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Monday, October 1, 2007
Glavine is not the answer
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
In a purely professional capacity, he’s my all-time favorite athlete. I was sorry when he left and happy when he won No. 300. It’s always a pleasure to see him wherever and whenever. That said …
I wouldn’t bring back Tom Glavine.
Not just because the worst start of his Hall of Fame career will live in infamy as the final act of the worst collapse the grand old game of baseball has ever known. I wouldn’t bring him back because he’ll be 42 on Opening Day 2008, and the Braves have enough — more than enough — aging starting pitchers. John Smoltz is 40. Mike Hampton, who barely qualifies as a pitcher anymore, is 35.
The Braves shouldn’t try to reassemble the glorious rotation of old. They need to build a new rotation. Smoltz and Tim Hudson are great places to begin, but the reason this team, which statistically was good enough everywhere but in starting pitching, didn’t reach October was because everything began and ended with those two.
Some Braves made the case last week for Glavine as the missing No. 3 starter. But is Glavine even a No. 3 anymore? He was 13-8 with a 4.45 ERA this season. (Chuck James, who spent the year proving he isn’t a No. 3 starter, was 11-10 with a 4.24 ERA.) The more Glavine worked, the worse he got: He didn’t win any of his last three starts, and he yielded 17 earned runs over his final 10 1/3 innings.
And the symmetry of Sunday’s loss cannot be missed. It marked the first time since 1993 that two teams entered their 162nd game in a first-place tie without either having clinched a wild card. On Oct. 3, 1993, Glavine outpitched David Nied (remember him?) and the Braves beat Colorado 5-3 and won their most improbable division title when the Dodgers finished off the Giants three hours later.
That was the Glavine we all knew and admired, a matchless combination of guile and guts.
The Glavine of Sunday in Queens was something less. He faced nine batters. He retired one. He left with his dying team dead, left after hitting Dontrelle Willis with the bases loaded to make it 5-0.
He plunked the opposing pitcher with a change-up, the pitch Glavine discovered while fooling around in the outfield in the spring at West Palm Beach long ago, the pitch that will carry him to Cooperstown.
And that’s the greater point: Always a finesse pitcher, Glavine is less precise now than he was when he left for the Mets. (And one of the reasons the Braves let him leave is that he’d had a bad second half in 2002, capped by two playoff losses against San Francisco.) His ERA this season was his second-worst of the past 19 years. He worked almost the same number of innings as in 2006 but registered 42 fewer strikeouts.
It’s thought that Glavine, who can buy himself out of his Mets contract, would accept $10 million to return to the Braves next year. The Braves need to take a longer view. They need younger arms, power arms. They need guys who’ll be starting here after Smoltz and Hampton are gone.
They need a Nate Robertson (who had a bad year for Detroit but who still has gobs of potential), a Joe Blanton (who was mentioned in trade talks before the deadline and who won 14 games for the A’s), even a Shaun Marcum (who’s 26 and who won 12 games for Toronto but who’s facing minor knee surgery).
The Braves don’t need a one-year rental. They need to make a trade and invest in the long term. (Just because John Schuerholz and Bobby Cox are nearing the end doesn’t mean the franchise will fold once they’re gone.)
There was a time when any rotation would have been fortified by the addition of Tom Glavine. That time, sad to say, is past. He’s not what he was. He’s not what the Braves lack. He’d be more of what they already have.
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