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Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Take Braves in this tight race
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
The surprising Buddy Carlyle notwithstanding, the Braves’ starting pitching beyond John Smoltz, Tim Hudson and Chuck James is a mess. Suddenly, closer Bob Wickman is more of a question mark than an exclamation point. Speaking of Smoltz, he joins Chipper Jones as Cooperstown guys who also may qualify for the Hall of Fame of aches and pains.
Can Smoltz and Jones stay healthy in the second half of the season?
Don’t know.
What we do know is that, despite the Braves’ various issues, they have a lot of everything else. That includes a surging Andruw Jones at the plate (finally) and the great Bobby Cox in the dugout. It’s a combination that will keep the Braves near or at the top of the National League East beyond the summer. As a result, the Mets will have to do something they didn’t have to do last season when they exploded down the stretch to end the Braves’ record streak of division titles at 14.
The Mets will have to defeat the Braves during a tight race.
Take the Braves. In case you’re wondering, the Philadelphia Phillies aren’t worthy of this discussion. They haven’t the pitching. And, like the Mets, the Phillies haven’t Smoltz, the two Joneses and Cox, who have been there and done that regarding the winning of tight races.
You had the Braves snatching the NL East by a game over the Mets in 2000. Just so you know, none of these Mets were part of those Mets. The following year, no more than three games separated the Braves and the Phillies from late June to the last game of the season when the Braves solidified their title with a 20-3 blowout of the Florida Marlins. In 2005, the Braves held off the Phillies again by two games with 18 rookies. There also was 1991, when Smoltz and Cox were around to help the Braves shock the Los Angeles Dodgers for that worst-to-first miracle. Two years later, the Braves ended what was called The Last Great Pennant Race with 104 victories to the San Francisco Giants’ 103.
Here’s the point: Since nobody on the Mets’ current roster has been in a tight race while playing for the Mets, how would these Mets react to the Braves nipping at their cleats in October? “That’s a good question, and I don’t know,” Tom Glavine said earlier this season at Turner Field as the definitive person for the question. For one, he has pitched for the Mets since leaving the Braves in 2002 after 15 seasons of tight, loose and no races. For another, he discovered in New York that the Braves always are on the Mets’ minds.
“When we came down here and had that good series against them last year, I think we kind of felt like we put all of that to bed,” said Glavine, recalling how the Mets took five of six games from the Braves from late July into early September.
Thing is, the pressure is negligible for teams in early September compared to late September, and the Braves spent last year stumbling toward finishing 18 games out of first place. That won’t happen this time for the Braves. In addition to battling the Braves in late September, the Mets will be battling high expectations.
With Cox among those saying the Mets have “an American League lineup,” they were supposed to bash their way into October. It hasn’t happened with the offensive struggles of the two Carloses (Delgado and Beltran) and the inconsistency of David Wright. The bullpen is solid with closer Billy Wagner, but the Mets’ starting pitching is as shaky as advertised. Glavine and Orlando Hernandez are fossils showing their age, and after a nice first half, Jorge Sosa and Oliver Perez are on the disabled list. Pedro Martinez is slated to return from shoulder surgery in August, but who knows if he’ll be Pedro Martinez?
Thus we’ll have the flawed Braves against the flawed Mets.
Take the Braves, all right, because they’ve been less flawed in crunch time than anybody since 1991.
We’re talking only about the regular season, of course.
Permalink | Comments (65) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Terence Moore
Dogs or Jackets? Too soon to sweat
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Holy cats! We’ve barely made it past the Major League All-Star Game, haven’t even played the British Open yet, or opened the season at Saratoga, and Georgia has already whipped Georgia Tech. On paper.
And they don’t play until Nov. 24. Just check Mark Bradley’s column. When Bradley speaks, people snap to attention, and he says it’s the Dawgs over the Jackets already. It takes guts. I had guts when I was younger and vigorous-er. I gaze into the future now with caution, and, frankly, haven’t arrived at any conviction about the Georgia-Georgia Tech game this soon. I’d say this, that it’s the better part of discretion to anger the Jackets than it is the Dawgs.
No reason I shouldn’t. Phil Steele’s annual football preview hit my desk the other day, and I’m now armed with all anybody needs to know about college football in the United States in the year 2007. I don’t know Phil Steele. He works out of Cleveland. Has a staff of, I think, 30 some. He uses a lot of small type and crams more stuff into 328 pages than Sears Roebuck used to put in a catalog.
I don’t know that I needed his help, but it is nice when somebody who makes a living doing this stuff agrees with me. Phil nominates Georgia as his sixth surprise team of the season. No. 11 in the nation. Also picks the Dawgs to win the SEC East. You have to run a long way down the line to find Georgia Tech. Forty-second, between Auburn and Illinois. That should be a shock to Auburn.
I can’t buy that, that there will be 41 teams better than Georgia Tech. There are some stars coming back, Adamm Oliver, Darryl Richard, Philip Wheeler, Andrew Gardner and Tashard Choice. The Jackets suffered a loss, though, that leaves a gaping hole in their offense. Calvin Johnson took early retirement, and Tech had never had an offensive threat like him in my time. On the other hand, consider this: Reggie Ball is gone, and with him goes a mystery for which none of us has an answer.
Ball broke in at Grant Field with a rousing performance at quarterback. He beat Auburn. It came out of the blue. He had Florida State on the ropes at Tallahassee. That’s all pretty good, but it never got any better. Four years later he was still trying to find what he had lost along the way. Instead of building on that glorious opening, he was playing more like a freshman than a senior at the end.
All the while, Taylor Bennett stood along the sideline. The one game he had started, he kept the ship afloat against Connecticut. Ball was hurt. The next time Bennett got to start would have been Ball’s last game, but Ball was academically ineligible. Bennett had a dazzling day in the Gator Bowl. So did Calvin Johnson. Georgia Tech hadn’t seen a passing combination like that since Joe Hamilton and Harvey Middleton. And all of us, from the least inquisitive alumna to the most rabid man in the stands, begged the question: Why had they not seen more of Taylor Bennett? When Ball was crashing — and oh, how many crashes he had, not the most crucial of which was losing count of the downs and making a throwaway pass against Georgia — why not Bennett? On and on it went, until in the Gator Bowl they saw what might have been.
Now Bennett gets his shot, but his best target will be in Detroit. It breaks your heart to imagine what a battery Bennett and Johnson could have been, and why Chan Gailey stubbornly stuck with Ball, who was better when he got there than when he left.
Offhand, you’d have to say that it’s likely Larry Munson’s last season at Georgia will be more enjoyable than Wes Durham’s season at Tech. Munson, who wouldn’t know a “hobnail boot” from a snowshoe, by his own admission, but Durham who would, being one of us Tar Heel countrymen. And you’d have to go along with Bradley, but in the heat of the summer, isn’t it rushing the season a bit? I don’t like to mix sweat and football.
Permalink | Comments (159) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Tech / ACC, UGA / SEC
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