Early Clinch Silenced Braves' Juggernaut
PLUS: REMEMBERING THE RARE BATTING FEAT OF TONY CLONINGER
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Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
The four best NL MVP candidates [Ronald Acuña, Jr., Matt Olson, Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts] went a combined 6-43 (.139) with no home runs in seven NLDS games but the week off has nothing to do with it? . . .
The Depression did a number on the St. Louis Cardinals, who traded two starting pitchers and his best bat from the pennant-winning team of 1931 and lost 29 games in the standings . . .
First to go was Burleigh Grimes, a 17-game winner and future Hall of Famer who brought Hack Wilson from the Cubs . . .
Future Hall of Fame executive Branch Rickey was the man who ransacked those Cardinals, offering the newly-acquired Wilson a 77% pay cut ($33,000 to $7,500) before trading him to Brooklyn, and sending Chick Hafey to Cincinnati rather than meet his salary demands ($12,500 minus a $2,000 fine for holding out) . . .
Those ‘32 Cards finished sixth, 18 games behind the front-running Cubs with a 72-82 record . . .
The 2023 Mets were only the third team in baseball history to finish with a losing record in a full season after winning 100 games one year earlier.
Leading Off
Clinching Too Early Took Wind From Braves’ Sails
By Dan Schlossberg
The 2023 Atlanta Braves are living proof that wresting on your laurels is not a good thing for a team with World Series aspirations.
The team basically tanked after clinching its sixth straight National League East title on Sept. 13 — with a 4-1 victory against the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park.
Atlanta went only 8-8 after that, dropping a three-game series in Miami to the weak-hitting Marlins by scores of 9-6, 11-5, and — gulp — 16-2. Those same Marlins managed almost nothing in their following series against the equally impotent New York Mets.
Returning home, Atlanta extended its losing streak to a season-high four by dropping a 7-1 verdict to second-place Philadelphia at Truist Park. After a 9-3 win stopped the skein, the Braves dropped the rubber game to the Phils, 6-5.
Atlanta then beat Washington at Nationals Park, 10-3 and 9-6, before losing the third game of that series, 3-2, because the juice was suddenly cut off to the juggernaut. The Braves salvaged the fourth game, 8-5, and headed back home to play the Cubs.
Atlanta then knocked Chicago’s playoff hopes by sweeping a three-game series, 7-6, 6-5, and 5-3. Any of those games could have gone in another direction.
Weak-hitting Washington then sprang to life in the last homestand, winning the opener, 10-6, and the nightcap, 10-9, sandwiched around a 5-3 Saturday game that made Spencer Strider the only 20-game winner in the majors.
That 16-game stretch set the table for the multiple failures of the four-game Division Series against Philadelphia.
After securing home-field advantage throughout the postseason by leading the majors with 104 victories, the Braves blew that advantage in the first game of the NLDS.
Their 3-0 shutout was the first time they had been blanked at home in more than two years, dating back to August of 2021.
The hitters who pounded a record-tying 307 home runs couldn’t even collect singles. Again.
Last year’s team hit .180 and was outscored 24-13 in four games. This year’s team hit .186 and was outscored 20-8 — after a regular season in which they scored 947 (5.8 per game). They hit only three NLDS home runs, two of them by Austin Riley, while the Phils pounded 11.
MVP contenders Ronald Acuna, Jr. and Matt Olson combined to go 6-for-30 with four runs scored, one extra-base hit, and zero runs batted in. Zero.
As a result, the Braves — who scored more often in the first inning than any other team scored in any inning — did not tally even a single run in the opening frame against the Phils.
“We didn’t have a four-game stretch like that pretty much all year,” said Olson, who led the majors with 54 home runs.
In their three losses, the Braves went 2-for-17 with runners in scoring position and left 26 runners on base. Their total of eight runs scored in the 2023 NLDS was one less than their previous four-game low of nine.
“Our offense didn’t get traction,” said manager Brian Snitker.
Atlanta hitters seemed over-anxious from the start. They swung at first pitches constantly, rarely worked the count, and blew many chances for walks that would have provided more traffic on the base-paths. And they lunged for pitches that bounced in the dirt, sailed in over their heads, or were too far inside or outside.
Bad base-running by Kevin Pillar, who could have scored from third on a short fly ball, compounded the felony in the finale, which the Braves lost, 3-1. The score of the first game was 3-0.
Normally, holding the Phils to three runs would have been more than enough for the Braves, who won eight of their 13 regular-season games against Philadelphia and lost only once in six games at raucous Citizens Bank Park.
Change is coming. It has to be.
“If we truly want to win a World Series,” said Spencer Strider, 8-0 against Philadelphia in the regular-season but 0-2 in the playoffs, “we’re going to have to change something or add something.”
Losing Charlie Morton, a starting pitcher with a reputation for winning big games, definitely hurt. But the Braves scored only two runs in Game 3, which was started instead by erratic youngster Bryce Elder.
