ESPN.com – MLB – Recap – Braves at Padres – 05/15/2003
First off, Ryan Klesko was (unintentionally) hit in the head with a Horacio Ramirez pitch in the fifth. He left the game and was woozy; hopefully, Ryan will be all right.
Anyway, so much for the rookie pitchers the first time theory. The Padres actually led 3-0 after 2 and 3-2 entering the fifth. And then, the Braves put up eight runs without the benefit of a homer. Julio Franco’s two-run triple was the biggest blow. Marcus Giles had two hits in the inning and four overall, including a homer and two doubles. (Should have stretched one of those, Marcus!) The Braves added on five late runs and Bobby opened the floodgates on the pen.
The rundown of offensive oddities: All the Braves’ starters, including Ramirez, had hits… Chipper walked four times, was hit by a pitch, and singled in one official AB. He didn’t get a chance to drive in any runs, and neither did Javy Lopez, but every other Brave starter — again, including Ramirez — did, and every one scored except Sheffield. The Braves’ 1-3 hitters are now hitting .331, .336, and .348.
Horacio Ramirez pitched about as poorly as you can and still get a win, going five innings, giving up five runs on five hits, four walks, and the HBP. The back of the bullpen did okay, with one run allowed by Jung Bong.
In Horacio’s defence, only three of the five runs were earned, and one of the walks was intentional. Having said that, he didn’t look sharp and was lucky to finish the fifth to get the victory.
Little bit of a hijack here, but I thought y’all might find interesting the stuff on Marcus in Jayson Stark’s column at:
http://espn.go.com/mlb/columns/stark_jayson/1554106.html
Specifically:
“Another scout calls Giles “the most improved player in the league.” And he had to be to sell Braves manager Bobby Cox, who played veteran utility man Keith Lockhart over Giles much of last year.
“If Lockhart was still there, Bobby would probably still be running him out there,” one scout says. “So maybe the best decision they made all winter was not bringing Lockhart back. It’s allowed (Giles) to blossom.”
This scout knows Bobby pretty well…
Colin
Of course the other school of thought is that if Giles had been handed the job right out of AA – like say Sean Burroughs of the Padres – he wouldn’t have been driven to work on his shortcomings and wouldn’t be the player that he is today.
Not saying I believe that, but with some players it can hurt their development if they are just handed everything.
On another note, Trey Hodges ripped through the 8th inning yesterday in eight pitches, recording one strike out. Free Trey Hodges!
Hasn’t Trey now been used in 4 games in a row? If we free Trey Hodges any more, his arm might fall off.
I think Robert meant Hodges should be used as a starter. While Reynolds may pitch his way to an unconditional release any day now, I don’t think the Braves will put Hodges in the rotation any time soon.
Cox and Mazzone tend to use the old Earl Weaver technique of putting a rookie in long relief for a year before moving him into the rotation. That’s what they did with Marquis, Chen and Odalis Perez (as well as Bong this year) and what they might have done with Millwood had Smoltz not gotten hurt in 1998, with Moss last year had Maddux not started the season on the DL and with Ramirez this year had Byrd and Hampton not been injured.
I believe that Trey could have handled being a starter at the beginning of the year, rather than Ramirez. Horacio has the fast ball, but Trey has the control. In the end, control is the key, and Trey will prove it, one way or another.