We need a new manager!!!

M

murph3

Creepy Lurking Stalker
Cox would have been thrown out of the game last night. I saw some bad calls that went Kershaw's way. Yes, he is a great pitcher, but he doesn't need help from the umpires. What frustrated me the most was the quick strike call from the ump at 3B on the check swing. Freddie just stood there. Nothing to stir us up. The players looked dead and had no enthusiasm. He needs to pump these guys up. Cox used to get thrown out of games just to light a fire. Sometimes it worked. At least the players knew their skipper was behind them.

Now to Wren!! The owners let him spend a little and look what we have. Who would have known the Uptons would suck so bad together, epsecially BJ who we are stuck with. He will be the new SVOD. I am seriously worried. Will they let him spend money anymore. We have decisions to make on McCann, need to move Uggla, and have a shell of a pitching rotation IMO.

What say you guys?
 
I agree Fredi should have raised some hell on the check swings, and he should have PH for Medlen with Simmons on 2nd after Medlen showed he didn't "have it" last night. However, Fredi is not the reason the Braves lost. The Dodgers completely, and utterly, trounced the Braves last night in every facet of the game.

While I think Wren clearly bid against himself and overpaid for BJ, nobody could have predicted he would suck this badly. Players with elite skillsets like BJ (and make no mistake, he is still an elite specimen) don't just lose it at the age of 29....ever. Which is what makes BJ's 2013 so shocking.
 
I've been very vocal about how much I dislike Fredi but last night is definitely not on him. Yes our defensive positioning was very questionable but that's more an overall coaching staff problem. Our issue is the same issue the Braves have had for about 15 years. We crumble under the pressure. No team will ever win in the playoffs constantly making errors and mental mistakes.
 
IF Wren and Co had known that Gattis would produce as he has would there have been a need to commit $3M to Laird.
If Wren and Co had known that Gattis would produce as he has would there have been a need to trade for J Upton.
If OFlAY and Venters had not gotten injured would we need Walden.
If Hudson hadnt gotten injured who would have started last nite.
If Uggla or BJ had performed JUST one game over the course of the season as they are capable, would we be playing LA or Pittsburgh
If Fredi had started anyone not named Loe would we have had a better chance of dodging the Dodgers in the first round.

Lots of questions ran thru my mind after mid-nite.
These are just a few.
 
emk418 said:
I've been very vocal about how much I dislike Fredi but last night is definitely not on him. Yes our defensive positioning was very questionable but that's more an overall coaching staff problem. Our issue is the same issue the Braves have had for about 15 years. We crumble under the pressure. No team will ever win in the playoffs constantly making errors and mental mistakes.
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Not making excuses but you cant overlook the extreme youth on this team.
 
I would have probably pinch hit for Medlen in the fourth. We have seven relievers and an off day Saturday. Might as well use them. As it was we ended using one per inning from the fifth inning on. None of them threw over 20 pitches so they should all be available tonight.
 
I go back and forth on Fredi, but I think Wren's decisions are on the verge of haunting this team for the next half decade.
 
There is youth all over the game and all over this postseason. We don't have as many vets as the other teams do, but I didn't see the Dodger players who had never played in postseason making mistakes last night.

I don't think anyone could reasonably put blame for last night on Fredi, I just want some consistency out of him. The roster choices he made for this series were not consistent with how they were used last night. Maybe it's him being a relatively young manager, and he'll figure more things out eventually. Then again, it is his seventh season.
 
There's always something to grumble about but the fact is Wren and Fredi have a pretty good team on the field and we'd be darn near unstoppable if Uggla and BJ hadn't decided to turn into pumpkins.
 
Fire Fredi? In my opinion, Fredi is doing the best with what he's got.

It takes a lot of balls to bench two veteran players making $15 mill/yr. It takes more to take one of those players and leave him off the playoff roster and replace him with a player that is best know for his Tim Kurkjian impressions. It takes a helluva lot of baseball sense to take the guy (Heyward) who has been projected to be your #3 hitter and move him to lead off.

