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Sunday, May 14, 2006
Falcons’ upgrades are obvious
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Flowery Branch — At 32, Lawyer Milloy wasn’t looking for a fixer-upper. Lawyer Milloy was looking for a home that was pretty much fixed. In his free-agent rounds, he visited three teams — Seattle, which won the NFC title last season; Cincinnati, which won the AFC North, and Atlanta, which won nothing of consequence. Milloy’s presence in this minicamp tells us he believes the Falcons are primed to rectify that posthaste.
“I’m at the point in my career where I don’t have the time or the energy to wait for a team to rebuild,” he said Sunday, speaking after the morning session of minicamp. Having won one Super Bowl, he wants another. He believes the Falcons can get him there. More to the point, the Falcons believe Milloy can help get them there.
He’s a safety who hits hard and tackles expertly. The Falcons’ safeties of 2005 — Keion Carpenter and Bryan Scott — were chief culprits in this defense’s abrupt descent to being the NFL’s seventh-worst against the run. “I’ve never heard such negative talk about what they experienced last year at this position,” Milloy said. Then, pointedly: “But that’s not me.”
And the way of the new Falcons — the Blank-McKay-Mora Falcons — isn’t to wallow in self-pity but to solve problems at full gallop. The Falcons hated their safeties, so they found two new ones. (Chris Crocker is the other.) The Falcons needed a pass rusher to offset Patrick Kerney, so they traded for Pro Bowler John Abraham. This organization got so much done in one inspired offseason that the disappointment of last year has given way to hope born of the realization that this franchise no longer considers 8-8 an achievement.
“It’s a credit to their dedication to get this team more balanced,” Milloy said. “They were really aggressive. They were able to make the necessary transactions. That tells me they want to be champions now, to win now.”
Milloy is an impressive guy. Four times a Pro Bowler, he was the defensive captain on New England’s first championship team. A year later, he refused to restructure his contract and was cut, a move wildly unpopular in the Patriots’ locker room. He signed with Buffalo, where he spent the last three seasons, and the Patriots got over their disappointment and won the next two Super Bowls. So yes, Milloy knows better than most that, while players do the heavy lifting, the grand design for winning titles is set by the front office. Or not.
“If you build something special, and it’s for real, it will last for a while,” he said. “I think this organization can win now and win in the future.”
Maybe the Falcons weren’t quite as good as they seemed two seasons ago, when they played for the NFC title, but there’s growing evidence they weren’t as flimsy as they looked at the end of last season. Gifted players still dot this roster — Vick, Dunn, Crumpler, Kerney, Brooking, Coleman, Hall — and this offseason has yielded three (and perhaps four, depending on the rookie Jimmy Williams) more. Were there deficiencies? Sure. Have most of the areas of need — wide receiver is still an issue — been addressed? Absolutely.
“Some people have a knack for that,” Milloy said. “They had problems and they corrected it. In this league you don’t sugarcoat things. If you have problems as a player and you can’t correct them, you don’t last long. People want to read and hear about success.”
If the weekend’s work didn’t exactly suggest the Falcons are bound for Super Bowl XLI — “You don’t peak in minicamp,” said Milloy, who has been around long enough to know — the conspicuous personnel upgrades were impossible to ignore. The Falcons didn’t take 8-8 lying down. They roused themselves and got better.
“I’ve seen nothing since I got here to deter my attitude,” Lawyer Milloy said. “It’s all set up to win.”
Permalink | Comments (51) | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Mark Bradley
Sosa is dreadful again
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
This may shock you, but there was a concern about the Braves this season that had nothing to do with bullpen flotsam or former rookie phenoms suddenly realizing, “Hey, it’s Tuesday. Aren’t I supposed to be in Richmond?”
The concern was Jorge Sosa — and whether he would turn back into Jorge Sosa.
See, it’s important to remember that this isn’t a guy who was expected to go 13-3 last year. It’s a guy who was acquired for Nick Green.
The Braves won Saturday. Somehow. They dumped Washington 8-5 with a five-run ninth inning, including a walk-off grand slam by Jeff Francoeur. (It wasn’t Tuesday in Richmond).
Most important, the Braves won despite another dreadful performance by Señor Erratica. Sosa is not nearly the pitcher he was a year ago. Unfortunately, he is nearly the pitcher he was for three seasons in Tampa Bay, when he went 11-26.
“It’s just a matter of him executing some pitches better,” Braves pitching coach Roger McDowell said. “It just seems like a couple of times each game that he misses location, and he pays for it. Fortunately, it’s very few pitches.”
The Braves are trying to put a positive spin on this. But when you go 13-3 one season and 0-5 the next, it’s not because of a couple of bad pitches here and there. It’s more like only a couple of good pitches.
Sosa was 10-3 as a starter last season. He had a 2.55 ERA. But his numbers have ballooned. A Nationals team that entered Saturday hitting an anemic .255 tagged Sosa for five runs, nine hits and two homers in 5 2/3 innings.
Sosa isn’t 0-6 only because his teammates pulled him out of the lake. But this, they can’t cover: Sosa’s ERA is 6.52. Opponents are batting .331 — that is, when they’re not falling down laughing.
The Braves never had any delusions that they were trading for a pitcher who would win 13 games. In his three seasons with Tampa Bay, his bounced from 5.53 to 4.62 and back to 5.53. He was traded for a utility infielder. (There is a little-known baseball bylaw that reads, “Pitchers with 13-3 potential are never to be traded for Nick Green.”)
Sosa was expected to be a bullpen body — nothing more, possibly less. But he was solid from the outset, and when injuries hit starters Mike Hampton and John Thomson, Sosa was summoned.
He wasn’t a disaster. In fact, he went 10-3 with a 2.62 ERA as a starter. He was 4-0 in September. His 13-3 record accounted for the top winning percentage (.813) in the National League. The Braves went 15-4 in his 19 starts.
Sosa cashed in. The Braves avoided arbitration by giving him a one-year, $2.2 million contract — more than tripling his $700,000 salary from 2005. They were assuming 2005 wasn’t an aberration.
Oops.
Sosa did not appear to report to spring training in great shape (although it’s not something he has admitted to). It didn’t help that he played for the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic. He made only two relief appearances, further slowing his conditioning. When he returned to the Braves, he pretty much stunk. He went 0-2 with a 7.71 ERA in 14 innings.
Then the season began and things actually got worse.
Saturday, the Braves gave Sosa a 2-0 lead in the first inning. Even after the Nationals came back to tie it with runs in the third and fourth (on a Matt LeCroy homer) the Braves retook the lead on Todd Pratt’s blast in the fifth.
But Sosa couldn’t stand the success. He had two outs in the sixth, then allowed a double to the No. 8 hitter (Royce Clayton), an RBI single to the pitcher (Mike O’Connor’s first major league hit) and a two-run homer by Alfonso Soriano on an 0-2 pitch.
Bobby Cox quickly made his way from the dugout to pull Sosa — before his teammates had a chance to get to him.
“It was supposed to be a fastball in the dirt, but he threw it up here,” said Cox, holding his hand chest-high.
Last season, the pitch might have been lower. But Sosa appears to be drawing from his wrong old self.
Permalink | Comments (39) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Jeff Schultz
