Ding Ding, Round 2

The most hyped pitching match-up of the 2010 play-offs has thankfully got a mulligan. Game 1 in Philadelphia turned into something more akin to damage limitation than the hitter domination that had been forecast after Tim Lincecum and Roy Halladay’s respective play-off debuts. Against the Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds the two ace’s combined to pitch eighteen innings, allowed two hit and exactly zero runs. Just as a reminder neither of the two had pitched in the play-offs before. Not a bad introduction. Unfortunately the sequel was somewhat of a letdown after the impressive postseason debuts with Lincecum prevailing with seven difficult innings in which he allowed 6 hits and 3 runs, that qualifies as a quality start but hardly overpowering, luckily for ‘The Freak’ Halladay was slightly less impressive, also going seven innings while giving up four runs on eight hits. Neither pitcher had their best stuff on that cold Saturday night but thanks to the competitive nature of the NLCS the public gets to see a rematch of Halladay-Lincecum, and all indications are that round 2 will be significantly different from round 1, at least for one side of the equation.

Lincecum has had a very successful year facing the Philadelphia Phillies, going 2-1 with a 3.17 ERA and holding only three Phillies to above a .250 average, that’s Jayson Werth, Placido Polanco and Ross Gload. Halladay has had less success against the Giants with an 0-2 record and a startling 7.23 ERA. Given his track record against this Philly line up and his relative success in game one shows a potential position of strength the man they call the ‘Franchise’ whereas his potential successor as the NL Cy Young winner will have to change his fortunes against the Giants.

Both pitchers have had outstanding careers so far but tonight can only be a defining performance for one of them, and it will be the orange clad hurler who has that opportunity. For Halladay it is a game he has to win to keep Philadelphia’s season alive, Lincecum has the opportunity to do something far more historic. The Freak can signal a new dawn for this Giants organise and send them to their first World Series since 2002, which in itself isn’t exactly a huge deal on its own but, what is significant, it would be their first Fall Classic with Barry Bonds. How fitting if the new face of the franchise was the one to seal it.

Eulogy For Something Special

It’s over, and that’s the most startling thing about this whole 2010 Atlanta Braves journey is that it has come to an end. It didn’t happen the way the players wanted it to or the way the fans wanted but maybe it ended in the way most fitting for Bobby Cox’s career. More pertinently it wasn’t just the season that ended, the game 4 loss to the Giants in the National League Division Series marked the final time that Bobby Cox would sit on a Major League bench as a manager. Bobby’s career has been eulogised enough by people far more eloquent than I but these last two series (the Phillies and Giants) showed us exactly how much love the city and team of Atlanta has for the veteran manager.

The three sell outs to end the regular season during ‘Bobby Cox Weekend’ gave the fans the chance to thank Bobby for the 20 plus years he gave to the city and the team, it was an outpouring of emotion that only ever happens in sports. The epic finale to his wonderful career was the moments following Melky Cabrera making the final out of game 4, with the Giants beginning their celebration in the middle of the Braves diamond something strange happened in the capacity crowd. There wasn’t any boos, as the fans had showered on Brooks Conrad the night before, there wasn’t the mass exodus as witnessed the night after at Tropicana Field, the 44,532 individuals inside the Ted simply began chanting one name; Bobby. With the increasing volume and passion in the chant Bobby made one more walk up the dug-out steps and onto the field, his players stopped and applauded, the fans all stopped and applauded and, in one final touching tribute, the Giants stopped celebrating to applaud. One final great tribute to one of the last great managers.

