Do major league hitters still get signals from the third-base coach? With the virtual elimination of the sacrifice bunt and the suicide squeeze play, I’m not sure there is much for the coach to relay to the batter these days. And anecdotal evidence seems to support my theory that the take sign has gone the way of the ivory-billed woodpecker.

Last night, the Atlanta Braves and Los Angeles Dodgers were tied 2-2 going into the bottom of the eighth inning. Marcell Ozuna led off with a five-pitch walk against Michael Kopech. The next hitter, Matt Olson, took the first pitch for a ball, and then got a middle-in fastball that he drove off the wall in right-center field. The Braves were in business with two runners in scoring position with no outs.

Travis d’Arnaud was up next for the Braves. He took a strike low and away, but Kopech’s next pitch was in the dirt, and his third pitch was a good six to eight inches inside. d’Arnaud should have been in the catbird seat, but he wasn’t, because he swung at ball two and fouled it off. d’Arnaud had to be ready to swing at anything close, and he fouled off the next pitch that was over the inside part of the plate. Kopech’s next pitch was low and away, evening the count at 2-2. The next three pitches were all way up and in, but d’Arnaud swung at each of them and flied out to short left field, leaving runners at second and third.

Up next was Orlando Arcia, who was hitting a robust .220. Even though Kopech never threw Arcia anything close to the strike zone, Arcia was down on strikes after five pitches. The runners were still at second and third.

Up next, Jarred Kelenic, who stepped in with a .230 average. Kopech threw him three fastballs in excess of 100 miles per hour. Kelenic fouled off the first one but was miserably late on the second and third pitches. And just like that, the Braves’ scoring threat was up in smoke.

I realize the dynamics of an at-bat change with each pitch, and Kopech started off d’Arnaud and Kelenic with strikes. But with a hitter as undisciplined as Arcia has proven to be, it seems to me that someone should have given him the take signal at least until the pitcher threw him a strike. A walk to load the bases may have changed the whole inning.

It’s not as if the Braves were facing a strike-throwing machine. The walk of Ozuna by Kopech was the pitcher’s eighth walk in 18 innings since he joined the Dodgers. Would it have killed d’Arnaud and Arcia to have been a bit more patient?

After the Braves failed to score in the bottom of the eighth, the Dodgers erupted for seven runs in the ninth to salt away the game.

Perhaps the more egregious mistake by the Braves’ hitters was that, from all appearances, they made no effort to change their approach. Rather than adjusting their swings to attempt to merely put the ball in play, they all three swung from the heels like they were trying to hit a three-run homer.

The Braves have a thin bench, but it seems that at some point, manager Brian Snitker would yank some of these guys out of the lineup following their pathetic performances at the plate. Or at least, tell them to look for the take sign, because they have lost the privilege of being on their own in the batter’s box.