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Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2008 > June > 11
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Don’t expect Braves to panic
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sometimes good plans go bad. Sometimes it’s just not your year. It happens to all teams in all sports, and when it does the usual response is to roll up the corporate sleeves and try even harder next time.
That said, this Braves season has always seemed a last stand. By banking so heavily on aging pitchers and a probable lame duck of a first baseman, there was never any assurance that 2009 would look nearly so promising. This roster, the first of Frank Wren’s construction, was built to win now.
Alas, the Braves awoke Wednesday below .500 for the first time in five weeks, 6 1/2 games out of first place. They have enough time to recover, but they might not have enough players.
Sixteen days ago, this correspondent asserted that the Braves would be in first place by the Fourth of July. The assumption was that the outbreak of infirmity was surely near its end. The Braves have since lost four more players to the disabled list and have seen Chipper Jones miss games and Rafael Soriano reduced to occasional duty and Jair Jurrjens sprain his ankle on the dugout steps.
With all hands on deck, this team appeared the class of the NL East. Alas, it will never have all hands on deck. John Smoltz won’t throw another pitch this season, if ever. Tom Glavine, who hadn’t been on the DL until 2008, was just placed on it again, this time more ominously (sore elbow). And, with Mike Hampton doing his never-ending rehab, we see the flaw in the Braves’ design: A lot of old guys had to pitch awfully well to make this work.
And now the Braves arrive at a critical juncture: Wren will be tempted to make a massive move to save his team, but there wouldn’t seem to be a move to make. Trade Mark Teixeira and it opens a hole in a lineup missing two starting outfielders. (And if you trade Teixeira after only 11 months, weren’t those five prospects sent to Texas for nothing?) So what’s left to try?
“We’re not going to panic and do something we regret,” Wren said Wednesday, and then he allowed that Charlie Morton, the scourge of Class AAA, will be summoned to make a start this weekend. Given that the Braves have taken such pains to protect Morton, who has been in the organization since 2002 but who only became a winner last August, would this be a sign of … panic?
No, Wren said. “We’ve thought for a few weeks that he was ready when the opportunity presented itself. We’re not rushing him. He has earned the right to be in the majors.”
Still, it would be wrong to view Morton as a savior. Just because old pitchers break down isn’t reason to put pressure on younger ones. On the contrary, it’s reason to tread softly. As good as Jurrjens — a splendid Wren acquisition — has been, he has yielded 28 hits and 14 earned runs in his most recent 15 innings. Jurrjens is 22 and has never worked more than 144 innings in a professional season; he’s on pace to log 190.
For too long the Braves failed to develop young starters to replace aging incumbents. Now they have Jurrjens and Morton, who should be winning big five years after Smoltz and Glavine are called to Cooperstown. Nothing that happens, or doesn’t happen, this summer is as important as the cultivation of those young arms.
“The season’s not over,” Wren said. “If you get healthy and get on a roll, you can get close enough to feel like you’re in it. At the same time, you have to balance what’s good for the short term and the long term.”
This might well be the last stand of the Braves as we’ve come to know them, but if cultivated properly a new band of Braves will arise. The worst thing Wren can do is imperil the future for the sake of these next four months. The good news: He seems to realize as much.
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