The Morning Shift on 92.9 The Game

Orlando Arcia's All-Star season last year is starting to look like a fluke

The Morning Shift crew continues the opening hour by continuing to react to the Braves’ 4-2 loss to the San Francisco Giants last night, previewing the Braves’ big series against their division rival Phillies that starts tonight, and discussing how signing Orlando Arcia and not Dansby Swanson might’ve been a mistake.

Duration:: 12m
Broadcast on:: 05 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Now, with the MLB app, you can get baseball your way. Pick your favorite team, your favorite players, and get customized highlights, stories, and breaking news right on your home feed. Follow the action with Game Tip, where 3D replays add another dimension. Plus, notifications can keep you connected to every pinch, every hit, every game, the MLB app. Baseball your way. Download it now for free from the App Store or Google Play. Blackout, another restriction supply, major league baseball tray parts used with permission. Well, gentlemen, we got to do this because Mike Johnson, has he's prone to do. Oh, he's a stat. He's a stat geek. Hit a lady. He said a number that blew him away. What was said number? What say you, sir? 27. All right, that's the number. All right, 27. I got to give credit to Brad Roland because I was listening to him last night, talk about this. And I was, I was like, you're a big, Brad Roland guy. He liked Brad. He liked Brad. He liked Brad Roland. He knows his stuff, man. I was listening to Brad say this, and he's, he drops this stat right here. All right, the Braves, 27 straight games dating all the way back to August, I mean, I'm sorry, April 17th, 27 straight games. They have lost when their opponents have scored four runs. Yes. When their opponents have scored four runs, four runs. I'm not talking about eight runs, nothing about nine. Not talking about 12, four runs. They've lost every single time when their opponents have scored four runs in the last 27. Yeah, the last time they beat the Astros five to four. That's the time they want to game when they call it. That'll make you vomit. That's, that's, that shows you right there. Well, that shows you that anybody want, if you have anyone standing here and telling you why that their rotation is a weak spot and it's an issue, you need to tell them that they don't watch the game or they need to re uh, they need to re up their talking points because they're from 2022. That's what you need to tell them because the hitting has been the number one thing. And look, we talked about it, Rob, uh, on Wednesday, right now it is easy to look at the back end of this line up and say, Oh, this is not good enough because it's not because, you know, Arcea has, when he's and he's not been good right now, he's still out with his tooth issue. And then you've got, um, Adam DeValle doing whatever he's doing and with Michael Harris being out and, and, and, and so Cal, it's Calnick and a couple of guys on each side of him and it's not very good right now. Calnick's like the most energetic feisty gal in this entire roster. It seems like they're sleepwalking through the season. You know what he is? He's a, he's a jock Peterson type personality. Well, here's, here's how I look at that though. He wasn't here last year. And it feels like he's the guy in the lineup that feels against something to prove. Yeah. He does. You know, everything to prove. He's not riding the field. He was a high draft pick. And it was kind of, Oh dude, he was, I mean, he was, I, I, I told the story of a million times on here. I drafted him in fantasy baseball when he was in minor league. When he was in the minor leagues, that's how good he was. And I think when you look at it, Jared Calnick is not riding the coattails of what happened here last year. He's saying, dude, I got to go out and prove to, I need to be a part of this team. Well, Chris cells are the same thing if you want to go there. Yeah. No, I agree. And so is Renato Lopez. So is a grant homes. Oh my gosh. He's been so good. The, the, the, him coming in for Charlie and the sixth thing last night and getting those two outs was massive. And he went into another two innings, I think, after that, I want to see how they responded this series. Because I think this series could tell you a lot about the mentality of this team. Yeah. I don't think it's going to prove the ultimate in game. Because like I said, three years ago, this is a team that had some acquisitions. They go on a run in August and scratching claw their way to 500. And since they were so battle hardened, they were ready for the post season. Yeah. What's going to happen this year? What are the, is it going to be Cody Bellinger? Now his name's being bannered about. Is it? I mean, like, my thing is this, at what point should we expect changes to be made in the way these guys are approaching their ad bats? And that's been the most frustrating thing to me. And I know that I expected it probably earlier in squid and I had this conversation Rob through through weeks ago where I was like, I need to see more actual small ball