AJC > Sports > Braves > Blog > Archives > 2006 > June > 23
Friday, June 23, 2006
Too many L’s in bullpen
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As we’ve learned during this excruciating Braves season, they can’t spell “bullpen” without multiple L’s — literally and figuratively.
But as I began trying to quantify just how bad these relievers have been lately — they were a sieve in the early season, somewhat recovered for a while, now are worse than ever — I stumbled upon a rather startling set of numbers:
In Chad Paronto’s last 14 appearances he’s allowed 11 hits, 8 earned runs, 2 homers and 6 walks … and the Braves are 0-14. Yes, 0-14.
In Mike Remlinger’s last 10 appearances he’s 0-2 with a blown save, 11 hits, 5 earned runs and 5 walks allowed in 6-2/3 innings … and the Braves are 0-10. Yes, 0-10.
In Macay McBride’s 13 June appearances he’s allowed 6 hits, 6 earned runs and 10 walks (yikes) in 7 2/3 innings … and the Braves are 0-13. Yes, 0-13.
In Ken Ray’s last five appearances he’s allowed multiple baserunners in four … and the Braves are 0-5. Yes, 0-5.
And we haven’t even mentioned the name of a certain Canadian who’s on the DL.
Dial M for Murder. Dial Braves bullpen for Defeat.
Anyway, no need to keep rehashing the atrocities and crimes against baseball committed by Atlanta’s bullpen …
Oh, but why not? Just a couple other stats before moving on:
This is one you won’t see anywhere else. You’ll see the Braves’ overall staff ERA of 4.84, the second-worst in the NL, and their league-worst bullpen ERA (5.32), and their ungodly 15 blown saves in 30 opportunities, and perhaps it’ll be pointed out by some observers that the bullpen has only 24 more strikeouts (145) than walks (121).
But how about this one: In close and late situations (basically the seventh inning or later in tied or one-run games), Braves pitchers have allowed an almost incomprehensible .307 average and .395 on-base percentage. People, that’s simply outrageous. There is no way a team can contend for anything but cannon fodder with those figures.
The pathetic Royals (.300) and Pirates (.294) are the only other major league teams with a close-and-late opponents’ average above .285. The Tigers? They’re at .206 and .290 OBP, more than 100 points below the Braves in each category. The Mets? .231 and .316.
So many individuals have pitched in to help burn this season to the ground before the foundation was even completed. There’s the staggeringly underperforming Jorge Sosa — nice of you to come to training camp 20 pounds overweight after the Braves decided to count on you — and Marcus Giles, who couldn’t have picked a worse time to have his worst season.
There’s Chipper Jones, who has the third-worst fielding percentage by a major league third baseman and has been such a non-factor in the important No. 3 spot in the batting order most nights that it’s easy to forget the 1999 MVP had eight consecutive 100-RBI seasons through 2003. In his past 24 games, he’s hit .216 (19-for-88) with three homers, 10 RBIs and 25 strikeouts (unheard of for Chipper most of his career).
There’s the “platoon” work of Brian Jordan, who was supposed to be the right-handed hitting 1B complement — hey, that’s what the Braves projected, not me — to replace Julio Franco. Uh, well, Jordan was 7-for-44 (.159) against lefties before returning to the disabled list for the 13th time in his career and sixth time since 2002. He was also a team-worst 3-for-20 with runners in scoring position, not exactly the image of the clutch-hitting veteran the Braves tried to have us conjure.
Oh, it’s bad. It’s really, really bad.
They don’t have a consistent home-run threat — Andruw will hit 40 or more, but at any given time will go three weeks without a homer, and Francoeur will hit 25-35, but do it while batting barely .200 on the road and having an on-base percentage well below .300 overall and currently at .225 — .225!!! — on the road. At what price home runs?
And despite all that and more — John Thomson pitches just well enough to draw trade interest, but is just injury-prone enough to quash trades not once but twice; Langerhans has taken a big step back this year and doesn’t appear capable of playing nicked up — it all comes back to the bullpen, in my opinion.
Here’s what I mean: Early on in the season, when the Braves were leading the NL in most offensive categories (look it up, I’m not kidding, they were) they kept losing one-run games when the bullpen would choke on a lead. The hitters would say the politically correct, “It’ll all work out, I’m sure later on they’ll pick us up when we’re not hitting.” But it kept happening. And happening.
Eventually, I got the feeling that the continued wasting of leads wore down the hitters mentally. They stand around in the field now with a look of “Oh, God, what else can go wrong?” They don’t even resemble the swaggering Braves of the past.
Even Chipper doesn’t have any of the cocksure demeanor that made him such a target for road crowds. At this point, will they even bother chanting “Lar-ry, Lar-ry” at Shea? Probably, but only because they’re at a filthy ballpark in Queens. Chipper, where has the Kelly Leak in you gone? Is it forever lost?
John Schuerholz made a huge, huge mistake with the construction of this team. Actually, he’s made it a few years in a row, but only this year has it undermined their entire season and turned the Braves into a laughingstock. The past couple of years, he got away with it because the Braves won the division anyway.
His mistake: For more than a dozen years, the Braves had one of the best, if not THE best, starting rotations in baseball. And all those years, or most of them, they did their bullpen on the cheap with scrap parts that somehow came together just enough, and a few years far more than just enough, to serve their purpose. All it took in those years where the Braves would get 7-8 innings out of their esteemed and legendary starters four out of five days, all it took from the bullpen was a couple of decent setup guys and a serviceable closer.
They didn’t have to have six good bullpen arms, because they didn’t have to get 4-5 innings out of their bullpen two or three times a week. Now, when they need six good bullpen arms, something like we just saw from Toronto, the Braves have, well, maybe one or two.
This year, when Sosa has been woeful and Thomson dinged up, when Davies ripped his groin apart and Horacio sprained a knee in his first start and missed nearly two months, when rookie relievers Joey Devine and Blaine Boyer both got hurt early and John Foster never threw a pitch, this year the Braves have had to rely on journeyman like Paronto, Yates, Moylan, Ray, etc.
Not to mention Reitsma, who struggled mightily as the closer more often than not last season, but still, somehow, the Braves decided they could afford not to overspend on a Todd Jones or Bob Wickman or Kyle Farnsworth last winter, because they had Reitsma to fall back on. (The tear is coming down Braves fan’s eye now, like the Native American in the don’t litter commercials of my youth).
The mistake was thinking they could get by once again with a bargain-basement bullpen, a ‘pen with only two relievers making more than $500,000 and neither of them (Remlinger and Reitsma) coming off a season that should’ve given the Braves the confidence to rely heavily on them.
Oh, well. Live and learn. The season’s toast, and the Braves have a worse record than the Devil Rays in late June.
Come on, kids, who wants to go to Tooner Field!!
