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.

Big Braves Blog; Part 2

Anybody who knows the Atlanta Braves knows pitching. Tom Glavine’s recent retirement serves as a reminder of the Braves tradition. For the first time in a long time the Braves look tooled to build on the Maddux, Smoltz, Glavine years. With Javier Vazquez now residing in the slightly colder, higher pressured New York City the team has a new ace; and despite last year it’s not Tommy Hanson. Over the last two years Jair Jurrjens has built a resume as strong as almost any other major league pitcher. Despite having only spent two years in Atlanta JJ seems to have found himself right at home, improving dramatically from his first year. He took his ERA down from 3.68 in 2008 to 2.60 last year, which was good for third best in the National League and only 0.12 higher than eventual Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum. As well as improving statistically Jurrjens took on more of the work load, throwing 26.2 more innings that 2008 and going over 200 for the first time in his career. Oh yeah, on top of all that, he just turned 24. Nothing I say can do justice to how good Tommy Hanson really is. People far more talented than I am have waxed lyrical about Hanson’s talent and every word is justified. For most Braves fans the prospect of having the 23-year-old Californian from Opening Day is almost illegal and he may be on the mound at Turner Field against the Chicago Cubs. Both Hanson and Jurrjens will win at least 15 games and have sub-3.00 ERA’s, the keys to the Braves season, however, will be the 3, 4 and 5 starters. Tim Hudson gave the organisation enough confidence in 7 games that he can pick up where Vazquez left off, whether that will include the 2.87 ERA and 238 strikeouts is yet to be seen. The biggest question surrounding Tim is obviously how his Tommy John repaired shoulder will hold up over 30+ games instead of the 42 innings he pitched in 2009. His performance over those big league games was encouraging, they included a 3.61 ERA and very impressive 30 strikeouts to only 13 walks. If he returns to pitching 200 innings, as he has in 6 of his 11 major league seasons he will have fully justified Frank Wren’s faith in him. Kenshin Kawakami and Derek Lowe provide the biggest question marks. Kawakami’s issues last year can easily be attributed to 31 year old rookie, but statistically these glitches did not hurt the Japanese star, he finished pitching in 32 games, starting 25 and amassing a 3.86 ERA. If he does that again in the fifth spot in the rotation he will prove to be a very solid investment and useful piece of the bigger puzzle. D-Lowe on the other hand has got way more to prove. Last season was an unmitigated, unimaginable disaster for the man labelled ‘Ace’. I know of no other staff ace who would end with an embarrassing 4.67 ERA. Despite this, and my desperation to trade Lowe instead of Vazquez, we now need to get behind Lowe and look at what he can give us. In his last year with the Los Angeles Dodgers he produced his career year but that is never a good indicator in a contract year so let’s look back a little further. Over his previous three years in LA his ERA’s were; 3.61, 3.63 and 3.88. If he can forget about last year and produce his usual level of performance, 3.70 ERA and 15 wins, it would help Lowe’s case for not being a hugely expensive bust.

Those coming out of the Braves bullpen provided record levels of relief for the Braves, especially Peter Moylan, Mike Gonzalez and Eric O’ Flaherty. Well Moylan and O’Flaherty are going to have to do it all over again, between them they pitched 129.1 innings, an almost unheard of number. Unlike last year they won’t have the help of Mike Gonzalez, now a Baltimore Oriole; instead they will be hoping that potential future starter Kris Medlan can build on his improvements of last year. Despite his nightmarish debut the young pitcher didn’t shrivel and die like other young Braves pitchers have (Jo-Jo names) he came back and improved every time he pitched. He ended with a very solid 4.26 ERA in 37 games (4 starts); the amount he pitched will also help him in the upcoming season.

After this very solid middle relief there is now a completely brand new closing unit. They have experience working together last year in Boston but how Takashi Saito and Billy Wagner perform for the team will depend on how well their bodies stay together, especially Wagner. While not recording a save last year his strikeout-to-walk ratio was highly impressive; 48-15, and he will need to keep that up if he is to be the effective closer the Braves need. The other thing he will need to be, if the Braves are to go to the play-offs, he will need to be clutch. Last year Rafael Soriano fell apart down the stretch costing the Braves (and Tommy Hanson in particular) several games. Wagner will need to preserve the leads he is given, the Braves offense isn’t good enough to give him 3 run leads every time he is called on. He will have several games that he only has 1 run to work with and they will be the games he earns his money in.
Pitching is without doubt the Braves ultimate strength, and what Bobby Cox will be leaning on most to take him to his fifteenth division title. The recent revelations about Jair Jurrjens needing an MRI back in Atlanta just a week before Spring Training is disturbing to say the least, we can only hope that it is as unimportant as JJ is making out.

