Red Pinstripes: Sweep dreams
The Phillies sweep their first series, the bullpen is good, Shohei Ohtani shows off, the All Star Game leaves Georgia and more
Good morning,
Welcome to the first regular season edition of Red Pinstripes. And how sweet of an opening it was for the Phillies! I’m still playing around with what I’ll do as the season goes on, but right now I’m planning on writing a Phillies-centric newsletter before every series they play. In between, I’ll have at least one newsletter with the top story focused on a more general baseball topic.
That doesn’t mean Phillies-focused newsletters won’t have general MLB stuff. Just go to the bottom of this newsletter for more MLB news and some highlights from the weekend.
In today’s newsletter: not only did the Phillies sweep the Atlanta Braves, they did it in the best way possible to expel the demons of last season. Plus, a quick preview of the upcoming series against the New York Mets. That will be the Mets’ first series of the year because of the Washington Nationals’ ongoing COVID outbreak.
Also, some links about the All-Star Game and a great profile of a great reliever. By the way, Shohei Ohtani started on the mound for the Angels Sunday night while hitting second in the batting order. He did this:
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A perfect sweep
If you were to script a season-opening series that would create the right tone for the Phillies season, I don’t think you could have done better than the Phillies’ sweep of the Atlanta Braves this weekend.
The narrative about the Phillies all offseason has been the bullpen. When you have one of the worst bullpens in baseball history, that’s going to be the story. Even though the team made moves to improve the relief corps, fans and watchers around baseball needed to see the Phillies prove they had made the bullpen better.
It’s a small sample size, but this bullpen has already stepped up in ways last year’s bullpen couldn’t. They held the Braves scoreless all series, 7 1/3 innings. The bullpen did not have a single three-game stretch last year where it did not allow a run to score.
On Opening Day, you could feel the narrative beginning to build, that this year would be just like last year after Aaron Nola let a Pablo Sandoval home run tie the game in the seventh inning. In a lot of corners of the Phillies’ fanbase, there was zero confidence that the bullpen could keep the Braves from scoring again.
But the bullpen did hold the Braves without a run. And then they did it Saturday. And they did it again Sunday. It was a mix of the newcomers – Archie Bradley and José Alvarado – and the holdovers – Connor Brogdon and Héctor Neris – who got the job done.
It’s easy to see the death spiral the team could have entered into if the bullpen had blown two or three of these games. All the attention would have been on the bullpen. National writers would be dooming the team to the NL East basement. Commentators on MLB Network would be laughing at the team.
Instead, the Phillies swept the defending division champs and move on to the division favorite New York Mets with a lot more confidence.
Other notes from the series
The starting pitchers were great in this series, on both sides. For the Phillies, Aaron Nola, Zack Wheeler and Zach Eflin were dominant. Eflin’s performance wasn’t a surprise to Phillies fans; he’s the secret weapon this year. But what Eflin did should be a wake-up call to the rest of the league that it’s not just Nola and Wheeler this year.
Like the bullpen, the team’s defense was an area of concern for a lot of prognosticators this year. They came to play this weekend and the Phillies probably would have lost Opening Day if it not for the play of three of the most maligned defenders:
Alec Bohm
Didi Gregorius
Roman Quinn
Finally, the offense scored enough runs for the Phillies to win, but they weren’t tearing the cover off of the ball. Even their runs, with the exception of Andrew Knapp’s bomb of a home run Sunday, were lightly hit. I’m not concerned. It was a cold weekend in Philadelphia and they were up against the Braves’ best pitchers. But the strikeout rate will be something to watch moving forward.
Meet the new Mets
The Mets opening series against the Nationals was postponed because of COVID cases within the Nationals. That means the Mets will instead open their season three games behind schedule in Philadelphia this week.
The Mets will debut their new-look lineup featuring the $341 million man Francisco Lindor. The Phillies will also deal with Jacob deGrom in this series's first game, not the second or third game. That means they’ll probably miss deGrom next week in Queens.
The Phillies will have two debuts of their own. Matt Moore will take the ball in game one and Chase Anderson will go in game two. If these two are just competent, that would help the Phillies a lot this year.
Here’s how the starters line up this week:
Monday, 7:05 PM
Jacob deGrom at Matt Moore
Tuesday, 7:05 PM
Marcus Stroman at Chase Anderson
Wednesday, 4:05 PM
David Peterson at Aaron Nola
Phillies playoff odds
PECOTA: 40.3% chance to make playoffs, 17.4% chance to win the division, 85.2-76.8 projected record
FanGraphs: 23.5% chance to make playoffs, 7.7% chance to win division, 81.7-80.3 projected record
Both projections as of 6:30 PM Sunday.
Around the NL East
There’s not much else to report out of the NL East because the Mets and Nationals ended up not playing. The Marlins played a series against the Tampa Bay Rays and won one game while losing two. It’s not a terrible result for the Marlins, who lost 1-0 in the first game. Taking one from one of the American League’s best teams is not bad for a team with many lineup issues but great pitching.
Nationals are still waiting to hear whether their season will begin Monday (Washington Post)
The Nationals were supposed to start a series against the Braves Monday. As of Sunday night, Monday’s game was postponed but the league hopes to start the rest of the series Tuesday.
Rizzo’s comments held a mix of good and less encouraging news. The Nationals, whose three-game, season-opening series against the New York Mets was postponed, have had no new positives in their coronavirustests from Thursday or Friday. But they now have 13 members of the organization in quarantine (for close contacts) or isolation (for anyone who has tested positive). Four players tested positive last week. Nine others — seven players and two staff members — are quarantining because of potential exposure. Two of those people — a player and a staff member — were added to the quarantine list this weekend because of D.C. regulations.
Baseball news and highlights
Major League Baseball announced Friday that it would move this year’s All-Star Game out of Georgia because of the state’s new voting restrictions.
The Braves took umbrage with the decision, but it’s important to remember that this is a franchise that just a couple of years ago left a perfectly good stadium in downtown Atlanta to chase white fans by building a new taxpayer-funded stadium in Cobb County. Whenever anyone says the game was taken out of Atlanta, that’s not true. The Braves did that on their own.
What Georgia’s Voting Law Really Does (NY Times)
Here’s a breakdown of Georgia’s new voting law for anyone who hasn’t had a chance to read about it. This isn’t just about “securing elections” as supporters like Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp have said it is. The law includes provisions that reduce access to polling places. And in a much-ridiculed provision, it prevents people from giving water or food to voters waiting in line.
Brewers’ Devin Williams isn’t your average baseball star (The Undefeated)
Here’s a great story from Clinton Yates of The Undefeated about Brewers’ stud reliever Devin Williams. Williams had to go through a lot to get to where he is and the story is worth your time.
HIGHLIGHTS!
The return of real baseball games means real things happened on the diamond this week. And boy did some things happen.
Miguel Cabrera hit an Opening Day home run during a snowstorm. He wasn’t sure if he actually got it over the fence, so he slid into second.
The Reds and Cardinals got into it Saturday after Nick Castellanos flexed in the pitcher’s face after scoring on a wild pitch. Jomboy breaks it down:
Akil Baddoo, a great story and a Rule 5 pick who made the Tigers, hit his first career home run Sunday.
Raimel Tapia’s inability to catch baseballs led to two weird highlights. First, the Dodgers ran into an out when Justin Turner crossed Cody Bellinger on the basepaths on what should have been a home run but became an RBI single.
Then Tapia almost robbed a home run Saturday but actually deflected the ball back into the field. That let Zack McKinstry get an inside-the-park home run.