AJC > Blog > Archives > 2008 > April > 17
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Baseball gods have it in for Braves so far
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If the breaks really do even out in baseball, the Braves are due for one heck of a torrid streak. Last night, they hit into three inning-ending double plays en route to their seventh one-run loss in the 15 games they’ve played so far.
To say things aren’t going their way on this current road trip would be putting it mildly. In fact, Dave O’Brien quoted Matt Diaz as saying, “I don’t know how bad hell is, but I’d call it the trip from hell so far.”
Case in point: Tuesday night, Chipper Jones blooped two singles on the right-field foul line and then later with two on, he hit his hardest ball of the game — a broken-bat liner right at left fielder Josh Willingham. Or last night, when Mark Kotsay fired a rocket that should have been over the head of the shortstop into left — except that the Marlins shortstop is 6-foot-3.
The number of at-‘em balls these guys are firing off is unbelievable … the baseball gods have certainly had it in for them so far. So what do you do?
In yesterday’s Chop Chick blog, Bill in VA posted: “I’ve played a lot of low level baseball & coached a lot of it too. Baseball is baseball and when there’s no hitting there are techniques I like to see used to shake the game up a little, like drop down a bunt or 2 straight bunts, to get the pitcher moving around and out of his groove. I wonder why I don’t see more of this in mlb. There’s other stuff too; Bobby knows!”
I agree that there are definitely things Bobby could do. Heck, I wouldn’t mind seeing him draw the lineup out of hat just to shake things up and keep the players loose. That’s been done before, and how cool would it be to see John Smoltz hit leadoff tonight? If he got on and helped manufactured a run, no one near the Braves clubhouse would ever hear the end of it.
OK, I”m not entirely serious about pulling the lineup out of a hat, but I do think Bobby plays things too by the book and tends to stay the course way too long, which is partly where the Braves got their “buttoned-down, businesslike” reputation. What are your ideas to help guys get out of the rut they seem to be in?
Side note: I’m trying really hard not to worry about Tim Hudson’s “dead” arm, as Bobby called it.
Permalink | Comments (83) | Post your comment | Categories: Chop Chick
.JPG)
-1.JPG)
Services »
