Braves will be 'happy winning that series' with Phillies

0:00Let's talk some braves as the road trip starts. It's nats and then it's fillies, but we got to start with what went down yesterday. Grant McCauley joined this best baseball guy in town and Grant, your assessment on what happened yesterday and that seven to three loss. Yeah, just a couple of things that really went wrong on the pitching side for first Bryce elder and then really Dylan Lee. And I think we've been seeing this in the second half and especially here lately that it Dylan Lee's just not getting away with anything. He kind of started to look into his game logs and kind of see what exactly is going on. Has he been overused or you know, he lost velocity. Is he just not as deceptive as he was before? I don't know. It could be a combination of a few of those things at different times, but velocity seemed to be there. I don't think that Walt Weiss has been going to him too often. He's been going to him in a leverage spots because it played a lot of close games. But Dylan Lee indicated to reporters after the game last night that he believes that pitch tipping could be a possibility. So Mark Bowman wrote a little bit about that today on MLB.com. And you know, over the course of a long season, it went team studying the

1:04day in and day out. I'm inclined to believe that could be a play. But every time you get hard, it doesn't mean you were necessarily tipping pitches. So we'll see how all of that kind of shakes out. But that was kind of the moment right there is the Giants turned that six sending into a big frame for them and they were able to win a baseball game pretty handily just based on the fact that the braze bullpen and to a lesser extent rice elder were struggling to get the out they needed there. But the offense was also very quiet, which you wouldn't expect as a team like the Giants had to fly across country to play this one game in Atlanta and then head on their way to their next stop. So you were hoping to take advantage of that matchup. It just flat out didn't happen. Yeah, we talked about it earlier and just, you know, keeping the balls in the park is an important part of the process, certainly. But and then I just looked at the, at your point about the Bowman article, the pre-all star break and then post all star break is just eye popping for, and less than, and now the Giants, they by the way, the Giants are a kryptonite, which is strange because they're not going anywhere. Yeah. Well, one of the odds that the braze would go five and one against the Los Angeles Dodgers and one in five against the San Francisco Giants this year. But that's the reality

2:08we're living in. It is, it's Grant McCauley guys joining us here on Dukes and Bell. So what that said, this road trip becomes really important. How are you viewing this? I don't want to dismiss the nets, but you got to handle that. But I think this Philly series, man, Grant, have a cushion, right? Yeah. Like I don't want to say there's reasons on the line. As far as the division is concerned, but you know, you go sweep them. I think it's, it's done. That's where I'm at. You don't and they sweep us for whatever reason. All of a sudden now things get really interesting. How are you viewing this? Yeah. Well, I think it let's take sweep off the table, right? I mean, you'd be happy with winning that series. And whereas the braves would benefit from that, the Philly's wouldn't quite get enough out of that because two of those games would cancel each other out. So ultimately, they'd only pick up one game in the standings if they take two out of three. Now, to your point, if they take all three, we can all do the math. That's three games that would be cut off that lead. So that would tighten things up really quick in that divisional race. So the braves obviously want to avoid the sweep. That goes without saying.

3:09You want to avoid as many losses as you can, which is why we need to point at the nationals and say, well, let's go ahead and try to win those games. The national pitching staff is one of the worst in baseball. On the flip side, they do score a lot of runs, but James Wood is also on the injured list. So they don't have to worry about his 30 plus home or bat there. So, you know, it's kind of, you know, like you said, you don't want to overlook anybody, but it's hard not to focus on knowing that there are these seven September meetings between the braves and the Phillies and whether it's a four game lead or a five game lead or a three game lead, you're going to be feeling kind of that playoff atmosphere that we were seeing it through as park when the Dodgers had rolled into town. So can the braves continue to play well in those kinds of games? I think that they've shown that they can play a very complete game. They've got clutch hits. They've been getting great starting pitching really in the entire second half, but especially since the trade deadline and can the bullpen continue to do its job, those are the things that the braves will have to do is kind of everything in concert right now because the offense, you know, it's been a while since they just blew somebody out.

4:12It'd be nice if they wanted to tune up the band and do it a couple of times. Washington and get right and roll into Philadelphia a little bit of momentum offensively speaking, but it's been the completeness of the braves game that has been their greatest asset here, especially in that seven game winning streak, which was punctuated by a sweep of the LA Dodgers and Chris sales masterful performance in a one nothing game. Those the kind of games that even a week or two before, you weren't sure that the braves could win those. Right. Again, it's been it's been some as a roller coaster season. It's a long season, but certainly the Dodgers and that just the way they looked against the Dodgers to in a playoff atmosphere, that's why even if we do get the fillies, you know, I don't want I just want I don't want to be in that best of three grand. That's the thing. That's why I think we all agree. You just got to be that number two seat if you can't get to the brewers. By the way, you mentioned the bullpen. Suarez explained the roster moves. Is it retroactive? How does it all work and when do we expect to see Suarez? Yeah, all of those kinds of things when you transfer from a 10 or a 15 day IEL sent to a 60 day stint. Typically, you know, because you don't want to put somebody on the 60 day immediately if they have a chance of coming back soon,

