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Friday, August 15, 2008
Is this the end for Glavine?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When Tom Glavine left Thursday’s loss to Cubs after giving up seven runs in four innings, he might as well have handed a baton with “Braves pitching” on it to Jair Jurrjens, who will start tonight’s series opener against the Giants.
Because it sure felt like a changing-of-the-guard moment to me. Oh, sure, plenty of signs before this indicated that Glavine was probably done, that he might not have enough left in that arm to finesse his way to more wins to add to career total of 305.
But long-time observers have learned not to completely count out these wily old dudes — Glavine, Smoltz, Maddux — until they’re officially done. And with Glavine, you had to wonder if perhaps he’d come back a little refreshed after nine weeks on the DL, though you also had to know 40-something athletes don’t exactly heal magically, unless they find a fountain of HGH … er, fountain of youth.
And fortunately for those who care about their memories of the great Braves Big Three, there has never, ever been any link, no whispered suspicion, nothing to link them to any of the stuff that probably helped a few other 40-something ballplayers stay at the top of their profession at an age when history, and human physiology, says they should have been fading.
But anyway, back to Glavine. Like many, I thought it was a good idea for the Braves, who didn’t have $15 million in their budget to spend on a pitcher last winter, to instead bring Glavine back to Atlanta for one year and $8 mill.
Say what you will about his age and final few terrible starts with the Mets, but the facts remained: he’d never been on the DL in his career, had pitched 200 innings last season, had won 13 games last season (third consecutive season and 15th time in past 17 seasons that he had at least that many wins), and had made at least 32 starts in every 162-game major league season since 1990.
But now, the evidence suggests that Glavine is near the end of his Hall of Fame career, at least in terms of being a viable, innings-eating starter who gives his team a chance to win most times he gets the ball.
Maybe he’ll reel off a few wins in the last six weeks of the season and feel like coming back. Perhaps he just needed to shake off the rust last night, and maybe his starts before he landed on the DL for the second time this season should be dismissed because he was pitching with a barking elbow.
Still, it’s hard for me to watch a great pitcher struggle like he has recently, and realistically, it’s hard to be positive about his chances of returning to anything even remotely similar to the pitcher he was before.
For his sake, if he wishes to continue pitching and feels like he can do it, I hope I’m wrong. I really do. He’s absolutely as classy and accommodating, not to mention intelligent, as any player I’ve covered. Oh, yeah, extremely intelligent.
Folks, here’s a secret: We sometimes have to clean up a quote a bit, remove an excessive “you know” or two, or edit a long-winded response with elipses (…) to make it readable or make it fit a 20-inch story without bogging everything down.
Not with Glavine. Dude is more articulate than most folks who make their living as public speakers. You take a quote from him and just plop it into your story, word-for-word, usually without need for paraphrasing, since he generally says it better than the writer can.
Alas, intelligence and guile alone aren’t enough when the physical skills fade and the stuff isn’t there anymore. The great Maddux still has tremendous movement on his pitches, and some semblance of the pinpoint control he had at his peak.
What I’ve seen recently from Glavine is a diminished fastball, which makes it hard for him to be effective with any of his other pitches, most of which aren’t as sharp or consistent as they were.
And if the umpires aren’t giving him pitches a few inches off the plate, well, it’s probably going to be a long night. These days, umps don’t give that strike like they used to.
That line between fading-but-effective and fading-and-not can be a fine one, particularly when pitching for a struggling team.
Consider that in 62 starts for the Mets, from the beginning of the 2006 season until Sept. 8, 2007, Glavine went 28-13 with a 3.88 ERA and .268 opponents’ average in 380-1/3 innings, averaging more than six innings per start in that span. His team was 42-20 in those games.
In 17 starts since then, Glavine is 2-6 with a 6.42 ERA and .312 opponents’ average in 81-1/3 innings, averaging just over 4-2/3 innings per start. His teams are 3-14 in that stretch.
Let’s hope Glavine, if he wishes to continue pitching, knows something about his body, knows there’s enough left to do the job well.
Kotsay’s resurgence: If any contending team was on the fence about trying to trade for Mark Kotsay, the center fielder’s 5-for-5 night Thursday, including the rarity of hitting for the cycle - single, double, triple, homer - might well have been the impetus to get a deal done.
Trade interest had been minimal, in terms of teams willing to give up anything that might help the Braves right away or a decent prospect that might help them in the future.
But if the Rays or another team decide that Kotsay might help for the final stretch, that could change quickly. Don’t know if Kotsay has been put on or cleared waivers yet, but if not, and if he were put on waivers and got down to the contenders, Red Sox could put in a claim to block and keep him from falling to Rays.
And if Sox wouldn’t offer anything of value in a trade for him, Braves might pull him back. No sense just giving him away, though some here on the old blog act as though Braves should take anything, absolutely anything, to get him out of town and get, say, Josh Anderson up here and in center field.
