The State | 02/25/2006 | Braves ask: Why not Reitsma?
Because we tried that before and it didn’t work.
41 Comments
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The State | 02/25/2006 | Braves ask: Why not Reitsma?
Because we tried that before and it didn’t work.
Use code “Journal” for a 5% discount.
“Jon Schuerholz” ???
of all the ways to misspell his name.
YAY for my local newspaper making stupid statements!
I think John Smoltz should be our number one starter too!
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” -Albert Einstein.
Today’s sign of the apocalypse: (from atlantabraves.com)
“Into the outfield”…that’s, what, 120 feet? Please, Hammer, don’t hurt yourself.
Hmmm…So I guess that, at least by Einstein’s definition, all the “experts” who pick the Braves to not win the division every year are insane.
The LaRoche/Jurries conversation continues:
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/sports/braves/stories/0225braves.html
Link
One of Jim Bowden’s actually decent moves this offseason goes down the drain. Whoopsie.
Man… what an unfortunate team.
First Omar Minaya bleached their farm system in the Cliff Floyd and Bartolo Colon trades (remember Grady Sizemore? well…) because the team was about to be contracted; then they hire Jim Bowden, who turns out to be Cam Bonifay, Allard Baird, and Dan O’Dowd combined; then their television contract is swallowed by universal dick Peter Angelos; then they lose the right to even call themselves the “Nationals,” leading to jokes so easy that even Jay Leno’s making them.
First in war, first in peace, last in the… oh, right. I guess this is nothing new. It’s been a long time since Walter Johnson, boys. You might have to wait a little longer.
OT — just saw that Don Knotts died today. My top four sitcom characters in television history:
1. George Costanza
2. Barney Fife
3. Lucy Ricardo
4. Archie Bunker
My memories of my childhood evenings consist of watching Andy Griffith before the Braves came on. Bye Barney
I think my best memories of “The Andy Griffith Show” are from Braves’ rain delays.
I was reading the Don Knotts obit & my girlfriend shouted out, “Oh… Mr. Furley died.”
“No, he’s Barney Fife.”
“Mr. Furley!”
“Barney Fife!”
“Mr. Furley!”
I guess I just don’t think that “Three’s Company” much stands the test of time.
My favorite sitcom characters:
1. Fred Sanford
2. Archie Bunker
3. Barney Fife
4. Ed Norton
5. Ted Baxter
Costanza was probably funnier than all of ’em, but I’m feeling nostalgic.
Honorable Mentions from “The Andy Griffith Show”: Otis the Drunk & Ernest T. Bass — a loony hillbilly character who only appeared on about 5 shows, but very memorable.
He was definitely Barney Fife. People will still be watching The Andy Griffith Show in 100 years.
Wow I just found out about Barney. This is a sasd day (well yesterday was)
Just saw a thumbnail comparison in the AJC this morning comparing the Braves and Mets. The writer (whose name I’ve forgotten) gives the Mets the advantage at catcher. The media’s bizarre fascination with Paul LoDuca continues….
Maybe the AJC has a tip that Brayan Pena is starting at catcher for the Braves.
I give the Mets the advantage at first base, left field, and the bullpen. The Braves have the advantage at second, short, catcher, and center. Right field’s a push, between second-years Victor Diaz and Jeff Francouer; so is the starting rotation, especially given how much of an injury concern the Mets’ starters are. Third base goes to the Braves if Chipper can stay healthy; otherwise, David Wright’s a stud.
And let’s not forget that LoDuca isn’t so young (and we’re talking catcher’s years). He’s gonna be 34 this year.
Agree with most of that, AAR, except I would give starting rotation to the Braves
ATL: Smoltz, Hudson, Thomson, Sosa, Ramirez
NYM: Pedro, Glavine, Trachsel, Zambrano, Heilman
If we look at who the replacements would be if there’s an injury, the Braves probably have the edge there too with Davies and James.
Also not sure about going ahead and giving the Mets the edge in bullpen. I wouldn’t be surprised if all our young guys really put together something good. Who do the Mets have besides Wagner and Sanchez? Julio (ha), Bradford (?), Schmoll, Iriki, Heath Bell, Juan Padilla
I give the Braves the edge in right too…Francoeur’s gonna have a big year.
I think this is all whistling past the graveyard. The real question, the biggest problem for this team is still the bullpen and we haven’t seen anything done to give us even the least bit of encouragement.
I’m really worried that it’ll be mid-May, with a sub-500 record, before somebody in the front office wake up and gets some real help.
J.S.;It’s still the bullpen, stupid.
I doubt that the bullpen will be that bad, and it’s not worth savaging the system to get in another mediocrity to close.
No new news on the Ugi jail break?
Big D and secondbass, I’d like to think you’re right; I think Francouer has the potential to put up monster numbers, but he could also go into a monumental drought like he did at the end of last season.
As far as I’m concerned, the keys to the Braves’ starting rotation are Hudson’s torso and Sosa’s post-Mazzone effectiveness. He could either regress into Victor Zambrano Jr., or stay an effective middle-of-the-rotation starter. I would like to see Kyle Davies turn into an effective fifth starter, but he looked a little lost at times last year after being brilliant in his first couple of starts.
I would like to believe the Braves’ bullpen won’t be as bad as it was last year. But, then again, I have no genuine evidence to believe that it won’t.
The bullpen is more than the closer & we had problems all over the place last year. And, of course, it was our eventual undoing. Until I see something, I will remain suspicious.
