AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2005 > October > 09
Sunday, October 9, 2005
None of this makes any sense
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Houston — On and on it went, with exhaustive moments inside of the equivalent of two baseball games on Sunday at Minute Maid Park. Then somebody named Chris Burke committed a double murder on the visitors. The dagger that he used to stick in their hearts and twist was a liner over the left-field wall. Just like that, in the bottom of the 18th (yes, the 18th), game over, National League Division Series over and postseason over for the Braves.
Again. If you’re keeping track, that’s 14 straight trips to the playoffs, a world championship a decade ago and five first-round exits during the past six years, including four in a row and two straight to the Houston Astros.
None of this makes sense for a lot of reasons. For instance: The Braves have collapsed by Halloween with a bunch of veteran teams, and now they’ve done so with a roster of eight rookies. They’ve had Cy Glavine, Cy Maddux and Cy Smoltz, but the results remained ugly. They’ve even tried to work with Cy Smoltz from the bullpen. No luck. In fact, Cy Smoltz, otherwise known as John Smoltz, was brought back to start this season with October in mind. Even so, the Braves just lost three of four playoff games to another inferior bunch.
I’m virtually out of solutions. Does Smoltz have any? “This, by far, with all that has happened to us this year, is probably the worst way that you can lose a baseball game,” Smoltz said, referring to Braves leads of 5-0 and 6-1 that evaporated courtesy of more non-relief from their bullpen. “A lot of people had the microscope on them, and they could have really been a redeeming factor here. And to gut it out the way we did for the whole game, we certainly had an incredible plane ride ahead of us. And now it will be a very quiet plane.”
There also was Chipper Jones, the Braves veteran third baseman, who talked of being so shocked by the Astros’ game-tying home run with two outs in the ninth that he wanted somebody to pinch him. He has some solutions. “I’d like to see us do some things to our rotation and to our bullpen, because you never can have enough pitching,” Jones said. “Obviously, during the course of the season, our Achilles’ Heel was long relief in the seventh and eighth innings. Things like that.”
Things that give you the feeling that Braves players finally are tired of these flips, flops and chokes. More than a few of them clenched teeth after the Astros won this thriller of a Game 4 to reach the second round while the Braves will spend another winter pondering and fuming.
“This is so frustrating that if I knew we were going to lose in the first round again, I wouldn’t want to be in the postseason at all,” said Braves first baseman Adam LaRoche, who already was sick enough. He suffered from a stomach flu before the game, but he pushed his team to a 4-0 lead with an early grand slam. It didn’t matter. Neither did the Braves sitting ahead by five runs as late as the eighth inning.
You know the rest. From Kirby Puckett to Jim Leyritz to Carlos Beltran, The Collapse always happens for the Braves of October. This time, there was that Astros’ grand slam in the eighth, and then there was that solo homer in the ninth to send this thing into extra innings forever. Later, after the Braves’ relievers actually showed a pulse, the Braves’ hitters died. They did the impossible by stranding 18 runners on the base, and as LaRoche added with a heavy sigh, “It was like Russian Roulette giving them that many chances.”
Across the way, Andruw Jones sat for the longest in solitude by his locker. I’ve known the great Braves’ center fielder since his rookie year, and I’ve never witnessed such anguish on his face. “This loss is really tough, because what this team looks forward to every year after we break spring training is being in the playoffs, and winning the World Series,” Andruw Jones said. “To get to this point, and to lose again in the first round, it’s just, man, it’s …”
He didn’t have to finish.
Permalink | Comments (178) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Miffed Vick kept in dark about his status
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
For as much progress as Michael Vick has made reading defenses, there are still some things he can’t see coming. Like being told, “Don’t suit up.�
Vick didn’t learn until he arrived at the Georgia Dome Sunday morning that he wouldn’t be allowed to play against New England because of a sprained knee.
Now, it’s common for NFL coaches to treat the injury report as a weekly disinformation campaign. It’s another to keep the team’s own starting quarterback in the dark.
“Very frustrating,� is how Vick termed things when told by Falcons coach Jim Mora he wouldn’t start. “I thought I’d play.�
So he didn’t take it well?
“No, I didn’t,� he said as he walked off the field, wearing shorts and a sweatshirt. “But I guess it’s the decisions that you gotta make. Nothing I can do about it.�
Vick isn’t merely the Falcons’ best player. He’s the kind of guy whose flare for the spectacular can often mask a team’s weaknesses. The Falcons hung with the New England Patriots Sunday, albeit a banged up version, before losing, 31-28.
But moral victories don’t figure into even wild-card tiebreakers. And minus Vick, this team’s holes were on full display.
Defensive backs seemed to float in and out of consciousness. Wide receivers dropped passes. An opposing running back rushed for over 100 yards for the third time in five weeks.
In Vick’s place, Matt Schaub was pretty solid. He threw for 298 yards and three touchdowns, rallying the Falcons from a 14-0 deficit to tie the score with under four minutes left. Not bad for a guy who also didn’t find out until Sunday who the starting quarterback was.
“I never one time said anything to our football team this week about our starting quarterback,� Mora said later. “That’s because to the guys in this room, I don’t think that’s what it’s about for them.�
Well, it kind of is to the quarterback.