I gotta say, I don’t follow the logic. It’s like, OK, the Braves were woeful these past four games, and Kotsay has been one of the few bright spots, really hitting the ball well after struggling in that first week back from the DL.
Kotsay has hit .359 (37-for-103) with 10 extra-base hits, 14 RBI, a .400 OBP and .505 slugging percentage in 27 games since July 8, after going 1-for-20 in his first six games off the DL at the beginning of July.
He hit .317 with 20 extra-base hit and 33 RBI in his last 66 games before going on the DL for the bulging disc in his back.
If you don’t count that six-game stretch after he came off the DL, he’s hit .329 with 30 extra-base hits (seven homers) and 47 RBI in his past 93 games.
And now, a few (or maybe it’s just one or two) of you sound asif you’d rather the Braves dump him for whatever, so they can be even harder to watch the rest of the season. That they lose 12-2 instead of 12-7, regardless of whether there is any serious trade interest in Kotsay or not.
If Frank Wren could have gotten something decent for him in a trade, don’t you think he’d have done it by now? Maybe he will after Kotsay’s performance last night, including his second home run in a week (two of only three homers by Braves outfielders in four weeks, the other by Jeff Francoeur last night).
But in the interim, why would you want to see spray-hitting Josh Anderson, good as he’s been hitting in Richmond, why would you want to see him manning center field instead of Kotsay? I mean, if the Braves can do no better than Anderson for next season in center, they’re not aiming high.
And if they were going to go with Anderson, or Schafer, don’t you think September and all of spring training are enough time to evaluate? What good would it be to have Anderson play 10 more games now? It’s not like he’s not played in the majors. He spent nearly a month with the Astros last September, played plenty, and played all spring with the Braves.
They know what he can do. Fully aware of that. He’s not 21, you know. He’s been around a while. They know what he can do.
On top of all that, Kotsay would like to play for Atlanta again next season if they want him back and he doesn’t get a much better offer closer to his Southern California home. He loves it here. So why dump him for nothing, if there’s a chance you’d want to re-sign him?
Sure, you can bid for him as a free agent whether he finishes the season here or not. But why have him go play somewhere else and have that team realize what a great presence he is in the clubhouse, etc, if you (Braves) have any intention of bringing him back?
Again, if you can get something for him now, something more than just a fring prospect or minor-league body, then I’d certainly understand doing it. But you don’t just give him away. Makes no sense.
It’s bad enough, losing so much down the stretch. But do you really want the Braves to be worse than they are, to have no chance at all most nights for the next weeks weeks because they’ve got only a few proven players in the lineup?
Boyer’s woes: Blaine Boyer leads the majors with 65 relief appearances. But after posting a 3.63 ERA and .228 opponents’ average in 43 appearances through June, Boyer has an 8.35 ERA and .306 opponents’ average in his past 22 appearances, including a 13.50 ERA and .382 OA in his past 11.
It’s not such a great thing when you have a reliever who leads the majors in appearances, but has a 5.00 ERA, which is where Boyer’s has risen to.
Sort of like - though not as bad — as Francoeur batting just .191 with runners in scoring position, worst among Braves regulars, and having 21 more at-bats in those situations (131) than anyone else on the team.
A fitting tune, perhaps: The fine singer-songwriter Chuck Brodsky grew up in Philly — smart man, he now lives in the mountains outside Ashville, N.C. — and said Steve Carlton inspired this song, but that it was not specifically about him. Rather, it’s about any generic, fading pitcher who once was great.
Braves fans can only hope that’s not the case with Glavine, as signs indicate.
”LEFTY” by Chuck Brodsky
Lefty’s in the minors, got his shoulder packed in ice
He’s trying to hang on there against all that good advice
Used to throw that sinker but that sinkerball went south
And then they started calling him for going to his mouth
Lefty holds the record for most strike-outs in a game
Once upon a time he really threw a ball of flame
Some wish he’d gone gracefully when his time finally came
They put Lefty on waivers but nobody laid a claim
It’s a Godalmighty shame — he got too old to play the game
Where he made himself a name — and they call him Lefty
Lefty wore the pinstripes for a good number of years _ The bleacher bums all loved him — they were tanked up with their beer
He used to throw that heater, but the radar does not lie
And now when Lefty lays one up there you can kiss that thing goodbye
It’s a Godalmighty shame — he got too old to play the game
Where he made himself a name - and they call him Lefty
Now they’re calling him from Cooperstown — out on the bullpen phone
Some little field in Bumfolk where the grass is overgrown
It’s the bottom of the 7th and a runner just got on
And they’re calling for a lefty … but Lefty’s not the one
There’s a capital L in Lefty, so say it with respect_
He’s Senor Lefty down in Mexico & he’s Lefty in Quebec
He could smoke you, he could fool you, throw a curve around your neck
He could paint one on the corners, he could fill the upper deck
It’s a Godalmighty shame — he got too old to play the game
Where he made himself a name — and they call him Lefty
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