IL names players of the week – OurSports Central
Billy McCarthy, International League Player of the Week after going 13-for-23 for the week, including a 6-for-6 game Saturday.
Johnson Watch: .323/.454/.615, 8 HR, 12 2B, 31 R, 20 RBI, 6-7 on SB. Oh, and he played shortstop the other day, Mr. Furcal.
McCarthy Watch: .343/.413/.543.
Marte Watch: .275/.362/.481.
Just for you Eddie Perez fans, introducing Brayan Pena Watch: .414/.464/.475. .414!!
Good information Mac. Kelly johnson also has walked 30 times to 17 strike outs. Braves needs someone like KJ in the outfield who knows how to get on base. Another player for your watch is lefty Chuck James. Probably won’t get called up to Atlanta this year but is tearing up the batters. Just promoted to Mississippi.
Chuck James made his first start for AA the other night. He was good until the rain delay hit. He gave up 1 run, but a big error by Onil Joseph proved costly. Cost the braves 3 runs.
Marte hit a HR today and went 2-3. Avg is in the .280s now
I’d love to be wrong about this, but I’m starting to think that the reason Mondesi is still around is that they’re looking to trade for another veteran. They must be over him by now. I’m sure that even if he’d still be patient about the offense at this point, overthrowing the cutoff man so many times is digging at Cox pretty good. I wouldn’t worry so much if I thought there was a chance it would be Huff. If we had a reliever to trade, I imagine Jeff Conine would have already been fitted for one of those awful red jerseys.
I’d be all for Johnson spending the rest of the year in AAA if it meant he was getting a real shot at short (but that seems unlikely). But that still leaves McCarthy as almost certainly better than any outfielder we’d probably get in trade.
I’ll take this management team over any other out there, but there sure are some things that make me absolutely nuts. And I totally see them preferring some other aging guy who never really was that good anyway to playing a second rookie in the outfield.
creynolds, would you think the Braves would make a trade with the Marlins? I think the Marlins middle reliever issues are starting to show up and their starters can’t keep up the pace they’ve been going at so far. The Braves aren’t going to help them out since they are the main competition.
It bother me that they don’t do something with Mondesi either, but as long as they are winning, I guess they can wait for a trade deadline deal when it becomes a buyer’s market.
Good point, bwarrend. That one does seem unlikely in the real world, even if Atlanta did have a reliever to give. He just strikes me as the kind of guy they would go after.
To be fair to Mr. Conine and his fans, I should say that he doesn’t fit the “never was really that good anyway” bit. He had a few damn fine seasons during his first stint with Florida. But since that was a decade ago, he seems like a perfect fit!
Breyan
avg : .414 , obp/slg : 464/475!!
Does noone in the atlanta system walk? 🙁
Apart from the Internet, this might be the biggest collection of hackers!
Poor kelly johnson..prolly gets bypassed cos he walks so much!
Marte’s walk rate is okay. Jurries’ is borderline. Wes Timmons has a .408 OBP versus a .281 BA in Mississippi. Gregor Blanco’s walks are the only thing he has going for him, but they keep promoting him anyway. Same goes for li’l Jonny Schuerholz, though he’s actually a little better hitter than Blanco. Luis Hernandez, putative shortstop of the future, has put up a .173/.305/.204 line, which may explain why Johnson got the shortstop glove out of mothballs. What’s weird is that he hardly ever walked last year.
I don’t think we can turn Kelly Johnson’s 1 start at shortstop (in which he made an error, no less) into succeeding Rafael Furcal. He hasn’t played there full-time in a couple of years and they always thought his defense was pretty marginal. Now, if he can play barely passable shortstop, I’m all for promoting him tomorrow; I don’t think that will happen, however, especially in an organization that values the appearance of defense (diving, not making errors, not being fat) like this one does.
It sure makes a nice pipedream to envision a 23 year old shortstop in AAA hitting 300/450/600, doesn’t it? 🙂
The future of shortstop is simply too unpleasant to think about without such dreams. It’s probably best to just go back to being consumed Raul Mondesi for now and leave the nightmares of Rey Sanchez or one of his clones for the winter.
With No Pepper down for awhile I hope we can share information about the minors. It seems to be in better shape than it has been since the mid 90’s.
I set up a “Minors” category today. So far, this is the only entry in it but if No Pepper is on hiatus for an extended period I’ll try to update regularly.
Brayan Pena’s numbers are impressive–especially because it suggests that he has become better at plate discipline. He has been an erratic hitter, but before this season Pena has been something of a free swinger. It is early, but it would be great to see the Braves develop someone who can be selective with pitches and really rake the ball.
Brayan is still a bit of a free swinger IMHO ( in the 4 games I have seen this year), but he seems to make good contact. Think Vlad without power.
Kelly Johnson is great ball player. I think he is Marcus Giles part 2.
I would love for him to fit in at short and for us to be able to move furcal in a trade for an Outfielder. I bet someone would give us a decent lead off hitter for furcal – Carl Crawford maybe?
I think they could definitely get a lot for Furcal from some team. Maybe Crawford wouldn’t work on either side (money for Atlanta and BJ Upton still trying to play short for Tampa), but there almost certainly is a lot of trade value there. Matching up may be one problem, since Furcal would only appeal to a contending team in need of a shortstop. And that team would have to have a veteran OF with lead-off skills for Atlanta to be interested. But I think the real problem with the scenario is that Atlanta just won’t be trading Furcal. It’s just not in their nature, I don’t think.
My personal opinion is that Furcal has been a good, but certainly not great player, and that he’ll ultimately be valuable this year. And letting him walk for draft picks is a pretty good strategy. I don’t like him right now, but I’m much more worried about how they’ll replace him next year than trying to replace him this year.