It's a new year. Are the Atlanta Braves still a good team?

That said …

Something is missing and it's more than Arodys Vizcaino. (Or Craig Kimbrel.) Everything is at least naked, and Thursday was a jigsaw puzzle by Jon-Bon-Jovi. The Braves entered the afternoon game with a chance to win their second series since April 10th. They lost 11-2.

The Braves sent Mike Foltynewicz, a member of the All-Star 2018, against Matt Strahm, a 27-year-old southpaw with a career record of 7-13. The Padres did not start with anyone with a batting average above 0.253; The eight starting Braves players include only one player below 0.263. After 4-1 / 2 innings, Foltynewicz was gone and Matt Strahm was doing like Warren Spahn and the visitors were leading 6-0, will soon become 11-nil.

The first round of the Padres was scored by Ian Kinsler, who hit .149. He placed a Foltynewicz cursor over the wall in center left, with a withdrawal in the third. He stayed 1-0 until the fifth, which began with a simple Bunt from Austin Hedges, the San Diego catcher. Strahm stole him away. Kinsler has doubled it at home, again on a slider. Then things became strange.

Franmil Reyes raised a reader to the short center. When he left the bat, you said, "You can make corn." Then, you understood that Ronald Acuna, the team of the center of the Manning that day, had not managed the biggest jump of the world. "The ball has to be caught," said coach Brian Snitker. This was not the case.

Manny Machado, the $ 300 million man, has beaten a sturdy .232. He repelled a Foltynewicz forward. The carom had not changed much, leaving a way out. But every time a pitcher rushes to second base, he is likely to be in the middle of the field. That did.

Now the score was 3-0. The fly of Eric Hosmer raised the score to 4-0. The left single from Wil Myers won 5-0. A disconcerted Foltynewicz has been relieved of his duties. Grant Dayton was greeted by a Manuel Margot liner in third place that a Camargo could have caught but did not do. That's 6-0. During this inning, the light strike forwards scored five runs on six hits, two of which did not leave the infield and a third that should have been taken, plus one mistake. Ergo, horror show.

<! –

->

A Braves game would not be a Braves game without some form of madness in pencil. Shane Carle obliged. He pulled out two of the first three batters he faced in the sixth, the newly born Kinsler being the exception. The four other Padres performed a communal cycle: double Machado, simple Hosmer, Ty France triple the glove of Acuna, first circuit of Myers. If this little league – and in some ways it was – the rule of the massacre would have been invoked.

On a six-month season, each team will have a match like this. (FYI, it was the first time since 2000 that San Diego had five points in consecutive innings.) What is troubling is that the Braves have found their starting pitchers. We hit pretty well, and they always lost 12 of the 20 games. And before you can say: "It's the fault of our manager", it has only aggravated Thursday's losses. This game was gone when Foltynewicz ran the ball to the center of the field.

When asked if it was fair to say that his team had not played yet, Snitker said, "I think it's more than just right. We did not click on all the cylinders. We start to get by: the guys start to identify themselves. Offensively, the average is good, but we do not play with guys as if we could do it. And the defensive is failing: it's not what we are. "

Then: "This round was an aberration, but we are not a team to the extent of what we can afford (to do such things). We have to play healthy baseball to be competitive, and we do it at 95-98%. It was a bad handle, and the things we usually do, we did not do it. "

Still, losing by nine points against the Padres, who had scored only six goals in the first three games of the series, may well be a hidden advantage. Charlie Culberson, who started in the left field, was called to start the ninth. According to the standards of this market, he was not half naughty. (Hey, he retired from Kinsler.) Mixing a fast 88 mph with a 77 mph slider, he qualified for the round without scoring. His EER for the season is 0.00, which breaks Carle's record of 9.64. Forget Kimbrel! Culberson for closer!

We stop to note that, as miserable as this game was, it is one of 162. It was, to use Snitker's words, an aberration. In one way or another, however, this one game seemed symptomatic of the season so far. This past season we saw that the Braves were on the right track. But now it's a different year and we're starting to wonder if it's a different team.

Support true journalism Support local journalism. Subscribe to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution today.
See offers.

Your subscription to Atlanta Journal-Constitution funds in-depth reporting and surveys that keep you informed. Thank you for supporting real journalism.