced they will use the traditional Atlanta “A,” rather than the Native American caricature.

Many members of the media spoke out in support of the Brave’s decision including national baseball writer, Craig Calcaterra. He wrote, “We’ll never know if public pressure and the negative reaction following the leak of the other design had anything to do with the choice, but it’s good to see that the Braves made the right choice.”

While this may be a step in the right direction, there are still many issues surrounding the use of Native American names and caricatures in sports. The Cleveland Indians are a team frequently in hot water for their mascot. They recently released new merchandise with an old logo of Chief Wahoo featuring a stereotypical Native American image with a large hooked noise and feathers.

The Washington Redskins, Kansas City Chiefs, and Chicago Blackhawks are just a few more examples of schools that use Native American mascots and logos. There has been debate over renaming these teams for many years, but so far no action has been taken. The one exception is the Florida State Seminoles, who were given permission by the Seminole Tribe to use their name.

The Atlanta Braves made the right decision, and it will be interesting to see if their decision will start a trend. There is no reason to disrespect a group of people by using offensive logos and mocking their traditions.