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Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Of Smoltz and other offseason matters….
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
While some people are busying making more out of John Smoltz’s recent comments to Atlanta magazine than the comments warranted, I thought I’d share with you a couple of recent conversations I had with GM Frank Wren that I found revealing.
But first, if you missed it: Smoltz told a writer from the magazine that if he gets through this grueling rehab from shoulder surgery and finds he can pitch again, and if the Braves don’t make him an offer, the 41-year-old (42 in May) said he’d definitely be ready to pitch for another team.
Smoltz also told the mag, “Make no mistake, I am absolutely, 100 percent committed to playing the rest of my career for the Atlanta Braves. But this can’t be my only option. … I may not be in the [Braves’] plans. It’s no given right, where I’ve spent 21 years here and [so] they owe me whatever I want.”
Folks, think about it: That’s all pretty obvious. He’s not putting in countless, painful hours trying to pitch again, only to let his fate be determined by the Braves. If they don’t want him back, and he can still pitch, of course he’d entertain offers to do so elsewhere.
Ask yourself, though: What team would be more inclined than the Braves to give Smoltz an offer this winter before knowing if he can even pitch, something we probably won’t know until the spring?
He’s said since surgery that he faced a lot of questions, the biggest two being whether he’d be able to make it back to pitch again, and then what kind of contract he’d get and from whom in 2009, since his 200-inning vesting option obviously for next season obviously didn’t vest.
Wren has said several times that it’s too early to know how the Braves are going to approach Smoltz and Tom Glavine (also coming back from elbow surgery, and hopeful of being ready for spring training), because the team first wants a better idea of whether either or both think he’ll be able to pitch.
I mean, you’re probably not going to give either guy a guaranteed contract if there’s no reason to believe they’ll be able to go to the mound again.
For a team with as many holes to fill as the Braves have to fill this winter, and with as much trouble with pitching as they’ve had the past couple of years, they shouldn’t count on either of those guys filling a need next year. You can hope one or both come around and are able to do so, but you have to make moves this winter without counting on it happening.
At the same time, I’d guess the Braves are probably going to need to say something sooner than they might want to, particularly regarding Smoltz. I mean, might be time to say something along the lines of, if John Smoltz can pitch, or believes he’ll be able to pitch, this winter we will certainly let him know we’d like to have him back and hope to work out a fair offer for both sides.
It’s a sensitive issue, the Braves have to realize. You don’t mistreat a career Brave who’s done all that Smoltz has for this team. If he can pitch, or there’s a reasonable chance he can, you make him a reasonable offer, perhaps see if he’ll take a conditional offer with a greatly increased salary should he make the 25-man roster.
But anyway, I’m not telling the Braves anything they don’t already know. They know how the vast majority of their fans feel about Smoltz. And no, I’m not forgetting Glavine, who’s also spent most of his Hall of Fame career with the Braves and has to be dealt with differently than just any veteran.
As I’ve said before, Braves can be creative if they want to be with these guys. And they should be. If you have to allocate funds above and beyond what the payroll would be without them in 2009, then you do it. It’s not a dangerous precedent, because I don’t think any 300-game winners or 200-win, 150-save, 3,000-strikeout guys are going to be coming along in the next decade or so who spend all or most of their career with the Braves before having season-ending injuries in the last year of their contracts.
Anyway, I’ll talk to Smoltz and hopefully Wren at the ballpark today.
Now, about those recent conversations with the GM…
Wren said a few things in a couple of interviews in the past few weeks, and for whatever reason I’ve not used these quotes yet. Should have, but here they are. They work well now, anyway.
A few weeks ago, when the Braves were settling into their season-is-over mode, Wren talked about how they don’t view this as a multi-year major rebuilding project, but rather a scenario where they can make a few big additions and be back in playoff contention next season.
He was asked about what he liked most about the future of the organization:
“The thing that makes me most optimistic is when I see the depth we have in the minor league system,” he said, adding that most of those top prospects were still at least a year or two away.
As for immediate needs, he said, “We’ve got some work to do in the outfield.”
And while I don’t want to make more of this than it might be, it’s definitely worth mentioned, this perhaps revealing quote from Wren on the right field situation: “If we don’t do something else, I’ve got to believe Jeff Francoeur will bounce back.”
Hey, just telling you what he said.
In another recent conversation, he said, “We’ve got our own pitchers, but they’re just a little young yet. So we need to make sure we have some established starters to lead the way. We know we’re going to have to add some veteran starting pitching, but I’m not going to get into specifics.”
And in that same conversation, when I asked him about a timetable for any decisions on Smoltz and Glavine and on acquiring pitchers this winter, he said, “It may take a while. There’s no way of knowing, right now, how quickly we might make moves. It might not be until December or January.”
By that, I’m sure he meant if the free-agent market takes a while to firm up this winter, if it becomes one of those domino-falling scenario where lesser pitchers have to waiting for top guys to sign before, and if teams don’t decide who they’ll make available for trade until seeing what the market is like, etc.
