more injuries

Moylan’s DL stint another blow for Braves

An update to the pitching situation:  Check your game program, fans.  If you have John Smoltz’s autograph on page 17, congratulations! You’re the new Braves reliever.  Report to the customer care desk to get your uniform…

April 16th, 2008 - Posted in baseball | | 0 Comments

Shaky ‘pen

I don’t believe in “The season’s over!”-type whining in April, but I have to say that I’m not filled with confidence about the Braves bullpen and their ability to keep it close.  With 16 earned in 27 innings, the maybes seem to be running 6 or 7 deep, with only Moylan and Soriano shaping up as top-notch.

Young Blaine Boyer is working himself into a hole and struggling mightily, so of course Bobby Cox will keep going to him beyond all reason.  That’s why guys love to play for Cox, but it tends to give Braves Nation heartburn.

April 8th, 2008 - Posted in baseball | | 0 Comments

Braves thoughts

Despite my lifelong love of baseball, I have a hard time writing about it. The logical positivist part of my brain tells me that it’s pointless to talk about what hasn’t happened yet. No one knows what’s going to happen this season, and the people who are considered “experts” at knowing it are really just as clueless–if more shrill–than the rest. This theory, in case you hadn’t noticed, invalidates about 90% of sports yakking and is why I’ve taken the liberating step of not listening to much of it anymore.

So what’s a rational being to do? Ask the same unanswerable questions everyone else is asking? It seems like a bad idea, and yet what else do we talk about? To make myself feel better, I’ll avoid phrasing them in the form of a question. So here, in a declarative fashion, are the points I’m thinking about as the season ramps up. (more…)

March 19th, 2008 - Posted in baseball | | 0 Comments

Who says baseball is boring?

The counter-argument to “NASCAR is boring” is, of course, that when you get a good crash it makes it all worthwhile. Similarly, even people who are bored with baseball can appreciate when–once a year or so–a manager completely and utterly loses his mind chewing out the umpires.

Phillip Wellman, the manager of the AA Mississippi farm team of my beloved Braves, had that moment tonight. It really is a classic.

June 2nd, 2007 - Posted in baseball | | 0 Comments

Spring is here

My phone rang in yesterday with the glorious tone that can only mean one thing: my first Braves score notification of the year from the AJC.

The problem with blogging about the Braves is the same as with blogging about much of anything: if you care enough, you probably already know as much as I do on the subject. But as anyone in Braves Nation knows, the big questions this spring are with the revamped right side of the infield and the impossible-to-project starting pitching.

While the first official game of the preseason isn’t much to base an opinion on, the box score from today’s 7-2 win over the dodgers is pretty encouraging. Infield question marks Kelly Johnson and Scott Thorman each had a hit and an RBI, and Kyle Davies threw two scoreless innings.

There’s also the slightly heretical question that no one is asking: whether adding Soriano and Gonzalez to the bullpen will make the team overconfident in their ability to stay in games. But I don’t want to rain on the one parade everyone seems to be universally happy about.

March 1st, 2007 - Posted in baseball | | 0 Comments

The Hall Of Self-Promotion

In a perfect world, the voting for the Baseball Hall Of Fame would be about… um… baseball. But now, in a way that only sports yakkers can seem to manage, the Baseball Hall Of Fame is about sports yakkers. Sure, there are still players. But what really matters is that as many sports yakkers as possible yak as loudly as they can about those players. After all, there have to be caveats in place to ensure that the enshrining of a great player doesn’t overshadow how important it is to be a sports yakker.

I’ll be brief about McGwire: 583 home runs. Never tested positive for steroids. Played his entire career before steroids were against the rules. One of two players who brought baseball back from the brink of irrelevancy in 1998. Even if he was steroid-enhanced, he was the most feared hitter in a league where most guys may have been steroid-enhanced. But that’s a baseball-based argument, and what sports yakker cares about that?

Leave aside for a moment how ill-conceived and poorly reasoned the anti-steroids argument is. Steroids in general–and McGwire specifically–is a convenient leverage point for sports yakkers who are more concerned with getting their faces on television and with working book deals than with actually honoring great baseball players.

Think I’m joking about the Hall being a sports yakker self-promotion tool? Meet Paul Ladewski. Ever heard of him? No, of course you haven’t before today.

“Paul Ladewski of the Daily Southtown in suburban Chicago wrote in a column Monday that he submitted a blank ballot because of doubts he had over performance-enhancing drugs in baseball.”

Gee, what a brave stance to take. Because nobody else is concerned about steroids in baseball, obviously. On top of that, he has his fellow yakkers in a lather because now Ripken won’t get a unanimous vote. (I suppose I don’t need to point out that Ripken, at zero, failed exactly as many drug tests as McGwire.) The fact that the heretofore unknown Paul Ladewski is now making national news is a huge burden for him to bear, I’m sure. But I imagine he’ll be able to grit his teeth and ride out the storm of publicity and notoriety.

At what point did the Baseball Hall Of Fame stop being about baseball? Maybe it was always about self-promoting opinionmongers. Maybe it was just never laid quite as blatantly bare as it has been this year.

January 9th, 2007 - Posted in baseball | | 0 Comments

Non-tender mania

Braves make no offers to Giles, Reitsma

It’s done.  Neither of these moves came as a surprise to anyone reading the AJC.

Rietsma has had flashes of brilliance, but he demonstrated pretty clearly that he couldn’t be entrusted with a lead.  At his salary, he would have just taken up space in the bullpen that might instead have gone to developing talent.

Giles’ departure stings a little more.  He wasn’t one of my favorite Braves, but for several years he’d been a guy you could count on for solid performance.  But his numbers are apparently declining, and he was inching towards Glenn Hubbard / Mark Lemcke territory as the most popular .230 hitter on the team.

In short, both moves are unfortunate.  But they will eventually improve the team by clearing room for more capable players.

December 13th, 2006 - Posted in baseball | | 0 Comments

Parallel universe where the Braves are contending

Ok, I will point this out exactly once, and will not speak of it again.

Bob Wickman has converted 15 of 16 save opportunities since coming to Atlanta.

Prior to that, the Braves had 20 blown saves.

If Wickman had been present, and had converted those 20 at that same rate, the Braves would have 18 more wins, and would be a half-game behind the Mets and the 3-game Mets / Braves series next week (at The Ted, no less) would be slightly more meaningful.

We now return to your regularly scheduled reality.

September 21st, 2006 - Posted in baseball | | 0 Comments