It wasn’t just the fans who were demonstrating their love during the NLDS the Braves players made it clear from the beginning that everything they did was in Cox’s name. No player was more forthright in their feelings or actions than the only Braves on the play-off roster who appeared in Cox’s last postseason appearance back in 2005. Brian McCann was a young rookie who came up as part of the ‘Baby Braves’ and Tim Hudson was serving as the Braves ace making his first play-off appearance as a Braves. This year they were the veterans of the team and the backbone that Cox relied on to be his leaders. Both paid tributes to Cox with their performance in the NLDS. Hudson only made the one start after appearing on sort rest at the end of the season, he had however been set up to pitch game 5 had the Braves forced a decider. Huddy proved the Braves stopper again in Game 2 after Tim Lincecum had pitched his 14 strikeout complete game two-hitter; Tim went seven strong innings against the Giants number 2 ace Matt Cain without giving up an earned run. He earned his ‘ace’ tag over the season and it’s just a shame that he didn’t get the chance to pitch in a Game 5 and was denied the ability to play in his first League Championship Series. In what was an extremely challenged offence Brian McCann proved the rock in the middle of the line-up that he has been for the past 5 years. Whilst playing in all four games McCann posted a .429 batting average that included a go ahead home run in game four that looked, to all intents and purposes at the time, to have kept the Braves in the hunt. Nobody took the series loss harder than McCann as he continues to be one of the most underrated players in the game and the building block for any future success the Braves may have.

Apart from the ending of Bobby Cox’s legendary career the sad thing about the Braves postseason elimination is that never again will we find ourselves in this situation with a team like this. They were nowhere near the best team in the National League let only the Major Leagues but they were one of the hardest working and that was a quality nobody appreciated more than Bobby. After moves like the Mark Teixeira trade that began to make the Braves look like a faceless team of hired guns, this team was one of the most easily likeable Atlanta has had in a long time. Regardless of how it ended this season was unique and incredibly special and should not be forgotten by anyone.

Whoda Thunk It?

For the first five months of the season Braves fans everywhere were lamenting the fact that Frank Wren hadn’t been able to trade Derek Lowe in the pre season. The 4.53 ERA Lowe posted through the end of August had the ever decreasing attendances at Turner Field wishing for just one more sighting of Javier Vazquez in a Braves uniform. In just five starts since the calendar flipped to September however something drastic changed with the man formerly known to some as ‘Lowdermort’. On September 3^rd Lowe skipped a start to rest and rehabilitate an elbow that had some unwanted bone fragments floating around in it, that meant Braves Country got one last memory from Japanese import, soon to be Atlanta export, Kenshin Kawakami and everything looked gloomy. Then came the new Derek Lowe who, for the first time in his Atlanta career, earned the huge contract he received two years ago. September 8^th D-Lowe went 6 innings and allowed one run, solid without being spectacular, September 13^th however was. Over eight shutout innings Lowe allowed only 6 hits and struck out a career high 12 Nationals hitters in what became his season defining performance in the middle of his season defining month. In September Lowe pitched 30.2 innings allowing only four earned runs and, most importantly he achieved a 46 ground outs to only 15 fly outs, the kind of ratio that will always ensure success for Derek.

This is now success that the Braves will need him to provide as he goes into the post-season as the teams ace, a position that D-Lowe has earned this past month especially given Tim Hudson’s recent struggles including a 5.35 September ERA. Lowe has been to the post season six times, four with the Boston Red Sox and twice with the Los Angeles Dodgers, while Huddy has been four times with the Oakland Athletics and once with the Braves. This means that the Braves starters in games one and two both have extended play-off experience, Lowe is the only one however to have travelled beyond the division series advancing to the league championship series four times. D-Lowe also has the experience of pitching in the World Series having picked up a ring with the 2004 Red Sox. In 21 play-off games (10 starts) Derek has posted a 5-5 record with a 3.33 ERA, Hudson has pitched in 9 postseason games (8 starts) and gone 1-3 with a 3.97 ERA that includes going 0-1 with a 5.27 earned run average in 2 starts for the Braves back in 2005. It seemed a pretty obvious choice for Bobby to go with D-Lowe in game one especially against Lincecum to try and put the Braves up in the series and then hope Huddy returns to his early season brilliance in game two. The wild card (pun intended) is Tommy Hanson who will pitch game three at Turner Field, Tommy has been great down the stretch posting a 2.04 ERA in September and not allowing a run over five innings against the Phillies on Saturday. The Braves have much more post season experience in their rotation and one that is coming into the series hot, at this stage of the year you don’t need to be good you just have to win; Lowe and Hudson have done that an awful lot over the years.

