At 36-years old and with 11-plus seasons in the majors, Braves right-hander Aaron Harang is both the oldest and most experienced player on the youngest team in the majors. He’s putting up numbers as a starter that, if they hold up, will end up among the best of his career.
All of that gives Harang the credibility to perspective and credibility to offer some leadership even though this is his first year with the Braves.
“I’m not one of the crazy vocal guys but I talk to guys around the clubhouse,” said Harang, who is scheduled to start against the Dodgers for Thursday’s series finale at Turner Field . “We all know we are going through a rough little string here but no one’s worrying yet. We have got to look each game every day and not worry about what’s happening in a week and really just try to focus on trying to win a series first.
“A lot of people have a tendency to try and look a week or two out and once you start getting that far out that’s when your mindset is totally not where it needs to be.”
The Braves have lost 11 of their last 13 games in large part to their anemic offense. Harang has been a victim of poor run support lately.
In his past five starts Harang has posted a 2.53 ERA while pitching at least six innings in each outing. But Harang got a no decision in all of those games as the Braves scored just 2.2 runs per game.
Harang said he’s not worried about the no-decision streak, noting that such luck can run both ways. He said it’s not too late for the Braves to get their offense going.
“We’ve just got to get a string of guys going at once,” he said. “It seems like a lot of the year we’ve had one guy or two guys going. One guy can’t carry a ball club. If we can get three or four guys hitting and playing soundly together, that’s how you are going to win ballgames and go on a big run.
“Different guys have to step up every night and get that big hit, make that big play, throw a good solid inning, get a pitcher out of a rough situation.”
Harang has seen it happen before. He was a rookie on the 2002 Oakland team that won 20 consecutive games from Aug. 13 to Sept. 4, tied for the third-longest streak in major league history.
The A’s had been 10 games back in the AL West as late as May 30.
“They were ready to fire sale everybody,” Harang said. “End of July, early August, everybody is like, ‘They are done.’ Boom! We hit that run all of a sudden. We went from fourth place to crushing everybody by the third week in September. It was contagious. It was a fun atmosphere. The fans were into it. It was somebody else every single night.”
The Athletics were 4 ½ games behind in the AL West before the streak and were up 3 1/2 games when it ended. They stayed hot through the end of the season and won the division by four games.
“We have the team that can do that,” Harang said of the Braves. “When that happened (in Oakland) we got multiple guys producing all at once. The pitchers were all kind of feeding off of each other. One of the guys would go out and throw seven or eight innings of one-run ball or no runs, and the next night the guy comes in and says, ‘I’m going to one-up you.’ We all fed off one another in that situation.”
