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Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Braves have company with road woes
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Searching around for answers for the Braves road woes this morning? This unbelievably dichotomy going on of their 22-7 record at home, 6-17 on the road, after last night’s 3-2 loss to the Brewers.
I’ve made it as far as the USA Today in front of my hotel room door. Lo and behold there’s a story by Bob Nightengale about how this road losing bit is apparently a major league wide thing. (Thanks, Bob. Nice tidbit.)
He points out that entering games Wednesday, teams have won just 42.9 percent of their road games, which is the worst percentage since 1931 according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
He also writes that if five teams keep up this pace of playing .700 ball at home, it would be the most teams to do so since 1900. And nobody had a .700 home winning percentage last year. The LA Angels led with .667.
Terry Francona - whose Red Sox are 21-5 at home and 11-18 on the road - pointed out a lack of bullpen depth these days might be showing up for teams more on the road, since you use don’t use your setup guy and closer the same way.
What do you guys think? Is that it? That might have been a factor last night for the Braves, though failing to score after the second inning did them zero favors either.
Just having a look through the standings, and there are only six teams out there with winning records at home and on the road right now. Three of the six division leaders have losing records on the road (Tampa Bay, Chicago Cubs and Arizona.)
Here are the teams that are winning at home (listed first) and on the road:
*Chicago White Sox 13-9, 15-14 *LA Angels 16-11, 16-11 *Marlins 18-12, 12-9 Phillies 15-11, 15-13 Astros 15-9, 15-14 Cardinals 17-11, 13-12
(*Division leaders)
So there, see, maybe it’s everybody. Does that make the Braves feel any better? Don’t guess it should, should it? Five more games to see if the Braves can make it better this trip.
And speaking of this trip, it will be interesting to see 21-year-old center fielder Jay Bruce in a couple of days for the Reds, huh? ESPN played up his debut pretty well last night, and rightly so: 3-for-3 with a double, two RBIs, a stolen base, two walks and a shaving cream pie in the face. Kinda reminds me of Jeff Francoeur’s debut night. Remember those good old days?
The Braves will have a few games’ worth of a scouting report on him, unless they go back to the AAA files. There he was hitting everything - .364 with 10 homers 37 RBIs, eight stolen bases in 49 games for Louisville.
LEADOFF SPOT: Interesting talk about the leadoff spot in the Braves order yesterday on the Braves/MLB. Thought I’d crunch a few numbers and see what we get. They are all from this season:
Kelly Johnson in the leadoff spot: hitting .263 (30-for-114) with 8 doubles, 3 homers and 11 RBIs.
Kelly everywhere else: hitting .375 (18-for-48) with 3 doubles, 2 triples, 3 homers and 12 RBIs.
Yunel Escobar in the leadoff spot: hitting .250 (14-for-56) with one double, one homer and 7 RBIs. He’s walked once and struck out 10 times.
Yunel everywhere else: hitting .326 (43-for-132) with five doubles, one triple, three home runs and 15 RBIs. He has 16 walks and 17 strikeouts.
Gregor Blanco might be the more true leadoff hitter and as the Braves go forward following Matt Diaz’s knee injury, maybe he’ll get more of a shot up there. He’s only 1-for-6 as a hitter in the leadoff spot this year but he drew three walks, so funny how this happens but his on-base percentage in the leadoff spot is higher than the other two: Blanco .444, Johnson .328, and Escobar .295.
DIAZ: And speaking of Diaz, he’s headed to Atlanta today for an MRI on his posterior cruciate ligament after crashing left knee first into the outfield fence last night - hitting chain link and concrete.
And yes he had some thoughts on that:
“I have four stitches because I hit chain link and concrete,” Diaz said. “I never understood that. I know it’s so the pad doesn’t get wet but if you’re going to put a pad on a fence I don’t understand why it doesn’t go all the way down or at least within an inch or two of the ground because it seems to happen every now and again, somebody will do something stupid like I did.”
Not that he’s apologizing for playing hard. That’s how he plays. As for the knee, Diaz has torn his right PCL before when he was in A Ball and said even with a grade 2 tear he was out six weeks. We shall see what the report is. Not sure if he’ll be getting the MRI today or tomorrow. Just know it was really good news that it wasn’t ACL.
Diaz had been struggling bigtime at the plate but said he was just figuring some things out with Terry Pendleton. He broke an 0-for-12 streak at the plate with a single to left in his second at-bat Tuesday night.
“It stinks because three days ago, TP and I did some film study and my swing started to feel good,” Diaz said. “Hit a hard ball tonight to right and hit a line drive to left, then to go and do something like this. But it comes with kind of the reckless aggressive way I play.”
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