Better Late Than Never

After collecting a Major League best 25 last at bat wins why did any of us even consider that this Braves team might make it easy on us. After entering last week easily within striking distance of the NL East lead they proceeded to get swept in Philadelphia and drop two of three against the Washington Nationals. The black cloud that enveloped Braves country following the Nats series was all consuming and, despite only being half a game back in the wild card, it felt that the season had prematurely ended in the most depressing of ways. But it seemed like that in 25 games previously, the team was down and getting no offence before a timely contribution from an unlikely hero. Apparently the Braves had that script rewritten on a much larger scale. They entered the last month of the season a lock for the play-offs, they entered the final week of the season outside play-off position, were they disheartened? Downtrodden? Uninspired? Not in the slightest. In the span of 20 innings and two thirds of this Marlins series everything has changed.

It started on Monday with Tommy Hanson pitching like the ace he projects to be next year, he pitched 7 2/3 innings allowing five hits, no walks and a single earned run. Not that the offence gave him help as they scored 1 run while Tommy was in the game. This is something Hanson is starting to get used to, in 17 starts since the end of June Tommy has posted a 2.51 ERA and collected just three wins. A side note on that is how classy Tommy as been throughout it all, he has never complained, never sniped about it, he just goes out every 5 days and does his job. Even when Hanson left the game with two outs in the eighth, and with the possibility of pitching on three days’ rest on Friday, the team could not muster any runs until deep into the cold Atlanta night. When the moment came, as it repeatedly has late in games for the Braves, Omar Infante delivered as big a hit as he has all season driving Nate McLouth on a two out RBI single and somewhat softened the blow of losing Martin Prado. It also put the Braves into the wild care lead thanks to the Padres losing to the Cubs.

After the late drama Monday the second game of the series Tuesday night was a little less dramatic, but a whole lot more important. Once again starting pitching set the tone with staff ace Tim Hudson going on three days’ rest and spinning a gem, he went six innings and allowed only 1 run despite giving up 11 base runners. He wasn’t dominant but he was good enough to keep the Braves in the ball game and, in that situation, is all the management could ask for. Then came the explosive seventh inning that started with the introduction of young closer-in-waiting Craig Kimbrel, more on that later, followed by Melky Cabrera’s lead-off single that started the biggest rally of the Braves season. Following Alex Gonzalez’s sac bunt came Brooks Conrad who has turned the seventh inning and beyond into ‘Brooks time’ and, as he has done all year, he delivered a devastating RBI triple to right center field that tied the game. With Conrad stood on third Eric Hinske followed Brooks’ shot with one of his own that travelled higher and deeper and a long way out of the ballpark. As it sailed out Eric let out all the pent up emotion that has built up within all the Braves players, it was the big hit the team had needed all month.

The key however to these first two games against the fish has been the sterling work of the bullpen, and the use of it by Bobby Cox. This series especially has seen the bullpen used as if this was a play-off series and given hope that the season may end with Jonny Venters arm still attached to his body. Bobby as begun using match ups a lot more, using lefty’s like Michael Dunn against lefty hitters. What has impressed most about the bullpen has been the fireballing duo of Billy Wagner and the aforementioned Craig Kimbrel; they have so far combined to pitch three innings in this Marlins series, all when the game was on the line and have allowed no hit, no runs and struck out 8 of the 9 outs via strikeout. In September Wagner has pitched 11.1 innings without allowing an earned run, picking up 6 saves and striking out 20, the Wagner mini-me that Kimbrel has become has pitched 9.2 innings has not allowed an earned run either and has struck out 20 while only allowing 6 base runners (3 hits, 3 walks). The effectiveness of the bullpen has also been helped by Bobby’s realisation that Kyle Farnsworth should not pitch in any games outside of spring training.

The likelihood is that Hanson, Hudson and Lowe will all start the Phillies series on three days’ rest which means that, as impressive as the bullpen has been, it will have be even better for the season’s final four games. Great teams have great bullpens and win tight games; the Braves have ticked both boxes so far this week.

