Why are the Atlanta Braves so good??

Alright, so let's just start here. First of all, only nine All-Stars? Only eight All-Stars. Nine would have tied the record.

I believe that was the 1939 Yankees who also had honorary team captain Lou Gehrig, as that was his final season. But eight All-Stars, first time any clubs had that since the 2012 Texas Rangers. Happens pretty rarely, but when you start looking at this club and the lineup that they boast and some of the big stories on the pitching side of things, which Spencer Strider, Major League Strikeout leader, that's not surprising. But Bryce Elder, Major League ERA leader at any point this season was not on my bingo card when he started on opening night at AAA. It's been quite a role. I mean, Ron Lacuna Jr. is his own story.

We can spend our whole time talking about what he's doing this year. But yeah, the Braves is not just about one player. This is a very well-constructed team, a very well-rounded team, and the most dangerous lineup that I can think of outside of the 2003 club. I'm telling you, again, as the lead-in suggested, I'm a Mets fan.

And I keep reminding people of this. I do not hate the Braves. I admire what they have built down there.

First of all, fun team to watch. And as a baseball fan, I enjoy watching fun. And I don't know if it's the fact that we have new rules that have brought the stolen base back. But I mean, Ronald Lacuna Jr. already has 40 stolen bases. We used to look for the 40-40 guy. I don't know who the last 40-40 guy was. I remember when Darrell Strawberry did it or Howard Johnson did it.

I'm like, oh my gosh. I mean, he could do 50-50. Yeah. I mean, those guys were 30-30 club guys. I mean, three times for Hojo. I mean, he's kind of an underrated player when you look back at the late 80s and 90s and Strawberry. I mean, one of the best overall natural talents that you came across in a decade of baseball that for me holds a lot of value. And I'm also a big Dale Murphy for the hall of fame guy.

Throw that out there. He's a 30-30 guy, but 40-40, that's the kind of thing we just don't see too terribly often. There's four guys that have done it. The last one was Alfonso Soriano, I believe in 2006 for the Washington nationals of all clubs, but putting all that aside, Ronald said in the past 40-40 is a goal of his, but he is now in a place where for a while it looked like, Hey, he could join the 30-50 club, which is Barry Bonds and Eric Davis, or he could do 30-60, which nobody's ever done before 30, 70, 30, 80, so on and so forth.

You get the idea. Then he went on another home run binge and now he's on a 41 Homer 78 stolen base pace. That would not only be just historically ridiculous and unprecedented. It would also help him break the modern franchise record for stolen basis. The modern franchise record for run scored he's on pace for 150 of those 200 plus hits, 40 plus doubles, a hundred plus runs batted in all of that. And he's cut his strikeout rate in half from where it was two years ago. It's incredible to watch Ron Lecuna Jr.

These days, he's a tour de force. And if you don't get there in the first inning with this Braves club, you may miss some of the most fun that you're going to have in that entire game. If you're a fan showing up at the ballpark or simply getting to the TV on time.

And a lot of that starts with what Ronald's done this year. They lead a major league baseball, right? In first inning runs. And home runs.

Yeah. Well, they hit a lot of home runs. In the home run column, if you go to baseballreference.com of their top nine hitters, seven of them are in double figures in home runs. Seven of the top nine. One of them, Michael Harris, the lead off guy, the Punch and Judy guy, I use that term almost facetiously, has nine. The shortstop, Orlando Arce, has got seven.

So this is a powerful, powerful team. I want to talk about Acuna Jr. a little bit in this regard. And we're talking with Grant McCauley from the Diamond Podcast, covers the Atlanta Braves for the entire city of Atlanta, as far as I can tell. There was a question may posed on Twitter about, back when we used to use Twitter, was, is Acuna Jr. the greatest, I think it was either athlete or player in Braves history. Now, we never, most of us never saw the greatest of Aaron. But, and Henry Aaron before, you know, he became just a home run hitter toward the end of his career. You know, as I was a kid, Aaron's best was super athletic. He came up as a second baseman, wasn't even an outfielder. So is it almost sacrilege to even think that this guy is as good as that guy?