Blame Fredi all you want, just remember he currently has a left fielder playing right field, a right fielder playing centerfield, a DH playing left field, a AAAA second baseman, a bench that can't put a ball in play, and with the exception of Freddie Garcia, who was in the scrap pile, what may possibly be one of the least experienced postseason rotations the Braves have had since Glavine, Smoltz and Avery took the mound in the Fall of 91. A far cry from what his roster looked like on opening day.

I don't know if the Braves will win this series, heck, I don't know if they'll even win a game, but I do feel confident in knowing that if they go three and out, it will have a lot more to do with the players on the field and not Fredi's managing.

Be thankful for the Division Championship and be thankful that we have a manager that has been able to take a team that with the exception of two 10 + games win streaks was more or less a .500 team all season and win that division. To me, that sounds a lot like Bobby Cox.
 
nsacpi said:
I would have probably pinch hit for Medlen in the fourth. We have seven relievers and an off day Saturday. Might as well use them. As it was we ended using one per inning from the fifth inning on. None of them threw over 20 pitches so they should all be available tonight.
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If I remember correctly, Medlen came up in the 3rd after just allowing a 2 run bomb to AGon to put the Braves down 0-4. Simmons led off the bottom of the 3rd with a walk, and then moved to second on a wild pitch. EJ should have bunted him to 3rd, and then Laird or Reed allowed a chance to drive in the first run of the game. That would have gotten the Braves back in the game early in the game, and maybe settled the whole team down a bit when they were clearly playing with the deer in headlights look.

Instead, EJ predictably grounded out, Medlen predictably K'd, and Heyward was again carved up by Kershaw for the second straight AB. Medlen then went on to give up another run in the 4th, and was done after 4+ IP.

So why in the **** was Medlen allowed to hit when it was blatantly obvious he wasn't going to get it done on the mound last night? Why in the hell did they pass up the opportunity to scratch a run accross against Kershaw in the NLDS?

I stressed all year the difference between scoring runs in the regular season vs scoring runs in the postseason off a guy like Kershaw. I blabbered on and on about how all runs scored are NOT created equally, and why that assumption is one of the main problems with stathead thinking.

Why am I the only one that seems to understand these concepts?
 
Also, I don't think Wren can be blamed for BJ. If he had been able to give us anything remotely close to what he did just in 2012, we would probably have 100+ wins just off that. Much like if Uggla had been able to go on one of his extended tears. Look at the other alternatives to signing BJ. We had nothing in the system. Schafer wouldn't have worked as the everyday CF as we now know. Bourn wasn't worth the years and money. I made a case for Victorino from the outset, but knew he'd get a little too much. Maybe we could have acquired Span, but eh. Revere was hurt all season. Am I leaving anyone else out that isn't strictly a 4th OF type?

Wren puts a good team on paper out there consistently within the constraints he has. If we had ownership worth a flying ****, we could have had Greinke out there last night against Kershaw potentially.
 
Enscheff said:
If I remember correctly, Medlen came up in the 3rd after just allowing a 2 run bomb to AGon to put the Braves down 0-4. Simmons led off the bottom of the 3rd with a walk, and then moved to second on a wild pitch. EJ should have bunted him to 3rd, and then Laird or Reed allowed a chance to drive in the first run of the game. That would have gotten the Braves back in the game early in the game, and maybe settled the whole team down a bit when they were clearly playing with the deer in headlights look.

Instead, EJ predictably grounded out, Medlen predictably K'd, and Heyward was again carved up by Kershaw for the second straight AB. Medlen then went on to give up another run in the 4th, and was done after 4+ IP.

So why in the **** was Medlen allowed to hit when it was blatantly obvious he wasn't going to get it done on the mound last night? Why in the hell did they pass up the opportunity to scratch a run accross against Kershaw in the NLDS?

I stressed all year the difference between scoring runs in the regular season vs scoring runs in the postseason off a guy like Kershaw. I blabbered on and on about how all runs scored are NOT created equally, and why that assumption is one of the main problems with stathead thinking.

