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Monday, June 26, 2006
The Bronx and random thoughts
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The first time the Braves played the Yankees in the postseason was Game 1 of the 1957 World Series at Yankee Stadium, when the winning pitcher was Whitey Ford and the loser was Warren Spahn. The Braves (Milwaukee version) won that Series 4-3.
The last time the two teams met in the postseason was Game 4 of the 1999 World Series at Yankee Stadium, when the winning pitcher was Roger Clemens and the loser was John Smoltz. The Yankees swept that series, after winning the last four games in the six-game 1996 World Series.
Eight straight World Series wins against the Braves for the Evil Empire, which as I correct this graph is kicking Tim Hudson’s tail tonight. Giambi already has two homers and the Yankees had a 5-0 lead after two innings.
Don’t know why I was bringing up the Yanks-Braves postseason stuff, other than it’s pretty cool to look at the World Series history of matchups between these franchises, with decisions going to pitchers the likes of Larsen, Berdette, Turley, Cone, Clemens, Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz … 24 games, 15 Yankees wins for those keeping score at home, including eight of 10 going to the Yanks since the Braves moved to Atlanta.
The Braves won the first two games of the 1996 World Series, and the Yankees have won eight World Series games in a row against them since.
Since I’ll go out on a limb and say they’re not going to be meeting in the World Series this October, the only time these teams are going to play games that matter anytime soon is the next three days at Yankee Stadium. Games that matter being a relative term. They certainly matter to the Yankees, locked in another fierce AL East race with the Red Sox and also the Blue Jays making folks uneasy.
And they matter to the Braves, who insist they haven’t given up their goal of a postseason berth, even if most fans and realistic observers know it’d take a tremendous and improbable turnaround for the Braves to get back in the race.
For now, they can feel good about what happened over the weekend at Tampa Bay, where the Braves took two of three for their first series win in June — the brain becomes numb amid all the recent losing, but think about how staggering that is, that the Braves were 3-19 in June before the Devil Rays series — and saw the emergence of a legitimate potential home-grown newcomer to step into their rich pitching tradition.
Chuck James is smallish (generously listed at 6 feet, looks to be about 5-10), but he’s got something. Got a few things, actually. Very tough, unbending, not awed, and a delivery that makes it hard for hitters to pick up his only-average-velocity fastball. That and a deadly change-up are already drawing comparisons to another physically underwhelming lefty, name of Glavine.
Sure, it’s silly to predict this soon that he’ll have anything approaching the career success of Glavine, who’s going to win 300 games and go to the Hall of Fame. But James has the makings for a whole lot of success, and he’s only 24.
He’s exactly what the Braves needed Sunday, and it just makes you wonder where they might be if he’d been in the rotation from the beginning of the season. No sense beating yourselves up wondering … but let’s do anyway.
Imagine if the Braves had been able to trade John Thomson at the end of spring training, before he got hurt literally the week he would have been likely dealt for Pittsburgh’s Craig Wilson or someone else. Of course, they still had a woefully underperforming Jorge Sosa and Horacio Ramirez and Kyle Davies on the way to long stints on the DL.
But for the Braves, it would’ve been nice to have James going deep into games every five days since opening week, helping to feed into the competitive one-up mentality of Hudson and Smoltz.
Oh, well, he’s there now. And Sosa is in the bullpen, where he’s actually pitched quite well in his first two appearances as the closer du jour. Maybe he’s a lot better suited to going out and letting it all hang out for an inning or two, instead of thinking so much or trying to outsmart hitters, or whatever the he** he was doing that made him so dreadful in the majority of his starts this season.
Is it too late? It sure seems so. They’re barely withing shouting distance of the wild card, considering the number of teams standing between the Braves and wild card leader Cincinnati (they are still the wild card leader, right?)
But if the Braves want to believe, then hey, let them have at it. I do know from the tone of e-mails, call-in shows and bloggers that the Braves will sure have to reel off a nice little run before they’ll be able to get many people back on their bandwagon.
They still have so many areas that need help, and several recent trade discussions have fallen through. For instance, Schuerholz was working on a deal the other day, which was the reason he was late to his book signing at Turner Field. The deal fell through at the last minute, from what I’m told. Don’t know which one it was, but I know they’ve had their antennae up and had discussions for everybody from reliever Salomon Torres to outfielders Carlos Lee (no longer available, it appears), Kevin Mench and speedy leadoff man Dave Roberts, and the aforementioned Wilson.
Will anything get done? Probably a small trade or two for relief help, but I don’t know if the Braves will be able or willing to pull off the kind of big moves they need to really make a postseason run.
What they need right now, first and foremost, is for Hudson and Smoltz to start producing the kind of quality starts that the two rotation leaders are expected to produce, to go 7-8 innings and allow 2-3 runs tops, not these early exits or three-walk innings (Hudson), the kind of starts that might’ve been acceptable in the first month of the season, but not now. And they need for Horacio Ramirez to keep doing what he’s done in all but one start since returning from the DL, and for James to show Sunday wasn’t a fluke and that he’s ready to make an impact.
They need for Giles to hit close to .300 with an OBP close to .375 the rest of the way, and for Renteria to get back to what he was doing until the last week’s mini-slump. They need Andruw to keep doing what he’s been doing the last few weeks and avoid any more of the droughts he had earlier.
They definitely need Chipper to revert to something resembling the Chipper that once carried this team for long stretches, and they need for Francoeur to hit half as well against right-handers and on the road as he does against lefties and at home, and LaRoche to pick it up now that he’s playing almost every day, and for Diaz to keep playing as if he’s actually a .350 hitter (and maybe he is; I have a feeling we’re going to find out).
They need a lot of things, including a series win against the Yankees.
