In their first 54 games, the Braves used 38 players (20 pitchers), 37 defensive lineups and 50 batting orders. Logic screams they won’t maintain that pace, but for the sake of mind-numbing numbers, and my own amusement, that projects to 114 players (60 pitchers), 111 defensive lineups and 150 batting orders, give or take a coin flip.
“If I had to work a game tomorrow, I’d have a lot of work to do,” player-turned-broadcaster John Smoltz said. “I don’t recognize a lot of guys.”
Smoltz became a Brave during the worst days (106 losses in 1988), but was central to their best days. He started, he closed, spun his share of medical miracles and was one of the few Braves to own October (15-4, 2.67, 199 strikeouts).
Next month, he goes to Cooperstown, officially recognized among baseball’s 1 percent. His Hall of Fame induction will serve as a flashback to the Braves’ better days. The ongoing roster churn has left most to wonder whether the team can get back to that contending level, but Smoltz believes it will happen in the next year or two.
“There was a hole there, and the team was falling into it,” Smoltz said this week at the offices of CSE, his representatives, who honored him for his impending induction. “It’s not a perfect scenario, and I’m sure everybody involved is doing the best job they can. But given what they were facing and the long drought they were headed to, they had to make changes. We’re in a world where people want instant gratification and fixing it quick, but that’s just not realistic.”
He said the Braves can contend again in “2016 or ’17,” depending on “how well the young guys grow and adapt. My problem with baseball now is they just don’t prepare guys long enough. … It’ll be two years of not so good, or maybe get close, but then they can have a sustained run again.”
At the root of Smoltz’s optimism: John Hart, the Braves’ president of baseball operations. The two worked together at the MLB Network.
“Sharp guy,” Smoltz said. “I don’t know how they got him to take the job.”
He went as far as calling Hart’s rebuilding efforts “heroic.”
Strange. When I was writing about the ejections of Justin Upton, Jason Heyward, Evan Gattis and Craig Kimbrel, I never used the word “heroic.” Granted, Hart inherited an awful inbox. Upton and Heyward were a year from free agency and likely either wouldn’t or couldn’t be re-signed. B.J. Upton was … B.J. Upton. Gattis: a popular player but neither the team’s catcher of the future nor a great outfielder. Kimbrel: a wasted commodity.
All understood the Braves needed fixing. The quality of the deals was the biggest issue, and certainly the timing of Kimbrel’s departure — on the eve of the season, after several weeks of promises that the organization would not deal him because that would equate to a white flag — stunk.
But the Braves’ have been a relative scrapping, pleasant surprise. If the season were a game, they have played only three innings. But the offense has been far better than expected, and they’re threatening .500. They might even have a winning record if not for the major leagues’ worst bullpen (5.03 ERA through Friday).
Manager Fredi Gonzalez is catching grief (again), but 38 players, 37 lineups and 50 batting orders don’t suggest he’s knee-deep in All-Stars. But Hart has looked good with the acquisitions of pitcher Shelby Miller (who arrived in the Heyward trade) and second baseman Jace Peterson (via the Justin Upton trade).
Smoltz believes the Braves’ problems under former general manager Frank Wren extended beyond a deteriorating on-field product.
“The culture and the whole atmosphere was just getting really bad,” he said.
Asked if he thought Wren didn’t pay close enough attention to clubhouse chemistry, Smoltz echoed a sentiment shared by others: “I don’t know if it was that so much as maybe not trusting other people with other visions or opinions. It’s easy to play armchair quarterback and say, ‘I could see this coming.’ But what I did see is the culture of the Braves and some of the people who were making them relevant, they were going somewhere else. They were being re-assigned, or in some cases going to other organizations. These were pretty core people.
“The culture means something, and when it gets off the track that translates into (a bad) situation. Maybe it was just (Wren) being like, ‘This is my plan and I’m going to execute my plan.’ It just failed.”
So Hart brought in the sledgehammer. And we all wait for the 1990s again.