Next time I will examine the four men who will be making up the increasingly important infield.

Brave new world?

We’re not 48 hours removed from the end of the World Series, congratulations to the Yankees are due, and I’m already thinking what’s ahead for the Braves in 2010. This has been a constant on my mind since the end of our play off push this year but seeing as today players filed for free agency and I got my e-mail trying to sell season tickets today I got thinking. Well number 1 this, officially for a change, will be Bobby Cox’s lat year as Atlanta Braves manager, this is plain emotional for anyone involved with the organisation, especially for the people who have had the chance to be involved over the last 2 decades. There is no doubt Bobby will one day be smoking his victory cigar in Cooperstown, NY of that there is absolutely no doubt, there will be no asterix alongside his name he’s just plain earned it.

This brings me to my first big unknown, will this also end up being Chipper Jones’ last season with the team? Chipper has never known anything in the majors except for Bobby Cox, hell Chipper could well be the Braves next manager, but that’s a half baked idea for another time. Chipper, as everyone including him knows, stunk last year, I mean good old fashioned stunk. In 12 months Jones dropped 100 average points, he has only been that bad 3 times in his career, 1995, 2004 and this year. The injuries are well reported as well as Chipper himself saying he would call it quits if he’s that bad again, so he’s already thinking about it. I just can’t think of a more fitting way for Chipper to go out than at the same time as the manager that brought him up way back in 1993. Of course this would involve Chipper having to boycott his last year of his contract and walk away on his own accord, not exactly the easiest thing to do, there is also the possibility that if he gets his production back to where it has been he will happily see out the contract and hopefully continue helping out the Bravos. Jones is purely me speculating on an idea that I’ve been thinking about for some time, however there are some other things about the Braves that make me a little nervous about next year.

The first is that we have over half our payroll hooked up in only 9 players: Javier Vazquez, Tommy Hanson, Jair Jurjenns, Derek Lowe, Tim Hudson, Kenshin Kawakami, Chipper, Brian McCann and Nate McClouth, one of those (knock on wood Lowe or KK) will be traded, that however still leaves a lot of money being spent for not many bodies however talented. Those 9 were almost exclusively, with the exception of Martin Prado and Matt Diaz, where our best players last year so where in the payroll do we have enough financial movement to bring in players to improve our team. Nowhere, that’s the answer.

Second, we have almost twice as many contracted starters as we do competent relievers. JJ, Vazquez, Tommy, Hud, D-Lowe and KK, in case you can’t count, that’s 6. Eric O’Flaherty, Peter Moylan, Boone Logan and Kris Medlan are the only relievers under contracts who you would want in a game. Medlan could possibly even start the year as a AAA starter, which personally I want to see, but it was certainly interesting to see the developing trust in Medlan from Bobby through the season but maybe not to the point that he becomes the Braves Phil Hughes. There guys like Luis Valdez, Todd Redmond and Stephen Marek who there seems to be some belief in, especially Valdez. Even in both Rafael Soriano and Mike Gonzalez re-sign (and it’s unlikely both will) then that’s still a weak bullpen, and this is even without mentioning it was by far the most burdened in 2009. So even if our 6 starters are able to carry the team in each and every game how can we ask the bullpen to finish the job. Soriano’s meltdown at the end of the year is evidence enough of how hard the ‘pen worked throughout the year and even now there is very little help. The signing of Scott Proctor to a minor league contract is intriguing in that it happened before there was any attempt to sign back Gonzo or Rafa, and used money, even just a little bit, that could have gone towards either of those deals. Unless the starting rotation turns out to have 3 or 4 Cy Young candidates (which it could) this bullpen could end up churning out bull-something else by the end of the 2010 season.

The biggest concern is the Arizona Fall League. Last year Tommy Hanson went and became the first pitcher to win the winter league MVP and this year was supposed to be the year of Jason Heyward. Instead the AFL became a pain in the ass for Heyward, literally, the gluteus strain putting him out of the league. Then there was Freddie Freeman slumping like a rollercoaster, luckily he seems to be bouncing back but the start was worrying. Luckily Mike Minor, our number 7 draft pick, is throwing nicely, maybe not Hanson nice but promising nice. The worrying about the AFL is that it’s made me realise that the next generation of Braves superstars are maybe a little further away from Major League service than we hoped. Heyward will likely be starting the year in Gwinnett at AAA, Freeman at AA in Mississippi and I have no idea about Minor, I don’t even know if the Braves management do.

By the start of Spring Training Frank Wren may have made some of the kind of moves he did last year with the starting rotation and made me have a little more faith. I’m running on hope heading into the cold, dark winter months but does anyone else see this year being anything but a passing the torch one? All every Braves fan in the world asks, and we don’t care how, give Bobby the best baseball year of his life in his last one.