being played. I need to see when you have a runner on a second hitting a ground ball to the right side of the infield so we can move the runner over. And this team is so boomer bus as far as the long ball goes, as far as hitting for power that, you know, a lot of times in, in years past and even, you know, as recently as May that when they hit home runs, I feel like they won the game. It's just not that way anymore. All the home runs, they hit her solo shots. There's nobody on base. They don't hit runners in scoring position. At what point do they say, you know what? Maybe I don't need to hit one over the fence. Let me foul one on one or two off and see if we can move these runners over and get these guys home. How many, how many balls have there were normally home runs have not been home runs this year? A lot. There's nothing with the baseball, but I'm not excused to make it. You still got to come through with a base one in the gap to score runs. It's no longer a conspiracy theory with baseball when they've openly admitted that they've doctored baseballs that they've juiced up some years and not the other. But I'll say this, the situational hitting is what is disturbing for me. This team is all the last three to four year. Really this whole run under Seneca has been a team where it's like, if you needed a hit, they were clutched. The situational hitting was always really good. And it has not been that way this year. Austin Riley has now gotten hot. Matt Olson hasn't been cold and he hasn't been hot. He's just been and and now that it was done, he's been boringly missionary position is what he's been I was going to say something. I want some reverse cowgirl from this lineup. What do you want from me? Well, I think there's a couple of what Jared Kellogg's given you the reverse cowgirl. I mean, I think everybody else is is not, but what I was going to it he's just homing along. And when I need my when Michael Harris comes back, I need him somewhere in the sixth to nine range hitting in the lineup. The whole I told you didn't mean we didn't need a dance beat crowd kind of thing about how RC was just as good if not better. Yeah, I don't think so. I really don't because whatever dance beat is or isn't doing in Chicago. I know what he did here. And his last two to three seasons here, he was amazing. And RC is so phenomenally good with his glove and his bat is just you're seeing why he was he was pushed out of Milwaukee. Why he was a backup on the 21 world series team here. I love the guy, but it is turning into a black hole at shortstop from the place. I'll go there with you a little bit. But can we just we need to back off that just a little bit if the Braves and Alex looked at Dan's being said, we think there's dude, you know, he'd do some regression and his offense at the plate and his at bats. And we don't want to pay him 25 million because he's probably going to regress. I think that's fair. It was it's hard on it wasn't about regression. It was about the price. It was never about the regression. They regret they go hand in hand. They go ahead. I don't know why he's 25 million. They could have paid Freddie right off the bat what they wanted to know. And he wasn't going to regress. Now, Freddie left completely right. He left willingly at the end. But you knew when this is the same thing as guy bull max free. So are they predicting a regression from max free? I look, I love Alex. I love Alex. No one's a bigger Alex and topless fan than me. But his crystal ball is a lot better when it's basically reviving players careers than it is. Well, this is what I think they're going to be in a couple years. It's always about where the player is going to be age wise at the end of the contract more for Alex. Because we have given up on years on prom because I didn't want to pay guys in her late 30s. Like I said, man, I have no problem with the fact they didn't want to pay Dansy what Chicago has been paying now. It could have been differently in a braids uniform. Sure. Maybe. But I but look, what does he make? It's 25 million something in that ballpark. Okay. You're not getting that you're you're not getting the offense that you thought you would have out of Dansby out of our seat. You also know we're near themingly had an all star shortstop land in your lap last year. So I think look, I mean, I think we can go say Dansby this Dansby that I got bad news for you too. When Michael Harris comes back in the lineup, he's not going to be the savior either. I don't want him to be a savior. I just don't want him to be an automatic out. Well, I keep to your point. I keep seeing people on social man when we get Michael Harris back. We shouldn't have Forest wall and all these guys at the bottom lineup. Guess what? Michael Harris wasn't knocking the cover off of it. Michael Harris was getting was was was having on a hot street. He was really starting to find his groove like he did late last year. The people don't expect him to come back and be be hitting 600. What they don't expect though is seven eight nine. You might as well just you might as well just say it's like an automatic