5:14there's really nothing, you know, beyond just trying to give yourself a flexibility to have somebody come back in less than 60 days by putting them on the 10 or 15, even if you know they're going to be out for a while. But when you need a 40 man spot, which the braves did to make their September moves to bring up Blake Berkhalter, who's a very exciting relief arm. We'll see how the braves want to utilize him. He's active as of today. And he brought back how farmer as well. They're going to need another roster spot at some point for Randall Del Lopez, but it sounds like that's at least a week away. He's going to make another start in Guinet. But that's totally procedural for Robert Suarez, who's been out since the end of June to just move to the 60 day IEL and opens up a 40 man spot. And when it's time to activate him, they'll just have to make a corresponding move and send somebody out. So nothing to be alarmed about. But I would tell you right now, as we sit here on September the first, I would assume and I would imagine I'll do better than assuming. I'll imagine that it's about a three week window that we're looking at for Suarez to get really ramped up. And we could just be looking at that last few games or maybe last series of the season because I don't think

6:16they're going to rush him through this rehab process. And he's still got to throw bullpins and face live hitters and then go out and make some appearances. All right. I want to have a little nerd conversation with you here because I want to get into in depth a little bit in the Tyler Malley lowest ERA of any pitcher acquired at the deadlion 1.48. He's been great. Why? What is the pitch now that he's relying on? Has it changed and he came over? Has he added something? Yeah, I think he's actually simplified his, his arsenal. If I understood kind of looking at the pitch mix with the giants and looking at it now, I think he's been a little bit more fastball reliant too, which yeah, everybody you have to establish your fastball pretty much everything's going to live off of that, but certain guys they specialize with getting most of their swing and miss on other counts, but he ends a lot of strikeouts with fastballs and he's putting it up there about 94 miles an hour. So it's not like he's touching triple digits and really overpowering hitters, but the way that he is able to sequence and attack hitters, I think they just don't see him

7:18well. And that's the thing that is a benefit for certain pitchers that they're just a little bit more deceptive than others. And I think that the braze looked at him and so he's having some success. He's ditched some things and been able to incorporate different pitch usage. You know, even if it's just a percentage, the amount of times that you're throwing something that they've recognized, hey, this is more beneficial to him. Well, let's try it this way. I mean, Bryce Elder was telling me like last week, I started throwing a different change up playing catch one day and thought, man, this feels better than the one I'm using in games. And Jeremy Hector just said, use it. Take it out there. The worst thing that can happen is you've switched back to the old one at some point, but find out if it works for you. And if it does, we're not afraid to try that. And I think that's where Jeremy Hector really comes in and I had an in-depth conversation with him. You can find that in the archives on from the diamond. You can find it on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcast, but he sat down with me and really went through how they game plan for each person individually on a daily basis, make adjustments and do the kind of things that you're asking about. And it's fascinating because you've got 13 different projects at any given time. And that

8:22does include Chris sale because they did some things in the spring that they believe helps Chris sale find this a little bit of extra velocity at 37 years old. So everybody all the time is trying to get that much better. Is there like a Leo Mazzoni Honorary Award for pitching coaches? That there should be. Hey, by the way, Graham McCullough before we wrap, Hassan Kim in the lineup tonight in Washington. He's had a few hits. So I mean, we talked about we asked a question, Alex and Thapel is yesterday about, you know, like you're ever going to stick with him and he explained it all. It's on the Odyssey app. So are we going to continue to see like every other day is trying to get him in a rhythm with us on Kim? Yeah. I think so. I mean, you can't give a better answer than Alex and Thapel is did because he knows exactly what they're trying to do with their roster spots and, you know, Hassan Kim and deciding that look, we've spent the $20 million and that's not necessarily the problem. And he did bring up a great point with, look, we felt like at one point that Dylan Dodd was a better option left handed than Aaron Bummer was and who's on the team now and who was getting paid just to kind of go try to find another job. And the answer was Aaron Bummer

9:25is the guy who wouldn't had to find other work. But to bring it back to Hassan Kim, I do think that he's done a ton of work to kind of get himself ready for whenever that opportunity came. The Dodgers moment was chef's kiss timing for him and for the braves. But, you know, he's going to have to continue to play well and look good in in these games and in these opportunities to earn more. You got to obviously all these D.H.ing today, Mauricio DuBon's playing second base that does open up short stuff for Hassan Kim and I do think that Walt Lies wants to move Mauricio around and try to give some guys some days off here and they are down the stretch so that everybody's going to feeling like they're ready to play their best baseball in October and not like they've been pushed to the limit with no days off because the schedule is a little bit unrelenting that you had to sacrifice an off day yesterday, for example, to play the Giants in a makeup game. So a lot of different things have been thrown at him. But I do think that with Hassan Kim, just try to figure out what you got here. And if he can provide a spark at a good time, you'll be forgetting all about April, May, June, July and all the way into August to be able to come through it some big times.

10:25Good stuff, Grant. We'll see what happens tonight and we'll talk to you tomorrow and Porton Road Trip for the Braves here as we start September. Thank you again. Look forward to it. Thanks, guys.