BTW, Francoeur is way better than Diaz. Despite the favorable comparisons to Manny, Diaz quickly became the most-hated Met by Shea Daddies last year for his lack of effort and his penchant for bonehead plays (throwing to the wrong base, overthrowing cutoff men, brainlocks onbase).
If you remember the bullpen last year was full of proverbial excretement: Gryboski, Kolb, Bernero, Brower, Foster …… OK we still got Foster. But it can’t be worse … can it??
Comparing position-to-position is kind of silly. For example, the Mets have a huge advantage at first base, where Delgado is a 9 and LaRoche is a 2 with delusions of 5hood. But LaRoche is a support player, while Delgado will be a key performer. It’s similar but in reverse at second base, where the Mets don’t even have a starter right now.
Well, no matter how much I hate it, but I am very sure now Brian Jordan is going to make the team. He is taking grounders at first. So, Bobby is finding everyway to keep Jordan around for another year.
I don’t think anyone’s posted this yet, so here’s the link to the interview with Roger McDowell over at Talking Chop.
I like this guy. Hard to say if he’ll be as good as Bobby and JS seem to think he is, but I like him.
By the way, I’ve never really been able to figure this out: is Terry Pendleton a good hitting coach?
AAR, I read the interview too, but there are not much new information coming out from that interview, which I guess is the reason why no one talks about it here.
From my perspective, it’s quite hard to tell whether a hitting coach is good or not because we can’t tell if a player’s improvement (eg Andruw) is contributed by the player’s own work or advice from the hitting coach. Chipper is another example as he is more willing to listen to his dad on hitting advice. So, it is quite hard to evaluate a hitting coach’s performance in my opinion.
I’m not crazy about Pendleton as a hitting coach. It seems to me there’s a strategy for most good hitting coaches (ie, work the count, aggressiveness, …). I haven’t seen any strategy from Pendleton that is reflected in the Braves hitting. Am I missing something?
td, some players don’t listen, or they would listen but not following instructions when he is actually at the plate taking the at-bat. Pendleton preaches aggressiveness and uses the entire field, which is pretty consistent with his own hitting approach during his playing days. However, LaRoche keeps grounding out to the second baseman. On the other hand, I am starting the see Andruw hitting bullets to the right field more often than before. So, it’s really up to the players themselves to carry out the overall appraoch preached by Pendleton.
I mentioned last year that some players might start hiring individual hitting instructors, and that it might be a good idea. My belief is that Pendleton does pretty well with hitters who are more or less like he was (for instance, Furcal and Estrada, both of whom are switch-hitters with midrange power) but that some other hitters aren’t really suited to his teaching. Which seems obvious to me: there can’t be one perfect hitting coach for a whole team of thirteen position players.
Look at it this way… Ten points of batting average is just six hits a year, but those six hits can be worth several hundred thousand dollars come contract time. If you can hire a coach who can actually help you get those six hits for $100,000 a year, wouldn’t it be worth it? Players already often have personal trainers, this is just an obvious extension of it.
I’m not sure that it would be good for the team, but I think it’s inevitable.
Just to add on… Andruw credited his success last season to instruction from Willie Mays. Which makes sense. Though he hasn’t lived up to the Mays talk that greeted him when he was a prospect, Andruw is a lot more like Mays as a hitter than he’s like Pendleton.
That’s a good point, Mac, and I don’t think it would necessarily be bad for the team–at least not offensively, although chemistry (whatever the hell that is) might suffer.
Of course, it would take much more than a hitting coach to make LaRoche a good hitter. Maybe they could bring in Mark Grace, another tall, painfully slow left-handed first baseman with no power, to teach Adam how to keep a starting job for fifteen years in the bigs. If that works out, maybe he could teach him to stop striking out and TAKE A FRIGGING WALK every once in a while.
Ahh… Adam LaRoche… Randall Simon of the mid-2000’s… how I hate you…
If anything, Laroche has one of the more decent walk rates among the non-Chipper Braves. His walk rate is kinda unique. When he goes into a slump, he starts walking more!!
Personally I am not a big fan of TP. We seem to be a team of hackers more often than not, and that is something the hitting coach should have some input on. OTOH we seem to do well whenever we have to face a tough pitcher second time out. Are the adjustments made by the players or does TP factor in there?
I think Mac made a great point regarding “there can’t be one perfect hitting coach for a whole team of thirteen position players.”
In respect of TP, it’s not like the Braves haven’t tried changing hitting coach over the years to see if that makes any differences to the offense. Personally, I don’t think a hitting coach has as much influence on the batters as a pitching coach has on the pitchers.
godot, you gotta like tp. what else are you going to use, paper towels?
FYI, Ernest T. Bass was either the director or the producer, for the Andy Griffith Show, and I think Sosa will be a bullpen demotion by April, and James will take his spot.
Hey Mac:
Sorry to post this here. I can’t find an e-mail address, and this looked like a good thread to post this.
I write one of the Phillies blogs, Beerleaguer. Around this time, I like to check in with the other teams in the division to see where they stand before the season gets underway. I wanted to write a quick post on the Braves bullpen to see how the team plans on addressing this area.
Quite honestly, I don’t even know the latest on the situation. The last thing I read was an article in BA on Oscar Villarreal having a good winter in Venezuelan winter ball, and how he could be a darkhorse in the bullpen mix.
I was hoping you could give me a paragraph or two on the state of the Braves bullpen, what they plan to do, and how you are reacting to the situation as fans.
Thanks,
J. Weitzel
http://www.beerleaguer.com