Atlanta Braves Conspiratorial Morning Chop
The Honeymoon is over â Snitkerâs early success with Replay Review was merely a tease. Now weâre back to the league not wanting the Braves to win.
Twenty challenges from the Braves with six successes. The Braves are now 26-51, so theyâve played 77 games. That means two replay challenges each week.
League-wide, managerâs are successful in nearly 50% of reviews (49.4%). Itâs a 32.2% rate when the umpires themselves ask for a review. Fredi Gonzalez had a brutal time â his own requests were rejected routinely (the Braves were the last team in baseball to have an overturned call) and even now, they are only up to a 30% rate â even as others are over-turned despite less evidence than weâve seen in plays like last nightâs 9th inning fiasco.
The past week or so has been pretty vicious. A run scoring at home that wasnât (you couldnât actually see the feet in the dust, but home plate hadnât moved â it was under those feet) and an infield hit that wasnât (challenge decided/rejected in about 30 seconds with the ball still not secured in the glove).
Extrapolating that inning⊠If Ender Inciarte had been a 10th of a second faster, then heâd have been on first base ahead of Freddie Freemanâs triple. A sacrifice fly later would have tied the game up in the 9th.
Didnât happen.
Ender? I guess youâre just gonna have to put the ball in the outfield. This thing of trying to beat out infield hits isnât working for you.
Maybe MLB really is out to get us. Somebody forget to contribute to the Umpiresâ benevolence society?
All that said: starting to wonder if thereâs something up with Arodys Vizcaino. Heâs definitely been scuffling over the past couple of weeks. Thanks to an error (an understandable one by Erick Aybar, it turns out â he actually had no play), he was only charged with 1 of the 3 Cleveland runs last night, but his control is eluding him. Something to monitor.
Next: Still Checking out South Floria