New Dawns

Some stories never seem to change (see the three team power trip of the AL East) several divisions in baseball have been dancing to a very different beat in 2010. As of this morning (Saturday 28^th August) the six divisional leaders are: New York Yankees, Minnesota Twins, Texas Rangers, Atlanta Braves, Cincinnati Reds and the San Diego Padres. The Yankees, Twins and (historically) the Braves aren’t exactly strangers to the play-offs the Reds, Padres and Rangers haven’t been rushing to organise banner unveilings, in fact they only have a combined 2 play-off appearances this decade both by the Padres in 2005 and 2006. This year all three teams have found success in exactly the same mould; pitching, pitching and an MVP candidate.

San Diego Padres

San Diego trusted the season to a young and incredibly talented rotation from the very start and could not have imagined how successful it would turn out to be. Leading the way has been 22 year-old right handed sensation Mat Latos. Latos began the year as an incredibly talented but divisive prospect who had earned himself a reputation as a bad teammate, something that chiselled veterans like Heath Bell refused to tolerate. Latos admitted that in 2009: "I was so young, 21, and all the other guys were so much older than me, I felt like I kind of didn't fit in so I had to put up a wall almost and be by myself and be my own person and away from everybody else." Bell eventually had enough of the young Latos exploding in a dressing room rant that included him telling Latos: “You're a talented pitcher but we can make you that much better. You walk around here like you're a veteran thinking like you're somebody. You have to be humble. We have to work as a team." Whatever happened between that confrontation and the beginning of the 2010 season did make Latos a better pitcher, much better. Over the five months that have constituted the 2010 season the native Virginian has been dazzling, he is currently fourth in the NL and fifth in all of Major League Baseball with a 2.29 ERA and a league leading 0.98 WHIP. Usually it helps a team to see the back of a starter that good; when you’re playing against San Diego it is one of the most disheartening things that can happen in all of baseball. First out of the ‘pen is usually either Luke Gregerson or Mike Bell and if the opposition is still hanging around in the ninth inning that would single the arrival of the aforementioned Bell. The 6’3 220 pounder from Oceanside, California , which is about a 40 minute drive from Petco Park, has had by far the best year of his 7 year career. His previous best ERA mark was in 2007 when he posted a 2.02 mark in 81 games with 102 strikeouts while only being given 6 save opportunities, the position of closer being held by the imposing figure of the legendary Trevor Hoffman. This season Bell’s strikeouts will almost certainly be down, he’s currently at 73 and would need to appear in every remaining game and pick up a K in order to pass 2007, his WHIP is up from 0.96 in ’07 to 1.20 this year but he has seemingly learnt to be a more efficient pitcher, reducing the all important ERA from that previously mentioned and very impressive 2.02 to an astonishing 1.78 which is fourth best amongst Major League closers behind Mariano Rivera, Billy Wagner and Andrew Bailey.

Leading the Padres offensive output is, as always, Adrian Gonzalez. A-Gon leads the Padres in average (.296), homers (27), RBI’s (86), OBP (.388) and slugging percentage (520), he is the best player on the team in every offensive category, which makes him more important to his team than even Albert Pujols is to the Cardinals. At the beginning of the year the buzz surrounding Gonzalez was his importance to a play-off team, nobody thought it would be the Padres. The clever money was that he would be plying his trade a long, long way from his home town in the significantly more historic and successful surroundings of Fenway Park in Boston but, as this season has progressed, it became increasingly impossible for the Friars to send Gonzo anywhere other than his regular position at First Base. Oh by the way another footnote about the predicted trade to Boston: the Red Sox are 4.5 games out of first place in the AL East with a 74-55 records, the Padres are 6 games clear in the NL West with a 76-51 record. Importantly to the 2010 Padres is not what their super slugger has been accomplishing with the stick, it has been what he has achieved with the glove behind this pitching staff that need great, not good, but great defence. Gonzalez has a .996 fielding percentage which, amongst Padres with more than 500 innings ranks third on the team, the defensive skills that the San Diego native provides is much more important than any home run he has hit this year (well, almost). For all the sabermatricians out there that Gonzalez’s season has resulted in a +4.7 WAR (wins above replacement) basically the difference between San Diego’s record and that of the Boston Red Sox.

