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Monday, April 10, 2006
Pitching staff digs itself out of first-week hole
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Spring being the hot time for baseball books — La Russa’s last year, steroids this year — we can only imagine the publishing proposals the season’s first week have generated. Working titles surely include: “From Haughty To Has-Been: How I Let My Pitching Coach Leave Without Even A Counteroffer And Now My Whole Operation Is Circling The Drain,� by John Schuerholz, erstwhile genius.
“So Who’s Overbearing And Overrated Now?� by Leo Mazzone, the aforementioned pitching coach. And finally: “Can I Have A Second Shot At That First Impression? Please?� by Roger McDowell, harried successor.
The Braves opened the home half of their six-month regular season Monday night bearing the most incongruous number the sport has seen since Brady Anderson hit 50 home runs. The team that has pitched better than any other over the past 15 seasons arrived at Turner Field with the worst ERA — pause for effect — in all of baseball.
And this wasn’t a case of one bad inning fluffing up an otherwise attractive number. This was a case of a week’s worth of bad innings. Braves pitchers yielded 109 baserunners in the first seven games. No starter posted a win on the West Coast. The bullpen nearly blew the road trip’s first game and did blow the last.
In sum, it wasn’t the week the man who replaced the game’s most renowned pitching coach had planned as an opening statement. To his credit, McDowell reported to work Monday saying he’d given his status no thought whatsoever. “It’s not something I concern myself with. I’m concerned with, from the standpoint of this pitching staff, getting the starters to pitch deep into games.�
McDowell wants what Mazzone wanted, what every pitching coach since the beginning of time has wanted — starters eating innings, starters giving their team a chance to win. Again to his credit, McDowell looked on his pitchers’ California crash for what it was. “An unfortunate start,� he said. “Things go in cycles, and we’re struggling a little bit from a staff standpoint in making some pitches. … It could have been worse than 3-4.�
Well, yeah. The Braves scored enough runs in Week 1 to win seven games in most any other week, and their offensive largess prevented a halting start from becoming an utter wipeout. But now for the good news: That was one week, merely the first of 26. Said McDowell, almost smiling: “I have an understanding about the length of a season.�
Already he reports heartening signs. “[John] Smoltz going seven innings Sunday was a huge positive. Kyle Davies going five innings [Friday] was a huge positive. Tim Hudson threw two bad pitches and got behind, but somewhere down the line those pitches will get popped up. … You have to like the track record of our starters.�
Monday marked another advance. John Thomson, who wasn’t in the rotation until Horacio Ramirez hurt himself, worked five nearly scoreless, if not exactly tidy, innings. The bullpen wasted one two-run lead but held another. The staff ERA dropped from 7.58 to 6.85, which means the Braves are no longer the most pliant team in the bigs.
“Kind of like you’d script it out,� McDowell said afterward. “It doesn’t always work that way, but this was like …�
He searched for the words. He found them. “A normal baseball game,� he said.
More than anything, the standard-issue home opener offered no indication that Week 1 was anything but an ugly blip. And even though first impressions can be powerful, it should be noted that the new pitching coach didn’t form his opinion of this staff in one rainy week on the Left Coast. He formed his in spring training, and this is what he thought: “That everyone was where he needed to be. And I still think that.�
So spoke Roger McDowell, presumably including himself in that mix.
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