Well, here's the thing. I think when it comparing eras, sometimes we just end up in a lose-lose situation because I mean, I love the history of baseball for everything that it shows us and the continual growth and evolution of the game. And I think that that's something that the Hall of Fame voters and the criteria for Hall of Fame candidacy should really look and reevaluate because I think they're kind of stuck in the past, but taking a pen in that, you know, chipper Jones is the one that brought up the fact, and he did this on television, not just in, you know, some small circle and some offhand quote in a newspaper article that, you know, appeared in the news cycle and disappeared.

He brought it up on a television broadcast. Ron Lacuna Jr. Is the most talented player to put on a Braves uniform from chipper Jones first ballot Hall of Famer, one of the three greatest switch hitters of all time. That's pretty high praise a guy that has a deep appreciation for the history of the game, going back through the eras past Dale Murphy, two time MVP Hank Aaron, obviously being the gold standard of Braves baseball, Eddie Matthews.

I mean, you'd name them. The Braves have had a lot of great players and Ron Lacuna Jr. Does everything at such a level that, you know, it's like taking the best of this column and this player and that player and putting it all together to create, I don't know, like captain America, you had to create it somehow and you pulled the best of the best from everywhere to make it happen. And that's what he's doing these days, running on the basis. He loves doing that. That's a big part of his game in the outfield. He has one of the best arms that you're going to find at the on base skills are there.

The strikeouts are not there. The home runs running the base is just in general, just for first to third, the danger that he provides for opposing pitchers to have to deal with. And it's just pressure from the very first pitch of the game on, because he can take you out of the ballpark. I think Matt Olson said it best. It was well with Ronald, he can either hit the ball to a part of the stadium that you've never seen a hit before, or it can draw a walk, steal bases and create general havoc. And that I think is what shipper was looking at. How many players can you find that do that from the very first moment of the game on and set such a tone and then looking at the numbers and projecting it out again this season, by the time we're done with 2023, if this guy plays 162 games or close to it, I think we're going to be talking about one of the most unprecedented and impressive seasons statistically that we have ever seen in the modern game or any era of the game. And that I think is where the comparison does carry a lot of weight. It really is remarkable for those people who grew up playing games like Strat-O-Matic as I did.

His Strat card is going to be completely off the charts. I just put a hold up four fingers. I just walk them every time up. All right, Grant McCullough, I have two things for you before I let you go. First is, give me a weakness. What is the weakness?

What is the area where you think, well, they could use this in order to really put them over the top? You know, the starting rotation has really been the one spot where the Braves have been a work in progress this year and had to plug some serious holes. And Bryce Elder, as I mentioned earlier, has stepped into a role where they were just trying to fill the fifth spot when we came to spring training. But then Ian Anderson had to have Tommy John surgery. Kyle Wright got hurt. Max Freed got hurt. Other guys didn't perform and had to be sent back down to AAA. Elder stepped in alongside Spencer Strider, who's been great, and Charlie Morton, who has been, I think, just everything you'd need out of a veteran starter in the middle of your rotation.

And then they've had to kind of solve for, I guess, solve for X or solve for Y, or maybe both, actually. You got Michael Soroka's comeback story going on. You're hoping to have freed back before the end of the month, maybe writes back next month is kind of the general timeline, though.

There's nothing specific yet for either man. That's the one place I could see at the trade deadline. If they don't feel like they have everybody go in the direction they need to, maybe they go outside the organization and try to get a starter and somebody who they could really count on. If some other things just don't work for them, that's been the one problem for the Braves and ain't the offense. It's not hitting with runners in the scoring position. Their bullpen over the past six weeks has also been statistically one of the best in baseball, but every contender could add a bullpen arm. That wouldn't hurt, but it's hard to pick apart the Braves and say, yeah, this is where it goes wrong. When you go to this guy, this guy, or this guy, or when it gets to this part of the lineup, there's just no let up for this club.

And that is why they're on the run that they've been on since the month of June started. at Grant McCauley on threads. Enjoy threads on all forms of social media. It's at Grant McCauley from the Diamond podcast.

You can check that out as well. Ran out of time, but we'll talk again in the future because they are the best team in the league. And I appreciate just how well they've done it and the way they have gone about it. Grant, appreciate it, man. I'll talk to you soon. Yeah, I look forward to it. Thank you. You got it. Grant McCauley here on the Adam Gold show.