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Monday, April 28, 2008
Braves should consider six-man rotation
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I really didn’t want to be able to say “told you so” about this one, but it looks like I may have been right about sitting John Smoltz and Tom Glavine for a while.
After I posted a blog with that idea on April 14, the 42-year-old Glavine went on the DL for the first time in his career, and now the 41-year-old Smoltz may be following him.
In Sunday’s loss to the Mets, Smoltz’s fastball barely hit 90 mph and his slider didn’t have any snap to it. “I just never got comfortable,” he told Dave O’Brien. “I couldn’t command any one pitch that I wanted to, and had to throw a lot of off-speed pitches because my fastball wasn’t anywhere near where I needed it to be.”
He’ll have his sore shoulder checked out this week.
So let’s see where we stand: A shaky Tim Hudson went only three innings in Saturday’s loss, and Smoltz gutted out four on Sunday, meaning an already-overworked bullpen had to carry 11 innings over the past two games. Now Glavine is scheduled to start his first game off the DL tomorrow, and who knows how much the ‘pen might be needed in that one? Thank goodness today’s an off-day!
The bullpen has thrown almost 80 innings in 25 games because the starters have gone seven innings or more only five times, and rookie Jair Jurrjens is the only starter who’s pitched at least five innings in every start.
One radical idea is to follow the suggestion someone posted on here a while ago and switch to a six-man rotation (sorry I don’t remember who said that; please post and let me know). Adding Jeff Bennett or Jo-Jo Reyes — who’s looking good, according to RichBrave — would give the aging/ailing starters some extra rest between starts on a regular basis, and that certainly couldn’t hurt anything.
We know Bobby Cox would never consider it, but what do you think?
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