Cincinnati Reds

The Reds, like the Padres, were a team that were largely expected to fade away as the season progressed, well in case you missed it they didn’t. Unlike San Diego they don’t exactly have the one dominating pitcher but what they have had is a rotation that has remained consistent throughout. For the first two months of the season their ace was 2009 eighth overall pick Mike Leake, the pitcher who the Reds rated good enough to skip the minor leagues entirely. The first three months of the season saw the 22-year-old compile an impressive 3.30 ERA that included a 1.88 mark through the month of May. Unfortunately since then his lack of experience has begun to take its toll on him, with a 4.56 ERA in July and an unfortunate 8.83 in August before ending up on the 15 day DL with shoulder fatigue, a side effect of the 138 innings that Leake has thrown so far this season. While the former Arizona State star has slowly fatigued he had done more than enough in the early part of the season to keep the Reds in the mix. Luckily for Cincinnati the loss of Leake hasn’t been felt nearly as much as it could have been given the improvement in Bronson Arroyo who began the year about as badly as he possibly could going 1-2 in the month of April with a 6.37 ERA. Ever since April everything has been going down, in the best possible way, the four succeeding months has produced chronological ERA marks of; 3.89, 3.60, 2.81 and 2.73, that has left him with an impressive season mark of 3.82. The work of the identical twins has been supplemented by an unimpressive but consistent season from the enigma of Johnny Cueto who’s season has been somewhat overshadowed by the unfortunate events at Great American Ballpark back on August 10^th. When he has decided to use his hands instead of his feet he has been as efficient as Dusty Baker could every have hoped for. The bad news for the Reds has far as Cueto goes is he alternates good and bad months, as shown by his ERA splits for the season.

Month	ERA
April	5.33
May	1.59
June	4.54
July	2.01
August	4.43

This means that, even though he may have a successful run down the stretch during which he could help secure Cincinnati’s first division title since 1995 it would be wise for Dusty to avoid pitching him at any point during October.

While the Padres are able to boast the outstanding hitting ability of Adrian Gonzalez it has been bettered in every category in 2010 by the Reds triple-crown threat Joey Votto. Both players lead their respective teams in every offensive category but, unlike his San Diego counterpart, Votto plays on a much better hitting team and also unlike Gonzalez the Reds first baseman is close to the top of the league in all categories. He is first in average, joint second in homers, second in RBI’s, first in OBP and second in slugging percentage. The categories that Votto places second in he ranks behind only Albert Pujols, the reigning NL MVP who also happens to play on the Reds biggest division rival. Despite the success of the Reds pitching staff the momentum that the slightly smaller Red machine has been riding this season has been completely driven by the size of Votto’s bat. While the presence of Albert will make any attempt at the triple crown a distant dream it would be very difficult for any honest judge to vote Votto as the 2010 NL MVP, especially if the Reds hang onto the division.

Texas Rangers

The Rangers rotation has been anchored by perhaps the two obscurest starting pitchers to have thrown a pitch in 2010. CJ Wilson was a career reliever who had a career year for the Rangers in 2009 with a very impressive 2.81 ERA in a career high 78.2 innings pitched that included 14 saves. Somewhere in the deep Texas heat Wilson reinvented himself before he threw seven shutout innings in Toronto in his first career start since 2005. When the Rangers looked to CJ to provide a solid fourth or fifth starter he gave them something more like the performance that Ron Washington hoped his ace could provided, well until July 9^th Wilson became the Rangers ace. The 3.02 ERA that Wilson has posted this year doesn’t accurately reflect the incredible season that the 29 year-old has had, his six starts in May have unfortunately inflated his ERA by at least half a run. On that basis Wilson could actually be sporting maybe a 2.52 ERA or a little more realistically maybe 2.72, imagine if it did sit at 2.72 how much more attention would he be receiving nationally? The most impressive aspect about Wilson’s season has been that he achieved all of thin in 164 innings which, if you’ve been paying attention boys and girls, is 91 more than any season before. His partner in crime has been the farmhand built, University of Alabama schooled Tommy Hunter whose 6’3 280 pound frame is rivalled only by CC Sabathia for most unlikely bodied big leaguer. Hunter, however unlikely, has achieved something that not even the great Nolan Ryan achieved; starting a Major League season going 8-0, Hunter had a realistic chance to go 9-0 before blowing a 5 run lead against the LA Angels. Hunter has been the prototypical prospect, improving every year he has been in the big leagues and is the type of young man we are going to see coming through the Nolan Ryan lead Rangers; big, strong, incredibly durable and above all else a winner. His 3.66 ERA while impressive is not as dazzling as that of Wilson but his 11-2 record displays and incredible ability for keeping his team in the game. That is nearly 400 words written about the Texas Rangers pitching rotation and I haven’t even mentioned Cliff Lee, the best pitcher in the whole of the American League, maybe even all of baseball. Lee hasn’t been as impressive in Texas as he was previously in Seattle but that doesn’t change the reason the Rangers acquired the former Cy Young winner: the play-offs.