walk. We're like gonna first. They just might as well walk up and have the pitcher throw three pitches and then he walks back to the dugout. That's what seven eight nine are right now on this lineup. All right, since let's hear from Sean Murphy about when everyone gets healthy, he's not going to yell at us like squid is sure. Yeah, I don't miss it. Mike, you know, stinks there at the top of the lineup. But, you know, we got to make doing the time being and the sports more runs. Now with the MLB app, you can get baseball your way. Pick your favorite team, your favorite players, and get customized highlights, stories, and breaking news right on your home field. Follow the action with game 10 where 3D replays add another dimension. Plus notifications can keep you connected to every pitch, every hip, every game, the MLB app, baseball, your way, download it now for free from the app store or Google Play, block out another research and supply majorly baseball trade parts used with permission. Yeah, maybe just wake up from an app. Just make that is like, is this that's a somber post game locker is Travis Darno rested enough from playing so much early in the season because I've seen about a month of Sean Murphy and I like him too. But I think Darno needs to get more of the starts. I'll catch you right now. Listen to your point about Michael, here's I feel like Sean Murphy is finally in the last week or so as far as started to hit the ball a lot harder. I mean, he to me, he asked. I listen, by no means you're 400 hitter, but let's take it for what it is. Darno was great. I mean, it was like a he was like a firework. He was great in it for what he was asked to do. But I mean, I'm cool with letting Sean Murphy get if we're going to let everybody else line up, build up to where they're somehow hot in August. Let's let Sean Murphy do the same thing. Yeah, but there are option you have you don't have options in his other places. You don't have options at third. You don't have options at first. You don't have options in the outfield. You don't have options. Ozzy's not being you know, Ozzy is the most protective player in this city, I think. No one gets a free pass more than Ozzy for the things he doesn't do at times at the plate. And he's had some bad at bat, some bad. There's been a lot of bad at bats. Dude, he had a couple balls last night though. I will say, I don't know how he hit the single he had later in the game. I want to say it was maybe the sixth or seventh inning. He hits a ball off the ground. I mean, off the grad, the ball might have hit home plate had he not hit it. And he hits it off the ground and somehow gets it out of there. And I just, I thought to myself, maybe that's him, you know, being able to put the bat to the ball and those crazy kind of pitches that Ozzy's really been known for over the over the span of his career. And when all these fans want to celebrate, not paying guys, hope you celebrate it next year. And when you don't have Spencer Strider to start the season, you don't have Charlie Morton because he's retired. You don't know what Renato Lopez is. And Max Freed starting against you in either Philadelphia or L.A. Because that's happening. And that's the guy that should have been damn well paid already. And he hasn't. And that is not Alex's fault. That is the, that is the, what he, that is the formula that the ownership group has given him that he has to play with him. That's the problem, the most frustrating thing last night. I'm watching the game, seventh inning, what Braves are down four to two. I go, they're not going to do anything. Last year, I was convinced they would do it last year. But last time thinking, I'm fist pumping when Grant Holmes gets out of that inning, he gets Charlie Morton out of the inning. I'm going, but for what? Why am I that excited? Because I don't see any good story laboring in the Marley's for 10 years for finally getting a shot with those epic locks of his. Well, Forrest Wall, did you get a sack bun? I think you got two. So all the small ball fans can can celebrate with the loss. That's what it takes. If that's what it takes, you should do it. Didn't do anything, did it? Trying to figure out what to eat for dinner yet again. With North Sides and Bullion as you're not so secret ingredient, you can skip the drive-through and do dinner at home. Nor taste combos provide a menu of delicious, affordable, and well-balanced meals that you can prepare in 30 minutes or less. Visit nor.com to get quick and easy recipe ideas for your home cooked weeknight dinners. It's not fast food, but it's so good. Now with the MLB app, you can get baseball your way. Pick your favorite team, your favorite players, and get customized highlights, stories, and breaking news right on your home feed. Follow the action with Game Tip, where 3D replays add another dimension. Plus, notifications can keep you connected to every pitch, every hit, every game. The MLB app. Baseball, your way. Download it now for free from the App Store or Google Play. Blackout and other With a research in supply, Major League Baseball Trepards use wood permission.