Atlanta Braves Analysis: Q&A with GiraffeNeckMarc

MLB Restart: Who’s hot and who’s not

Question: You talked about some possible breakout teams earlier. Who is your one TRUE breakout team this year that you are confident will be better than they were last year and outperform expectations?

Marc: I’m gonna go between that Diamondbacks and the White Sox. The biggest thing that is going to hold back Arizona is “how good are the Dodgers going to be?”

I think the Diamondbacks are one of the better teams in the National League, but the fact that they’re gonna have to play the Dodgers so often is definitely gonna hurt them because I just don’t think they have a good matchup against the Dodgers.

I think the White Sox are a bit of a safer pick because they weren’t great last year, and they did make a ton of improvements to their team, so I think they’re probably the “Safe Pick,” but my hot pick would be the Diamondbacks.

Question: Who is your underachieving team for this year?

Marc: I’m gonna go to the conventional NL Central, and I’ve got two picks – it’s gonna be the Cubs and the Cardinals.

Now, I don’t think that their record will necessarily be that bad, just because I think the Brewers are not very good, and I think the Pirates are pretty horrible…

But my saying always goes: “If you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse.” And I just don’t see improvements in the Cubs’ or Cardinals’ rosters going into this season where I go “that’s a better team than they had last year.”

And, especially with the Cardinals, Jack Flaherty is great… are you gonna get another Cy Young performance out of him again, cause he kinda carried their pitching staff the second half [of last season], and really took them to the next level. I’m just not confident with their pitching.

And the Cubs… they have the players, and there’s a very, very good chance that they’re gonna come out and play great again. Kris Bryant is a great player, [Javier] Báez, [Anthony Rizzo], [Wilson] Contreras, all those guys.

But their pitching, again, scares the hell outta me. Especially their bullpen – just not a lot of quality arms there, lot of aging guys. They have that young core, which is not really young anymore… I think David Ross is going to be really important to the team.

Like more so than most managers just because I think they were starting to lose faith in Joe Madden’s system a little bit. So I’m interested to see if David Ross comes in and is able to get them back to playing where they should be, or if it’s almost like the Mickey Calloway or Gabe Kapler Effect where [Ross] is just not ready to be that guy yet.

Question: What is your favorite Mets vs. Braves memory of all time?

Marc: Ooo, favorite memory… man, a lot of my Mets vs. Braves memories aren’t good ones.

The first ten years of my life, the Braves won the division every single year, so I just constantly remember Chipper Jones, Andruw Jones, Andrés Galarraga is always a name that I’ll never forget, even though he’s not really a Brave, I will always remember him as a Brave.

Those guys were, like, nightmare fuel for me. And I will never forget the Luis Ayala, pitcher for the Mets, the “Balk-Off,” where he balks in the winning run… there’s not a lot of great memories with the Mets, so it makes sense for me that my favorite memory would be one that’s not a good one.

Question: Who is your favorite Braves player of all time?

Marc: All-time is Andrés Galarraga.

I appreciate Chipper Jones and I respect him as a player. That’s a guy that you love to hate, almost because it’s like, “man, he’s so good, but also, he’s the reason why the Mets weren’t successful for so long.”

I mean, he owned the Mets so much that he named his kid “Shea” after Shea Stadium. That’s awesome. And I think, in his last game against the Mets, the Mets fans cheered for him, that that’s a respectful kind of thing.

But Andrés Galarraga is definitely my all-time guy, just because I think I described him [in one of my previous videos] as being Bowser, almost. He was like this big, old dude who would just crush home runs.

And he had a great name, Galarraga. Everything about him intimidated me and when he would step up to the plate, I was like “alright, he’s hitting a home run, that’s it.

He’s just that good.” For right now [currently], I gotta go Ronald [Acuña]. The dude is just an electric factor. He’s so much fun to watch. I love the bat flips.

I know some fans don’t like that he watched a couple of balls and didn’t run them out and stuff, but you look at his numbers and think, “he can do whatever he wants.” Dude’s an MVP candidate for the next ten years. Let him play.

Go and follow Mark Luino on YouTube here and on Twitter @GiraffeNeckMarc.