What Gonzalez and Votto have done for their respective teams is impressive but doesn’t even come close to the achievements of the Raleigh hitting machine that is Josh Hamilton. When Hamilton burst onto the scene at the 2008 All-Star home run derby everyone expected him to dominate in 2009, well better late than never. 2010 has been the year of Hamilton, he has torched every pitcher he has seen this year making landing himself in the top five in every American League category. The marks that he will put up this year will be career highs in every aspect most impressively average (.358) and one base percentage (.410). The statistics say a lot about Hamiliton’s ability but little about his character. When he was picked first in the 1999 baseball draft Josh had the world at his feet, then came the alcohol and the drugs that dropped Hamilton off the end of the baseball map. The road that he has taken since his fall into vice makes the pressure of a play-off seen like a work in the park for Hamilton, something that should make it easier for him to lead the Rangers to their first play-off birth since 1999.

All three of these teams were not expected to be in this position back in April but, with on the strength of some brilliant pitching and with one outstanding player all three should make deep and meaningful runs into October, as unexpected as they would be.

Information used in this piece taken from an excellent article written by Jorge Arangure jr over at ESPN, read it http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=5460639

Can Conrad Carry Braves?

When Chipper Jones fell to the ground in foul territory at Houston’s Minute Maid Park on Tuesday night it would have been easy for the Braves to lose momentum and crumple in the same way the franchise legend had, to their credit nobody allowed that to happen on Tuesday or Wednesday but Chipper’s injury is going to affect far more than just the Astros series. The Chipper that got hurt was not the .251 hitter that had plagued the Braves line-up for the first four months of the season, whether it was the intensifying pennant chase, the benefit of being healthy for a couple of consecutive weeks (irony) or just finally seeing the ball well, something had happened to Chipper in the month of August, in the nine games Jones had played this month he was hitting .400 with 3 homers. Whilst the improved average was a major improvement for Chipper the power surge was the most significant statistic of the month, not just for Jones but the Braves, the most homers he had hit in a single month so far in 2010 prior to August was 2. To top that in just nine was a significant boost for the 38-year-old third baseman, finding the power swing that could have propelled the team into the play-offs, unfortunately that won’t happen now. Do the Braves have other options, or at least viable one’s to fill in for Chipper at third.

The best option for the Braves is Omar Infante the do it all utility man with the robust .330 average who has an All-Star selection to his name, problem with Infante is he will be playing second base until next week at the earliest covering for another All-Star Martin Prado. So now the team is facing an absolutely huge series against the Dodgers (who spent Thursday night trying to infuriate Braves fan everywhere) without a top quality third baseman. Brooks Conrad will likely be the individual filling the void left by Chipper but, despite his regular late game heroics, he will be a bigger black hole than even when Jones was at his worst. The most at-bats Conrad has had in a month so far this year is 33, Chipper’s monthly low before August was 61, a figure that cannot be overlooked. Brooks is a bench player, one who has carved his little piece of Braves folklore yes, but a bench player all the same. He will now be vaulted into the position of replacing the second best player in franchise history in a series that, even though it is in mid-August, could go a long way to deciding who had the inside track in the race for the NL East. It has been the role players like Conrad that have carried this team to its 66 wins so far, in Chippers absence they will need the carry them to a significant number more. This weekend will go a long way to deciding how magic the 2010 Braves truly are.