You just never know, entering an offseason, how soon clubs are going to start getting active. And as aggressive as you might want to be, it sometimes is impossible to make any real moves until other clubs are ready, until someone else makes the first move and the prices start to get set for free agents, all those sorts of variables.
It’s worth noting the GM meetings are real early this year, just a few days after the World Series. That’s in part because so few GMs now go to the World Series the way they used to. Since they’re not at the Series discussing potential deals, feeling each other out for ideas and intentions, they want to get the ball rolling at the GM meetings, so they’re a week or two sooner than they’ve been in the past.
Of course, most of the real action probably won’t start until the Winter Meetings in the first week of December, out in Vegas.
Gotta be the tape: Kelly Johnson says the secret to his recent hitting surge is the “power tape” that Greg Norton taught him how to wrap around his wrists. I think he was kidding. But he might have been half-serious, too.
How many more must the surgeons cut? OK, that was rhetorical and tongue-in-cheek, but seriously, the number of surgeries in baseball has gotten ridiculous.
It’s one thing for Tom Brady to have a season-ending knee injury in the first game of the NFL season — it is the NFL, after all, not just a contact sport but a collision sport. But in baseball? Twenty years ago, or 10 years ago, it was still a really big deal when a prominent pitcher had a season-ending and/or career-threatening arm injury.
I remember covering the Marlins when Alex Fernandez’s shoulder broke down, and it was a big deal, a story I hadn’t written. Now, it feels like me and just about every other baseball beat writer is doing that story a couple times a year - or a couple of times a month, in the case of these Braves.
Based on the rash of shoulder and elbow surgeries to prominent major leaguers in the past year or two, I can only believe that must be pushing the limit to what the human body can withstand. (This is based on know scientific study, no figures, no research, just observations.)
Plenty of those guys have pushed that limit through performance-enhancing drugs, but I’m sure many others got there simply through every-evolving forms of fitness training and conditioning.
Regardless, they reached it. And the human body ain’t evolving quickly enough to avoid this story repeating itself, over and over.
While there have always been injuries and surgeries in baseball, it’s reached near-epidemic proportions these days, wouldn’t you folks agree? Or no? I mean, it’s like a team is lucky these days if it gets through the season without at least a couple of prominent pitchers lost to injuries requiring surgery.
Then there are the Braves, who’ve lost the vast majority of their key pitchers to season-ending surgeries.
OK, that was just something I was thinking about. No real call to action or anything, just an observation. Seems like it’s getting almost safer to have your kid become a quarterback rather than a pitcher.
Oh, but the career longevity is still a lot longer, on average. And if he’s left-handed, well, forget it. Put a baseball in that tyke’s hand as soon as he can grip it.
Speaking of careers…. I’m guessing Elmer Dessens is near the end of his, at least the major league portion. That is, if the numbers are any indication.
In 20 major league games (five starts) since the beginning of the 2007 season, he has a 9.00 ERA and .340 opponents’ average, with 53 hits (seven homers) and 16 walks allowed in 37 innings.
In his past five big-league appearances, including two last season and three since the Braves signed him out of the Mexican league, Dessens has a 24.30 ERA and .452 opponents’ average, with 14 hits and 18 runs allowed in 6-2/3 innings, and twice as many walks (eight) as strikeouts.
Diversions: After months with only a couple of TV shows worth watching, it’s great to have some quality series up and running again. Thrilled The Shield is back, but severely bummed it’s the final season. Love the new Mad Men and Prison Break episodes. Dug the premiere of Sons of Anarchy,, and looking forward to Rescue Me starting back up. And, of course, can’t beat The Daily Show in times like these, and we’ve got The Office and 30 Rock returning soon. Good stuff.
New CDs by Calexico, Patty Loveless and Okkervil River today, and new Metallica in a few days. I know plenty of folks are curious and anxious about the latter.
OK, let’s turn to Ol’ Neil to close this thing out:
“DON’T LET IT BRING YOU DOWN” by Neil Young
Old man lying
by the side of the road
With the lorries rolling by,
Blue moon sinking
from the weight of the load
And the building scrapes the sky,
Cold wind ripping
down the alley at dawn
And the morning paper flies,
Dead man lying
by the side of the road
With the daylight in his eyes.
Don’t let it bring you down
It’s only castles burning,
Find someone who’s turning
And you will come around.
Blind man running
through the light
of the night
With an answer in his hand,
Come on down
to the river of sight
And you can really understand,
Red lights flashing
through the window
in the rain,
Can you hear the sirens moan?
White cane lying
in a gutter in the lane,
If you’re walking home alone.
Don’t let it bring you down
It’s only castles burning,
Just find someone who’s turning
And you will come around.
Don’t let it bring you down
It’s only castles burning,
Just find someone who’s turning
And you will come around.
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