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Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Braves’ bats taking a while to heat up
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Everyone has been up in arms (pun intended) about the Braves’ pitching woes, and for good reason. It’s never a good thing to have so many aches and pains all at once, not to mention this early in the season.
But an argument can be made that pitching wouldn’t be the issue it is if the bats weren’t as cold as they’ve been. The Braves have outscored opponents 37-10 in their five wins (averaging 7.4 runs a game), but a whopping six of their eight losses have been by a single run. And all of them except the 12-11 loss to the Pirates in the second game of the season and the 5-4 loss to the Nats on Sunday could be characterized as pitchers’ duels, with the Braves averaging 2.25 runs in those games.
I don’t want to get too statistical — you can make numbers say almost anything you want — but there is something there. And that something is that it seems to be feast or famine so far this year.
While it’s possible that the guys have just run into some outstanding pitching, that’s not the most likely conclusion since those one-run losses came against the Pirates, Nats and Rockies. What’s more likely is that outside of Chipper Jones (who’s leading the league with a .415 average), they haven’t gotten into a groove yet for some reason — maybe weather or travel conditions? They’re hitting .312 as a team at home and only .232 away, with 37 RBIs in five home games vs. 27 in eight road games. Whatever the reason, they’re not consistently getting on base early in innings or coming through with clutch hits.
Tim Hudson, Tom Glavine and Jair Jurrjens have all had quality starts wasted (including Jurrjens’ effort against the Marlins in last night’s 4-0 loss) because the offense couldn’t get anything going, and a few of the bullpen’s missteps wouldn’t have been nearly as costly if a few more runs had been pushed across.
My theory is that they’ll be fine once the bats get started — Mark Teixeira isn’t going to hit .196 all year, Brian McCann will get his share of clutch hits, and Jeff Francoeur is not a .264 hitter (and here’s hoping Matt Diaz cuts down on those uncharacteristic strikeouts). That’ll give the pitching staff a little more breathing room, and it’s not like anyone’s running away with the NL East.
What do you think? Should Bobby Cox make any lineup changes to shake things up or should he stay the course?
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