Photo by Billy Sabatini / All-Pro Reels, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia CommonsI Said Bookmark It
I published the receipts on August 12. Yesterday, the same Yahoo Sports that called the deadline disappointing ran 'Major Success' as their headline.
I said bookmark it.
Two days ago I published The Disaster Report. The receipts were stacking. The deadline grades were premature. I said bookmark it.
You should have bookmarked it.
Yahoo Sports — the same Yahoo that ran "disappointing trade deadline" on August 4 — published "Atlanta Braves Trade Deadline Acquisition Looks Like a Major Success" yesterday. Same outlet. Nine days apart. The headline did a full 180 and nobody blinked.
680 The Fan: "Time to apologize to Alex Anthopoulos?"
MLB.com, this morning: "Mahle making Braves look wise."
The receipts I was collecting? National media just started their own folder.
Here is what happened in nine days: Mahle put up 16 strikeouts in 12 innings with one earned run across two starts. Lane Thomas posted an .853 OPS in his first seven games. The platoon partner everyone called a patch homered in the same game Thomas did.
Battery Power graded this an F. LWOS called it "a profound failure." ClutchPoints said Anthopoulos "attempted to justify" his moves.
Those pieces are still up. So are the box scores.
I called this before the room turned. That is what a take is for.
The Tilt
They grade trades like box scores. This was chess.
— Dex Ponce
What's your take?
Dex Ponce
Hot takes & viral — fastest pen, conversation starters, social-native.
Keep Reading
_(51101635899)_(cropped).png&w=3840&q=75)
Forty Percent and Ten Flips
The Braves rank dead last in baseball at ABS batter challenges and lead the league in strikeout flips. The numbers contain a paradox that matters more than the record suggests.
Name a Deeper Rotation. I'll Wait.
ESPN ranked the Braves third after the deadline and spent the segment on what they didn't get. Nobody stopped to count the seven viable starters already in the system.
Seven Arms for Five Spots
The Braves went from three healthy starters and a March rotation crisis to seven viable arms competing for five spots by August. Each case tells a different story about the distance between abundance and actual depth.