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Sunday, April 30, 2006
Good sign for Braves
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
The Mets did what they needed to do Friday and Saturday, and the Braves did what they needed to do Sunday. The NL East wasn’t decided over the weekend and won’t be decided for months, but the Braves made the upward climb a bit easier by winning Game 3. Six games behind after a month’s work isn’t where they’d choose to be, but six back beats the heck out of eight.
Not that the Braves were all that up on their numbers. “If you’d have said we were three games out or 13 out, I’d have believed you,” Marcus Giles said. “I can’t remember the last time I opened a newspaper. It’s April. It’s not worth getting into yet.”
And that part is true, too. The Braves won a big April game Sunday, but there’s much doubt as to whether any April game can be construed as big. “Yes and no,” said Chris Reitsma, offering an exceedingly accurate non-appraisal.” The importance of today is that you don’t want to get swept on your field.”
Here he shrugged. “At the same time, April’s April. Today was our 23rd game or our 25th [actually the 24th]. But I think we did show today that we’re not going to roll over for them.”
The Mets are good. The Braves should be good, too. The Mets have too many big-time players to collapse, the Braves too much history. April isn’t the month where anything is decided. April is merely the time when the groundwork gets laid.
Toward that end, this series reinforced what we’d suspected. The Braves aren’t nearly the offensive colossus they seemed the first week of the season. They managed two runs in the weekend’s first two games. True, they mustered eight runs and 12 hits Sunday, but roughly half the hits were of the well-placed, as opposed to the roundly struck, variety.
Even Bobby Cox, who moans at length about the number of his team’s hard-hit balls that get caught, had no gripe this day. “Everything fell in,” he said. “I told Giles [robbed by Jose Reyes in the first inning and by David Wright in the fourth], ‘Start hitting it soft.’ “
Jeff Francoeur had four hits, the first two rather polite ones, but when your April has been as lousy as Francoeur’s you’ll take anything. And it is becoming increasingly clear that the Braves, who aren’t sure what they’re apt to get from Chipper Jones anymore, badly need Francoeur to hit. Andruw Jones can’t do everything himself.
“I need to get on a more even keel,” Francoeur said. “I need to start helping this team on a consistent basis.”
Should that happen, the Braves will give the Mets a royal run. As stout as the New Yorkers are, their starting pitching is substandard beyond Pedro Martinez and Tom Glavine. (Steve Trachsel, Sunday’s starter, was awful, yielding 13 baserunners while recording 11 outs.) And no one knows if Martinez, who’s 34, and Glavine, who’s 40, will be able to click off 200 high-level innings the way they did as younger men.
The good news: The Braves’ starting pitching has settled down. The bad news: This team enters May with only four wins from its rotation. Kyle Davies was the winner Sunday but was hardly dominant, needing 101 pitches to complete five innings. But Francoeur kept driving in runs and the relievers, aided by you-know-who’s game-ending catch, did enough to hold the lead.
While no show of force, this victory did give the Braves reason to feel better about what’s ahead. Their starting pitcher outdid the opponent’s. Their bullpen held a lead. Their right fielder had one of those Francoeur-type games we’ve come to expect. There’s no reason to believe Sunday will be the last time we see such a display.
“April is done, and it’s been one of the toughest months with the travel and everything,” Reitsma said. “In May we start to roll.”
The NL East chase didn’t end here and won’t end when the teams convene again in Shea Stadium on Friday. On the contrary, this is all just beginning. And when will be able to say with absolute certainty that a game is actually big? “On Sept. 30,” said Cox, smiling.
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