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 > July > 03
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Is it time to trade Teixeira?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If you’re a Braves fan, which would you rather see: The team reach the All-Star break as it is now (six games back), or the team go 3-7 over these next 11 days and fall 10 games behind as of July 13?
Those are radically different scenarios. At six games back, the Braves would still feel as Chipper Jones suggested Tuesday: That they’re still in the division race and, given all that has gone wrong, their best days remain ahead.
At 10 games back, a colder sort of reality would begin to set in, and the organization’s thoughts would to turn to the kind of cold-blooded move this team hasn’t had to make since it dealt Dale Murphy to Philadelphia in 1990. The club that’s always looking to buy at the trading deadline would have to consider selling Mark Teixeira.
A stipulation: Having loaded up on veterans in what was seen as a kind of last stand, the Braves will reach the point of surrender only grudgingly. As long as Bobby Cox thinks they have a chance - and Cox always thinks his team has a chance - Frank Wren will be reluctant to concede anything. But sometimes concession is the only prudent course. If Teixeira is going to leave anyway (and he surely is), why keep him for two meaningless months?
The Braves have been buoyed by the recent stream of returnees, a strange sensation in this deflating season: Mike Gonzalez is back, and so is Mark Kotsay, and Chipper Jones didn’t have to go on the disabled list and Yunel Escobar started Wednesday’s game. And yet again we’re hearing that He Whose Name Cannot Be Uttered Lest He Tweak Another Muscle is looking good in his rehab starts.
That’s the good news. The bad is that the Braves have lost twice to Philly and are again headed south in the standings. These next 11 days could well determine the course of the final 2 1/2 months. Go 7-3 and Teixeira figures to be a Brave all summer. Go 3-7 and he could (and should) be gone.
Permalink | Comments (266) | Post your comment | Categories: Braves/MLB