Why am I the only one that seems to understand these concepts?
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I also don't understand why we allowed Ellis to hit with Kershaw on deck there in the second. Regular season fine, but postseason no. And then pitching to Gonzalez was absurd.

Also, I know you don't want to do a whole lot of tinkering in the playoffs, but why couldn't we have tried someone else leadoff last night if Heyward was going to be that horrible against the dominant lefty?
 
You guys kill me. We weren't even supposed to win our division this year, and look what we did? We humiliated the Nats and finished without Hudson, or Heyward for that matter.

It's a YOUNG TEAM.

How has Wren made decisions that haunt us? Could we have REALLY known Our most expensive players would be duds?

If the Braves didn't, you didn't either.
 
bravesnumberone said:
I also don't understand why we allowed Ellis to hit with Kershaw on deck there in the second. Regular season fine, but postseason no. And then pitching to Gonzalez was absurd.

Also, I know you don't want to do a whole lot of tinkering in the playoffs, but why couldn't we have tried someone else leadoff last night if Heyward was going to be that horrible against the dominant lefty?
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I agree 100% on the Ellis and AGon statements. The game was pretty much completely mismanaged.

However, there really wasn't another option other than Heyward to leadoff. We all should have known he would struggle against Kershaw, but I don't think anyone could have predicted Heyward was going to be quite that hopeless against him.
 
Enscheff said:
I agree 100% on the Ellis and AGon statements. The game was pretty much completely mismanaged.

However, there really wasn't another option other than Heyward to leadoff. We all should have known he would struggle against Kershaw, but I don't think anyone could have predicted Heyward was going to be quite that hopeless against him.
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Yeah I didn't really either. I just thought maybe since Justin had some extensive experience, we could have tried him there. Work him, maybe get on base and let Heyward bunt if nothing else.
 
jdunn said:
Fire Fredi? In my opinion, Fredi is doing the best with what he's got.

It takes a lot of balls to bench two veteran players making $15 mill/yr. It takes more to take one of those players and leave him off the playoff roster and replace him with a player that is best know for his Tim Kurkjian impressions. It takes a helluva lot of baseball sense to take the guy (Heyward) who has been projected to be your #3 hitter and move him to lead off.

Blame Fredi all you want, just remember he currently has a left fielder playing right field, a right fielder playing centerfield, a DH playing left field, a AAAA second baseman, a bench that can't put a ball in play, and with the exception of Freddie Garcia, who was in the scrap pile, what may possibly be one of the least experienced postseason rotations the Braves have had since Glavine, Smoltz and Avery took the mound in the Fall of 91. A far cry from what his roster looked like on opening day.

I don't know if the Braves will win this series, heck, I don't know if they'll even win a game, but I do feel confident in knowing that if they go three and out, it will have a lot more to do with the players on the field and not Fredi's managing.

Be thankful for the Division Championship and be thankful that we have a manager that has been able to take a team that with the exception of two 10 + games win streaks was more or less a .500 team all season and win that division. To me, that sounds a lot like Bobby Cox.
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+1.
 
mossy said:
You guys kill me. We weren't even supposed to win our division this year, and look what we did? We humiliated the Nats and finished without Hudson, or Heyward for that matter.

It's a YOUNG TEAM.

How has Wren made decisions that haunt us? Could we have REALLY known Our most expensive players would be duds?

If the Braves didn't, you didn't either.
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If you are going to be a cost-conscious team, you don't sign a guy who is going to likely trend down to a four-year extension at $13 million per year. Uggla has his strengths, but athleticism isn't one of them and those guys--like Rob Deer and Gorman Thomas before him--tend to fall off the table. I always doubted that we were going to get full value from the Uggla contract and if you are in the budget situation we are in (supposedly) you have to avoid contracts like that one. As for Upton, Wren offered him a contract that was above his market value (or at least that is what most insiders say).

Sorry, I'm just not a Wren guy. I worry that the same thing will happen here that happened to him in Baltimore. Granted, Angelos meddled, but Wren didn't do a great job there either.
 
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