This blog has moved! Yes, already!
As of Thursday, Feb. 12, this little blog has relocated to a new home on AJC.com. It’s the same newspaper, the same Web site and the same writer (feel free to groan) — there’s just a new URL.
New features: Bigger type, more graphics, comments that load 10 times faster and a larger and more recent photo that makes me look pretty doggone old. I think you’ll like it (the blog, not the photo). But I am, as we know too well, often wrong.
Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2008 > June > 15
Sunday, June 15, 2008
There’s still life in these Braves
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Braves are engaged in a holding action. They sat 6-1/2 games behind the division leader on Father’s Day. If they’re that close or closer on July 14, Day 1 of the All-Star break, they’ll have cause to believe they can still win the NL East. Or, failing that, the wild card.
But July 14 is a ways away. Speaking the day after John Smoltz had surgery and Tom Glavine went back on the disabled list and Jair Jurrjens sprained his ankle on the clubhouse steps, Frank Wren stressed the need to get some notion as to “how long guys are going to be out.” He has a better idea today.
Smoltz is gone for the year but maybe not forever. Glavine is gone until — Wren’s prognosis — “sometime around the All-Star break or thereafter.” Jurrjens seems OK. Mike Gonzalez has yielded one earned run in four rehab appearances with Richmond. Rafael Soriano is now officially the bullpen equivalent of Mike Hampton. And Charlie Morton is 1-0 in the big leagues.
Because the rotation has been in enforced flux since March, we on the periphery keep expecting Wren to swing a deal for an established arm. (Greg Maddux is the most popular name.) Speaking on a teleconference Friday, the general manager said something fairly instructive: “Starting pitching really hasn’t been our problem. It’s more a lack of hitting.”
That’s true. Even a cobbled-together rotation — Tim Hudson and Jurrjens and Jorge Campillo and Jo-Jo Reyes and now Morton — has given the Braves enough chances to win. They just haven’t availed themselves. They’ve hit for average (still second-best in the National League) but to increasingly lesser effect (seventh in RBIs). This can partly be traced to the absences of Mark Kotsay and Matt Diaz, but more has to do with the tepid yields of Mark Teixeira and Jeff Francoeur.
Yes, Teixeira leads the Braves with 48 RBIs, but that places him only 10th among National League hitters. Given that he bats behind the major-league leader in average and on-base percentage, Teixeira ought to be fashioning a massive season. (Akin to 2005, when he hit 43 homers and drove in 144 runs with Texas.) And he has, it should be said, perked up this past month. But he’s still hitting .276, nearly 10 percentage points off his career average. He’s better than this.
As for Francoeur: As a rookie in 2005 he hit .300 with 14 homers and 45 RBIs in 70 games; through 68 games this season he’s hitting .256 with eight homers and 38 RBIs. He’s better than this, or should be.
As dire as these past two weeks have been, there’s still life in these Braves. The first two games in Anaheim showed as much. If Chipper Jones can stay healthy; if Teixeira and Francoeur can deliver at a higher rate; if this crazy-quilt rotation can keep clicking off quality starts; if Gonzalez can return before the bullpen collapses from the strain … then this team should be close enough a month from now for Wren to provide some sort of bolstering acquisition.
For now, though, it’s wait and see. With uncertainty rampant, there’s no sense making a big move yet. Why trade for veteran help if, four weeks hence, you find yourselves 10 games back and newly inclined to deal Teixeira before Scott Boras tells him to leave?
But this much we know: The organizational mind-set is to never give up on anything. John Schuerholz didn’t, and Wren seems similarly inclined. The Braves traded for Bob Wickman in July 2006 and Teixeira last summer; each time they were in third place, and each time they finished third, but not for lack of trying.
If this team can stand its ground until the break, it will feel really good about its chances. And at some point the plague of injuries has to abate. Doesn’t it?
Permalink | Comments (83) | Post your comment | Categories: Braves/MLB
