Weekend Reflections: Braves have no coherent plan for bullpen

President of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos didn’t plug holes in the pen during the offseason, and he’s been scrambling ever since. It’s been a flurry of transactions signifying nothing by Anthopoulos. It’s been suboptimal usage of relievers by manager Brian Snitker.

Kimbrel got caught up in the chaos for less than 24 hours.

One day, he’s pitching in a tie game in the seventh inning (his velocity and command weren’t good, but he was saved by a pickoff and caught stealing). The next day, Kimbrel is DFA’d with the choice of going back to the minors or declaring for free agency (it’s unlikely he’ll be claimed by another team).

After the Braves sent Kimbrel away, they recalled lefty (and Macon native) Austin Cox from Triple-A Gwinnett. Cox didn’t pitch against the Giants on Saturday. The next day, the Braves sent him back to Gwinnett and claimed José Ruiz off the waiver wire from the Phillies.

The Braves also dumped reliever Scott Blewett to the Orioles for cash. That was a day after he was charged with five runs in the ninth inning of a historically bad loss to the Diamondbacks. That was poor work by Blewett, but it ended a streak of six consecutive outings (8⅔ innings) with no earned runs allowed. Why give up on him so soon?

Meanwhile, Snitker gave closer Raisel Iglesias too much leeway. He’d been bad for weeks, but Snitker didn’t demote Iglesias until he gave up the lead in that ugly loss to the D-Backs. The Braves still would be on the hook for the rest of Iglesias’ $16 million salary if they DFA’d him. Might as well use him in lower-pressure situations and see if he can find his form.

Removing Iglesias as closer was a long-overdue move by Snitker, who said he’ll use a mix-and-match approach for the role. Then again, it’s not as if Anthopoulos has given him many good options for important innings. It started opening day in San Diego.

The Braves were tied with the Padres in the seventh inning. Snitker sent in Héctor Neris, who signed a minor-league deal in March. Neris gave up three runs on three hits. Three days later, Neris pitched the eighth with the Braves down, 3-0. He gave up two more runs. The Braves DFA’d him.

Braves decision-makers decided at one point that Neris could pitch high-leverage innings for them. Then they decided they didn’t want him on the roster at all after just two outings. They were two bad appearances, but if that’s all the rope the Braves were willing to give Neris, then what was the point? What was the plan?

The Kimbrel experiment is another indication the Braves don’t really have a plan for their pen.

College sports are over

The NCAA’s settlement of a class-action suit won final approval late Friday night. As part of the agreement, schools will directly compensate athletes beyond educational expenses for the first time. In a statement, NCAA President Charlie Baker called the revenue-sharing plan “a tremendously positive change and one that was long overdue.”

I was confused by that quote. For decades, NCAA member schools argued in court they must be allowed to collude to prevent college athletes from earning market compensation. They said the cartel system was necessary because consumers would lose interest in games played by college athletes who are paid a salary, leading to the collapse of the college sports enterprise.

Now, Baker is saying it’s a good thing schools will pay athletes (so long as they don’t get full labor rights, of course). It doesn’t really make sense unless NCAA schools had been making disingenuous arguments against paying athletes all this time — and surely, that’s not the case.

A skeptic might say that college sports administrators like Baker knew all along that paying players wouldn’t hurt the business of college sports. A cynic might go so far to say that coaches, athletic directors and commissioners wanted to preserve the cartel system so they could keep stealing money from the revenue pot generated by the athletes people pay to watch work.

I’m not saying those things, though. I’m open to the possibility that NCAA schools were right in the first place and consumers will stop watching college sports now that the athletes are exploited a little less. If so then, man, will I have egg on my face.

All this time, I’ve argued that athletes should be paid. But if that leads to the end of college sports, then there would be less need for sports writers and, let’s be honest, they aren’t all that essential to begin with.

Atlanta’s Gauff wins another Grand Slam

Speaking on court after beating No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka for the French Open title Saturday, Atlanta native Coco Gauff said, “I didn’t think honestly that I could do it.”

I didn’t think she could do it, either.

Clay is Sabalenka’s weakest surface, but I figured her aggressive power game would be too much for Gauff.

Then I tuned in and saw it was a windy day at Roland Garros. It was going to be an ugly day, and Gauff could win ugly. That’s what she did against Sabalenka, who told the crowd she was sorry for playing “terrible tennis” and said Gauff “simply was better in these conditions than me.”

They weren’t the most gracious of words, but Gauff should take it as a compliment. She was mentally tougher than the world’s best player in a Grand Slam final. It was a big deal for Gauff, who is the first American to win the French Open since Serena Williams in 2015.

Gauff hadn’t won a Grand Slam since capturing her first at the 2023 U.S. Open (that seems absurd to say about a 21-year-old, but so it goes in tennis). Gauff lost the 2022 French Open final to then-No. 1 Iga Świątek, a defeat she said made her doubt herself because she was so overwhelmed with emotion (Gauff was just 18 but, again, we’re talking about tennis). Gauff lost two finals in high-level clay tournaments this year, to Sabalenka in Madrid and to Jasmine Paolini in Rome.

Now Gauff is champion of the biggest clay event of them all.

“I just felt like if I went through my career and didn’t get at least one of these, I would feel regrets and stuff,” Gauff said on court after he victory.

Gauff was born in Atlanta. Her father, Corey, played basketball at Georgia State, and her mother, Candi, was a standout track athlete at Florida State. When Coco was seven, the Gauffs moved back to Delray Beach, Florida, so she could pursue her tennis dream.