Strange week. On Monday, Mora said the MRI on Vick’s right knee was negative and he’d likely play. On Wednesday, Vick officially was listed as probable, which means there is a 75 percent chance of playing. After practice, Mora said of Vick: “I thought he looked fine.�
But as the week went on, things became less certain. Mora now says he inaccurately projected Vick’s progress. He watched Vick recover from a hamstring strain two weeks ago at Buffalo and expected the same progression this week.
On Saturday, he downgraded Vick to “questionableâ€? — after a walk-through. Who gets downgraded after a walk-through?
But Mora denied intentionally misleading anybody, even though he was going against Bill Belichick, the king of covert ops. (Belichick has been fined several times for injury-list fraud. Last year he didn’t list Richard Seymour on an injury report, and the player didn’t even make the trip to the game.)
That just doesn’t mean he’s going to be completely forthcoming. Mora obviously was strongly leaning against playing Vick Saturday, but he admitted: “I’ll certainly tell you that we were not going to divulge that.�
“Asking [Vick] to go out with a brace on at less than even 90 percent — it wasn’t smart, it wasn’t prudent. I held out hope until [Sunday] morning. … I thought [early in the week] he’d be fine. I even walked up and down the stairs with him. It’s not like he was grabbing the rail or anything.â€?
Told Vick seemed upset, Mora said. “I hope he wasn’t happy. I don’t want him to be happy. I don’t want any one to be happy when they’re not playing. He’s a competitor and it’s game day. On game day the adrenaline gets going. But part of a coach’s responsibility is recognizing that sometimes as a competitor you’re willing to make some sacrifices that you shouldn’t make.�
Vick was thinking about going against Tom Brady. Mora was thinking about the season. Vick doesn’t know if he’ll play next week against New Orleans. If he doesn’t know, Mora certainly doesn’t know.
Only one thing seems certain. Mora will hold a news conference today. Transcripts will not be etched in stone.
Permalink | Comments (153) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Jeff Schultz
Relief from hapless bullpen urgently needed
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Houston — We’ve been here before with the Braves. Actually, we’ve been here way too many times with this franchise, suddenly needing (stop me if you’ve heard this before) a victory in Game 4 of the National League Division Series to keep from another quick and ugly implosion during the postseason.
That said, if the Braves do the improbable today with a victory against the Houston Astros at Minute Maid Park, they’ll have a chance for redemption Monday at Turner Field in a decisive Game 5. Just don’t count on it, not unless baseball changes its rules during the next few hours and allows the Braves to trade all of their relievers not named Kyle Farnsworth for guys who actually have a clue. The Braves’ bullpen has been thoroughly brutal all season, and nothing has changed with the heightened pressure of the playoffs.
This is ridiculous. How did an organization that prides itself on pitching get into such a mess? Courtesy of four guys in the seventh inning not named Farnsworth, the Braves watched a 3-2 deficit Saturday night against the Astros evolve into a 7-3 loss at the end and a 2-1 deficit in this best-of-five affair that feels as if it’s already over.
The series still lives, though, but if it officially dies for the Braves in Game 4, they’ll become even more of an October pumpkin than they usually are when Halloween is near. After all, the Braves did find ways to survive Game 4 last year in Houston, and they did the same the year before that against the Cubs in Chicago. It’s just that the Braves eventually turned big and orange during both of those subsequent Game 5s, even though they were playing at home. And get this: Unlike this year, both of those Braves teams that couldn’t win Game 5s actually had a bullpen that were keys to those Game 4 victories.
“Yeah, well. This obviously isn’t the ideal situation to be in,” said Braves first baseman Adam LaRoche, easing into a chuckle to break the gloomy silence in the visitors’ clubhouse. His three-run homer in Game 4 last year propelled the Braves toward that Game 5 against the Astros. “The only positive thing about this is that we know what we have to do. We have to win two games in a row. Don’t look ahead. Look at today. Concentrate on one game.”
LaRoche forget something else: Hope Braves starter Tim Hudson goes nine, 15 or whatever amount innings it will take today to keep his teammates in the bullpen watching instead of throwing.
Anyway, despite a gorgeous night around southeast Texas, they closed the roof before the start of this one. It was the first clue that the Astros expected to treat this as an elimination game or one in which they could clinch something.
Neither was true, of course, but this was: The Braves had to approach the evening with as much urgency as their ruthless host. Whenever they close the roof over Minute Maid Park (even when a brilliant moon is dancing above warm breezes), the Astros wish to turn their already noisy home into the loudest place on earth. They even passed out a bunch of white Rally Towels for fans to wave along with their tongues.
Then they got that insect thing going in the first inning. Whenever one of the Astros’ so-called Killer B’s does anything worth noting, those in the stuffed house do their imitation of bumblebees. In other words, there was much buzzing after Craig Biggio led off with a double off the large wall in left field. He eventually scored. So did another one of those Killer B’s, Lance Berkman, on a sacrifice fly.
No problem for the Braves, who threatened earlier in the series to remain a resilient bunch. After they were ripped at Turner Field in the opener, they responded the next night by pounding the Astros. And here were the Braves, tying the game at 2-2 in the second despite all of that buzzing, all of that towel waving, all of that lack of ambience due to a closed roof.
The Astros’ Mike Lamb countered with a solo homer in the bottom of the third, but we already told you that the Astros meant business in this one. So did the Braves, but only those not named Farnsworth who claimed to be relievers.
Permalink | Comments (41) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
