#8 Dugie Does It, Braves at Home, A HR Record, Holmes cutter and an Easter Rib Roast

[00:00:01] Happy Easter. Hope you're all having a great day and will have a great day. The Braves had a great day yesterday. Another really nice win and finally a series win as they are guaranteed a series win, taking the first two from the Minnesota Twins. How about a sweep? Let's go ahead and get a little bit greedy. That'd be nice to have right now, but playing well and playing well at home. And it's only seven games, but five and two. And how about this for the Braves? They're hitting.299 at home. That actually leads all of Major League Baseball in batting average at home. So that is certainly a really good sign. Give yourself a little pat on the back. The atmosphere has been incredible. We know the guys love playing in it. We talked about it when they started the season 07 on the road and how nice it was going to be to get back home. There's a reason for that. So there's a really great comfort level and right now the Braves are playing well at home. Alex Verdugo, after an 0 for 5 in his first game, comes back with four hits yesterday. Big hits yesterday. Scored a couple of runs as well after his first two hits that he had. What a nice fit. This has been two games in everything we talked about. The ability to hit four average, nice level swing, putting the ball in play. He's the leadoff hitter right now and will be until Ronald Acuna Jr gets back. I mentioned that yesterday, but this looks really good and a really good fit. And then I got curious, you know, how many Braves have had a four hit game within their first two games with the franchise? We can track that back to 1901. He is the seventh player to do it. So welcome to the organization. With a big four hit day yesterday for Alex Verdugo, it was also a big homecoming for us. Paul Bird, I know y'all loved having him on the broadcast and being back in the ballpark. He was overwhelmed with your responses and everybody that he saw at the field at Truist that we're so excited to see him. First time he and I ever got to do an actual game together, which was really fun and got into some kind of fun casual baseball conversations. And I think we'll even take that a little bit further going forward as we're kind of feeling each other out. But Birdie called me on the way home yesterday, man, he was just so excited to be on the back of the broadcast and for us to have a chance to work together. So it was amazing. Good vibes with Paul Paul Bird. Everybody loves having him around. I do love the story that Brandon shared yesterday. If you missed it, we have a pretty intricate polo selection that we're working right now with the Braves. And not everybody has the. The full set. The full set is 17 different polos that Brandon and I have. And Wylie, I think because we work the most games. Excuse me. Obviously, Brandon works all of them. I'm like 110 or so. Wiley is somewhere in that same neighborhood. So we got the full. The full boat, all 17. It a little bit confusing. Birdie has six. And so BG told him, hey, this is what we're gonna wear the five days of this home stand. And Birdie says, you know, I'm probably gonna mess it up. I'm just gonna keep all six of my shirts in my car. That is typical Paul Bird, but so awesome to have him back. And so far, we've all had the right shirt on. We'll see if that continues throughout the rest of the day. I want to talk a little bit about Chris Sale yesterday. Eight strikeouts. It's hard to say you have a bad outing when you have eight strikeouts, but he was clearly frustrated with the inability to did see his velocity tick down, and he was asked about that after the game, later in the game. And he told Mark Bowman it was just kind of a glitch that he had because he finished his last pitch, even though there was a walk in there, two walks in that inning, he finished at 95 miles an hour. So that's good as far as, you know, what we're looking at from a health standpoint with Chris Sale. But he's fighting himself a little bit. But still, his stuff looks really good. I think he's just struggling to find that consistency that we saw last year throughout an entire outing. But his mentality absolutely blows my mind. First of all, he's really hard on himself, but most driven people are that have that level of success and after games, and he's such a great teammate that it really, really bothers him when he can't get deep into a game and has to put an extra workload on the bullpen. It is clear it's not fake. It is clear that that genuinely bugs him. And you appreciate that as a teammate. And the reputation coming in was really solid. And now we're getting to see it firsthand as he continues to kind of work through some things. I'm still not worried about Chris Sale. The stuff looks sharp. It's just a matter of finding some of that consistency. And like the very first batter of the game 02 count. Good change up little ball off the end of the bat for Byron Bucks and he gets a base hit. Then there's a couple of hard hits and all of a sudden you're down one nothing. So just kind of the way that's going right now for Chris Ale, but I think he will absolutely work through it. I ran across this, that it's not a big deal. It kind of surprised me a little bit though, as far as looking into some trends here with the team. The Braves have allowed a home run in 12 straight games. I'm like, oh, is that a lot? Feels like that might be a lot. And it hasn't felt they necessarily have been allowing a bunch of homers. Right? I mean, I don't know, maybe you feel that way. I didn't feel like it was a problem. [00:04:53] But anyway, that ties a franchise record all time here for the Atlanta Braves. The most consecutive games allowing a home run. So one of my four keys today is going to be keep it in the yard. Let's not break that record again. Doesn't matter as much. I mean, the Braves have won their last two games over those 12 games. They're 6 and 6, so it's not as if they're letting up a bunch of long balls and it's just kind of killing the team. That's not the case, but I found it interesting. So 12 straight games to the home run allowed, that does tie the franchise record. So let's go ahead and put an end to that today. We do have Grant Holmes going. He was great in his last one, like really, really great pitching deep into the game. And something that Darren O'Day had noticed that I missed during that game was the use of his cutter. You go back to his previous six starts, and that's including last year, he had thrown, I believe it was, nine total cutters. Over that time in the game in Toronto, he threw 19 cutters. Now, there was another star last year, the Rockies, in which he had thrown 19 cutters at about the same amount of pitches. But jumps off the page a little bit when you see that drastic of a change. Now, whether that was opponent specific or whether it was how he was feeling that day and what was working, I'm not exactly sure, but let's keep an eye on that one here this afternoon as they take on the Twins for game three with an opportunity for a sweep. Will Grant Holmes be using that cutter as much as he did against the Toronto Blue Jays? I hope you all have a great Easter. I got a rib roast that I'm working on today and since I'm not home because I have to work I got a put that in my wife's hands which she wasn't all that thrilled about. She will eat meat. She does not prefer preparing the meat. So I did everything I possibly could including getting that thing salted and lathered in butter and herbs and everything else and big bold instructions on how to do it including setting the alarm on her phone like three different times when you got to take it out of the fridge to get to room temperature, when do you got to preheat the oven? When do you got to pop it in the oven? So wish me luck because this is only the second time that I've done it and I don't have my hands completely all over this rib roast. But I am excited to to get home after the brave sweep the twins and dig into some prime rib. Hope you all have a great Sunday.