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Thursday, April 19, 2007
Braves’ bats cold so far
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Surely nobody is panicking over the Braves’ hitters spending much of their opening weeks of the season looking slightly less than the Big Red Machine.
Try the Little Blue Machine.
Mediocre average. High strikeouts. Few stolen bases. Lots of GIDPs, as in grounded into double plays.
It’s the weather, stupid. If you don’t believe me, listen to those who would swear on a stack of baseball cards that the Braves’ hitting woes are the result of a frigid April dominated by wind, rain and snow around the major leagues.
There was Braves manager Bobby Cox, for instance. Before his team finished with just four hits in a 3-0 loss to the Chicago Cubs on Thursday night at chilly Turner Field, Cox shook his head in the home dugout, before saying, “You really would be hard-pressed if you talked to Henry [Aaron], to Willie [Mays], to Mickey [Mantle], to [Ted] Williams and asked them if they preferred cold weather or hot weather. All of them would say hot.”
Thus the question: Has there ever been a cold-weather hitter of note? Cubs manager Lou Piniella, who was a wonderful slugger in his day, frowned and then said with a smile, “Unless you had an Eskimo in the lineup, I don’t think so.”
This is more of a baseball thing than a Braves thing. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, teams combined to score an average of 8.65 runs per game entering Thursday’s action compared to the 10.26 runs of last season when April actually resembled spring instead of winter. Plus, the overall batting average around the majors was .250 compared to .270 a year ago.
It’s just that the Braves had a team batting average nearly 30 points lower (.242 to .271) than what they had after 14 games in 2006. They replaced scrappy hitter Marcus Giles with unproven Kelly Johnson, a bust at the plate until managing eight hits in his past 12 at-bats. They sent Adam LaRoche (.285 average, 32 home runs and 90 RBIs last season) to the Pittsburgh Pirates for reliever Mike Gonzalez. To compensate for LaRoche’s loss, the Braves have a platoon at first base of rookie Scott Thorman and veteran Craig Wilson.
While Thorman is hitting .207, Wilson is at .160. Not exactly the stuff of Joe Morgan and Tony Perez, or even of Marcus Giles and Adam LaRoche.
If you didn’t know better, you’d say Braves officials were so obsessed in the offseason with fixing a ghastly bullpen and tweaking the starting rotation that they forgot you can’t win if you can’t score.
The Braves can score. Prior to Thursday’s action, only three teams in the National League had more runs than the Braves. They also can rip. Nobody in the league began the evening with more home runs. They can win, too, because they’ve done so more often than not with that rejuvenated pitching, timely hitting and Cox’s splendid managing.
Still, the Braves have those deficiencies on offense, but they only are temporary. For one, the weather has improved from grotesque to tolerable. “Nobody wants to have a bat in their hands when it’s that cold out, because if you don’t hit the ball on the sweet spot, you’re going to feel it for the next three innings,” said Brian McCann, the closest thing to a cold-weather hitter for the Braves with a .327 average.
McCann also is among those slew of hot-weather hitters. So are the Joneses (Chipper and Andruw) and Edgar Renteria among the game’s best in the clutch. The promise of that core, along with free-swinger Jeff Francoeur, is why Braves batting coach Terry Pendleton isn’t panicking.
“When you see them in batting practice, and everything is mechanically fine, nine times out of 10, it’s a mental thing,” said Pendleton, winner of a batting title during his All-Star career. “Some guys, mentally, it’s tougher for them to go out there when it’s cold and do what they’re supposed to do. So it’s my job to kick them mentally to get them going.”
That’s opposed to just kicking them, period. Which Pendleton might do if this really isn’t just Mother Nature throwing misery at Braves hitters.
Permalink | Comments (58) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Thrashers should hold, Hawks fold
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
The curtain closed for both of Atlanta Spirit’s teams in the span of 24 hours. The Hawks finished yet another lousy regular season Tuesday, and the Thrashers were swept from the playoffs Wednesday. Now decisions must be made about both franchises.
The Thrashers’ course seems so clear that even this addled ownership group can see it. This team wasn’t quite as good as it should have been — even in claiming the Southeast Division title, the Thrashers won only two more games than they had in 2005-2006, when they couldn’t keep a goaltender healthy and missed the playoffs by two points — and a goodly chunk of the future was mortgaged in the purchase of playoff insurance at the trading deadline.
And the playoffs themselves were a crashing dud. The Thrashers played like a team just happy to be there, and such teams never stick around long. Don Waddell said two weeks ago that his team had essentially “been playing playoff games for two years,” meaning that the Thrashers had gone all-out in the pursuit of postseasons both last spring and this, but there’s a fundamental difference between meaningful regular-season games and the chase for the Stanley Cup.
The Thrashers weren’t yet ready to win in the postseason. Their homegrown stars — Kovalchuk and Lehtonen — hadn’t been there before, and their famous imports — Hossa and Tkachuk — haven’t known real playoff success.The Thrashers came unstuck at the time a team needs to hang together, and that’s how you get swept by a lower-seeded opponent. But the failure to win a playoff game doesn’t mean the season was a failure.
Waddell made the right trades at the right time: Put simply, the Thrashers had to make the playoffs this season or people, Waddell chief among them, were going to get fired. It makes no sense now to dump the GM who, after nine years and seven seasons, has finally put together a division-winning team. Nor does it make sense to fire Bob Hartley, who has his quirks but who also has a Stanley Cup ring. Who else out there is any better?
The Thrashers are on the right track. The Hawks jumped the track long ago. The Thrashers at least have a banner to raise in Philips Arena next season. The Hawks were left to celebrate, if that’s the right word (and it isn’t), the first 30-win season of the Mike Woodson era. It’s an era that needs to end.
Maybe nobody could have done much better with the mismatched talent he has been handed, but the greater point is that Woodson has worked three seasons and has a career record of 69-177. Think of it like this: The Hawks could go 82-0 next season and Woodson would still be 26 games under .500.
The Hawks have to change coaches simply because these players have no reason to believe — and every reason to doubt — that Woodson is capable of winning. The world at large has every reason to wonder if Billy Knight knows what he’s doing, but the belief here is that Knight should be given one last year. That shouldn’t, however, be read as an endorsement.
To change GMs now would be to start over yet again. It’s better at this late date to bank on the extreme long shot of Knight being right in his method and his convictions — I put the odds at 25-1 — than to accept the absolute certainty of more losing that comes with upheaval and transition. Besides, what established basketball man would agree to work for an ownership that’s suing itself?
Maybe this is the year Knight gets lucky in the lottery and bags Greg Oden or Kevin Durant. Maybe the additions of one big-time player and a better coach can turn Knight’s mismatched roster into something approximating a team. Maybe the Hawks will be in the playoffs this time next year. If they’re not, fire Knight. Fire everybody.
Permalink | Comments (75) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Quick Hit