Catcher Sean Murphy and shortstop Orlando Arcia, both All-Star starters, were almost invisible in the Division Series — as they had been since the Midsummer Classic in Seattle. So was center-fielder Michael Harris II, an Atlanta native whose performance took a nosedive right after the clinching and never recovered. Eddie Rosario, the platoon left-fielder, never supplied much pop either.
Harris and Rosario, like so many of their teammates, reached for pitches beyond their reach as they pressed to jump-start the offense.
Even Olson proved to be a notorious streak hitter — his home runs came in bunches but his long homerless streaks were killers.
“We’re going to have to make an adjustment to our postseason approach,” Strider concluded in the somber clubhouse. “It’s something I’m going to get to work on and we’re going to get to work on as an organization the moment we get out of here.”
For the Braves, who spent less in free agency than any other team last winter, such restrictions need to go. They need at least one starting pitcher — two if Morton retires — and a lefty-hitting left-fielder. Another bullpen arm or too would be good too.
Former AP sportswriter Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn, NJ just completed the manuscript for a 2024 book called Home Run King: the Remarkable Record of Hank Aaron. He is already booking speaking engagements to promote it. His email is ballauthor@gmail.com.
Cleaning Up
Two Slams In A Game Made Tony Cloninger More Than a Footnote
By Dan Schlossberg
Tony Cloninger would be a mere footnote to baseball history if not for the events of July 3, 1966.
That was the day he became the first player in National League history to hit two grand-slams in a game.
Four American Leaguers had done it before him and eight players did it later but Cloninger was the only member of the group who was a pitcher [they took their turns at bat until 1973 in the AL and 2022 in the NL].
Tony Lazzeri was the first to do it, in 1936, and the illustrious Josh Willingham did it last, in 2009. The only Hall of Famers in the group were Lazzeri and Frank Robinson.
Getting back to Cloninger, the 6-foot, 210-pound right-hander from Cherryville, NC was the first Opening Day pitcher for the Atlanta Braves, working all 13 innings of a 3-2 loss to Pittsburgh on a cold April night. Just 25 at the time, he finished with a 14-11 record — the last time he won more than he lost for the Braves — after once winning 24 in a season for the team before it moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta.
Cloninger gave hint of greatness to come when he hit two homeruns in a game against the Mets on June 16, less than a month before his fortuitous performance.
The July 3 game was played in San Francisco’s Candlestick Park, where whistling bayfront winds wreaked havoc with hitters, fielders, and pitchers on far too many occasions.
Cloninger was staked to an early lead when batterymate Joe Torre, a future Hall of Fame manager, smacked a three-run homer against journeyman Joe Gibbon, the starter for the Giants. The rally continued and the Braves had the bases loaded for Cloninger later in the opening inning.
Facing reliever Bob Priddy, Cloninger homered, jacking the lead to 7-0. Cloninger hit another against southpaw Ray Sadecki, another reliever, in the fourth, then collected a club-record ninth RBI with a run-scoring single against Sadecki in the eighth.
No other pitcher — not even Shohei Ohtani — has been so prolific at the plate in a single game.
Cloninger hit five of his 11 career homers in 1966, when he finished with 23 RBIs in 39 games. Before Ohtani reached the majors, Cloninger and Don Newcombe were the only pitchers to produce a pair of two-homer games in the same season.
After winning 113 games in his 12-year career, spent entirely in the National League, Cloninger crossed league lines to serve as pitching coach for the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees.
Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn, NJ is national baseball writer for forbes.com and contributor to many other print and online outlets. His email is ballauthor@gmail.com.
Timeless Trivia
“The Phillies stifled us. They pitched really well. They had great plans. Their guys got big hits. We got beat and didn’t play well enough to win the series. It’s as simple as that.”
— Braves manager Brian Snitker after his team lost the NLDS in four games
The teams with the five best records in baseball [Braves, Orioles, Dodgers, Rays, and Brewers] all fell short of reaching the 2023 Championship Series . . .
The five-day layoff between games for teams with “byes” is longer than the four-day layoff at the All-Star break . . .
The Korea Baseball Organization [KBO] gives teams with the best records an automatic 1-0 record in the Division Series, so they only have to win twice to advance, as opposed to a necessary three wins by their opponent . . .
From 1969-93, division winners advanced directly to the Championship Series and from 1995-2011, each league had only one wild-card and the Division Series started immediately. A second wild-card was added in 2012.
Know Your Editors
HERE’S THE PITCH is published daily except Sundays and holidays. Benjamin Chase [gopherben@gmail.com] handles Monday and Tuesday editions, Elizabeth Muratore [nymfan97@gmail.com] does Wednesday and Thursday, and Dan Schlossberg [ballauthor@gmail.com] edits the weekend editions on Friday and Saturday. Readers are encouraged to contribute comments, articles, and letters to the editor. HTP reserves the right to edit for brevity, clarity, and good taste.