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Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Braves pitchers appear jinxed
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Nobody could have seen this coming through the rose-colored glasses of spring. The Braves finally had it right. Your trusty correspondent even referred to them as “pitcher-rich.” Six starters and only room for five. A bullpen clogged with bodies, armed and ready. A crop ripe and hardy for harvesting. Things hadn’t looked so good in so long. So sound the horn, get at ‘em while they’re hot.
Well, that’s the way it looked then. There was some mention that some of the starters were a little long in the tooth. But what fine trim they were in. Tom Glavine looked lithe enough to do health club commercials. John Smoltz, well, management had such confidence in him they were allowing him to conduct spring training on his own. On a field out of view of the passing public, out where the farmhands are cultivated. He always looks healthy as a stallion. Healthy enough to go golfing with Tiger Woods.
He made one start, and that was it. He was touched up for a few runs, but you know what they say: “It’s just spring training. Ho, hum.”
Tim Hudson and Glavine both looked as lean as “whit-leather,” an old down home kind of term. Their earned-run averages were in midseason form. There was the new kid in from the Tigers in the Edgar Renteria deal, a sort of befuddling name, Jair Jurrjens, the Curacoan with befuddling stuff. Only he has performed like a veteran. And, of course, from behind the curtain, what’s with the mystery man, Mike Hampton? He could be ready, and if he were, he should be good for 15 games, then again…well, you know the rest of that soap opera.
Bullpen? Let’s see, Rafael Soriano, Peter Moylan, Blaine Boyer, Manny Acosta, Royce Ring, and a cast of stars so impressive that they felt comfortable trading Tyler Yates. And did I miss somebody? Oh, yes, Buddy Carlyle and Jeff Bennett, who can go either way. That didn’t include Mike Gonzales, the bullet-slinger who came in the Adam LaRoche deal, and whose surgically-repaired arm should be ready by June. Three cheers and a lusty huzzah!
Well, that was then. Soriano got in four innings before his arm balked. Moylan, the Australian sidearmer, will get a surgically-imposed vacation. Acosta gets an expense-paid trip to Richmond, sponsored by a 6.00-ERA. Boyer has rewarded his bosses, but the star of the outpost has been a 30-year-old Mexican, Jorge Campillo, whose spring training ERA was in double digits. All the others have been inconsistent, even Ring, whose mission is simply dealing with lefthanders. The bottom line is, there is plenty of work for them all.
For the first time in his life, Glavine has been on the disabled list, much to his chagrin. Yeah, Smoltz got his 3,000th strikeout, but in the process swallowed the bitter pill of defeat. Hudson is the puzzler now. Three innings one time, four innings another, and for lack of any other way to put it, just doesn’t look comfortable on the job.
Surely that gold-studded “pitcher-rich” cast of the spring hasn’t misplaced its magic, all at the same time. It hasn’t been the best launching party for Frank Wren, the ascendant to the general managership. The roster he put together looked like a contender in Florida. Baseball Digest, the magazine, projected the Braves no worse than second to the Phillies in the NL East. Yes, the five-star pitching staff of spring is showing effects of age, but it shows only in the box score, not in their physical presence. There’s something about all this that has the cruel mark of a hex, if you believe in such stuff.
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