Minor Gets Major Opportunity

Tonight Mike Minor becomes the latest in a long line of top Braves pitching prospects being promoted from Triple-A to the big time. Minor may go on to have a long and successful career but the longest journeys always begin with the smallest step. The latest prospects being promoted have all scuffled and stumbled and tried their hardest to fall at that first step, some straightened up and are now running others fell at a later step, the Braves debut still appears somewhat of a poisoned chalice. This marks the fourth year that a highly touted Braves pitching prospect has made the jump from AAA to the big leagues with seriously mixed results.

It all began when the Braves has a spare key to the franchise cut for a young lefty drafted in the second round of the 2003 draft who made his Major League debut in July of 2007. His name was Jo-Jo Reyes. Long before the tag of farmhand was attached to Reyes and well before he was an afterthought in a mid-season trade both then-GM and manager Bobby Cox believed Reyes could be the next big thing in Atlanta. After his promotion to Triple-A Richmond (remember those days) he threw just 23 innings but posted a 1.57 ERA with 27 strikeouts, this convinced the organisation that the 22-year-old was ready to pitch in Atlanta, he was called up on July 7^th to start in place of the injured John Smoltz against the San Diego Padres and David Wells. The first inning went well enough Jo-Jo it was the second that the trouble started as Reyes gave up a solo homer to Khalil Greene, he would last barely an inning more giving up five earned runs in five hits and three walks while recording only one strikeout.

Next up for the Braves production line was the debut of James Parr, a fourth round pick in the 2004 draft. Despite being such a high pick Parr, like Reyes before him, worked the farm for the Braves progressing to AAA without ever dominating the same way the Jo-Jo had before him. In the Minor Leagues in 2008, prior to his September call-up, Parr remained solid without ever being outstanding, he made 28 appearances and 26 starts compiling 150.2 innings and a solid 3.52 ERA. He made his debut in Atlanta on September 4^th 2008 against the Washington Nationals as the Braves neared the end of another disappointing season. Parr burst onto the scene in exactly the way they had hoped Reyes to. In six innings Parr allowed only two hits and no runs earning his first Major League win in the Braves 2-0 victory over the Nationals.

2009 was the year that really began to shape the future of the Braves, both as a franchise and as pitching rotation. At the beginning of the season Tommy Hanson had climbed to the top of the Braves rankings but began the season at AAA Gwinnett along with Kris Medlen. It was a surprise to many that Medlen was the first to make his major league debut in what was supposed to be a spot start prior to Tom Glavine’s return to the Atlanta rotation. Despite the surprise an argument could have been made that Medlen deserved the start more than his more heralded friend having posted a 1.19 ERA at Gwinnett compared to Hanson’s 1.49. Medlen stepped onto the mound in Atlanta for the first time on May 21^st 2009 against the Colorado Rockies, a game Kris would later look back on as one of the most embarrassing moments of his baseball life. He lasted a Reyes-like three innings giving up 5 earned runs on 3 hits while walking five batters, a stat that ended up killing a debutant Medlen.

Hanson would make his debut barely two weeks after Medlen after Braves GM Frank Wren made himself the most unpopular man in Atlanta by cutting Tom Glavine prior to his scheduled comeback start. Unfortunately this made Hanson’s debut considerably less celebrated than it should have been as the top right-handed pitching prospect in the game. Whether or not this fact affected Tommy he became the second debuting pitcher to fall flat his first time in the Majors. Hanson pitched six innings striking out five which would have looked a lot more impressive if he hadn’t given up six earned runs that included three home runs.

Unlike his predecessors Minor does have the luxury of making his debut away from Atlanta in the relative obscurity of Minute Maid Park in Houston. To succeed Minor has to do exactly what has worked for him in his rise through the minor leagues, something that Reyes, Medlen and Hanson all got away from. As unfortunate as Medlen’s injury was, and as bad as it is for the Braves, it could turn out to be a blessing in disguise if Minor is able to repay the faith the organisation showed in him when they selected him with the seventh overall pick last year. Even half a Strasburg would be a success.