ESPN.com – MLB – Box Score – Cardinals at Braves
Once again, we meet Miserable Braves Loss Type 4.2(b), “Starting Pitcher Is No Good And Doesn’t Even Pitch Five, Team Can’t Get Hit To Come All The Way Back.†Maybe there should be some sort of modifier for the rain delay.
Thomson was just plain awful, finally getting lifted with two out in the fourth having given up five runs on seven hits and three walks and striking out only one. Of the seven hits, four were doubles and one was a homer. Two of the walks helped load the bases with nobody out in the first, after which he made his one good pitch of the day to get Rolen to hit into a double play, but even that scored a run.
The Braves had kept pace for a while, Marcus hitting a homer in the first and Francoeur scoring from second on a groundout in the second — LaRoche was on first, the second baseman fielded it but couldn’t apply the tag, the hitter was thrown out, there was a rundown of LaRoche and Francoeur kept running all the way home.
But Carpenter shut them down after that. He left after a long sixth-inning rain delay, but Adam Wainwright (sob!) came in and devastated his original franchise, striking out three in two hitless innings, though he did walk two. The Braves had a chance in the eighth after singles by Renteria and Betemit. Andruw singled home Renteria with one out and the tying run came to the plate, but McCann popped up 2-0 against the inevitable LOOGY and Francoeur grounded out against the righty, and the team went down meekly in the ninth.
Chipper is exclusively a pinch-hitter right now and didn’t even do that tonight, possibly because of the wet track. If he were available, I probably would have hit him for McCann, but that would be pretty radical… Villareal allowed a run in an inning of work, but it wasn’t really his fault (he came in before the rain delay and stayed in after it) and Yates and Barry pitched well. The bullpen — other than the ARod game — has been pitching relatively well of late, though I don’t think anyone has any confidence, nor should they.
Momentum killer, whee.
Thomson has been unbelievably bad – something like a 9+ ERA his last 7 starts (DOB went into it). I’d almost rather have Cormier starting at this point. The sweaty man can’t even give us 5. Pathetic.
Sorry, I have been away for a few days for vacation so I may have missed out on this…but did Thomson pitch in the minor for rehab before this game?
I meant to say something similar, Jeremy. Cormier sucks, but his suckitude is an order of magnitude below what Thomson is right now.
Looks like it’s time to unleash Chucky on the Cards.
A win tomorrow & it’s 3 out of 4 series. Nothing huge, but a helluva lot better than anything that happened in June.
Yeah. Let’s just get back to the “win the series” mentality. Tomorrow is the rubber game, so lets get that and move on to Cinci. At the least it should give the offense a shot in the arm. 🙂
It is a good job that aside from the Mets the NL is plain awful at the moment. There is still an outside shot at the wild card – I fancy the Braves over a lot of teams in front of us (all bar the Cards and Mets actually)
I gave up on the playoffs long ago, and I’m not jumping back on that bandwagon. Ideally, it would make it that much sweeter when I was wrong, but I just don’t see it happening. If anybody could execute a historic collapse like that, I think it would be the Mets, but at the same time, what are the odds? Simply being the New York Mets doesn’t increase it that much.
Thomson sucks, and this hurts, because he’s making himself untradeable. Why can’t he at least look marginally functional?
Well, it is now about 5:00 A.M., I can see the sky lightening a tad, and that means that this stupid night owl needs to go to bed. I am going to be in huge trouble when I actually have to join the real world in terms of my sleeping schedule.
http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/
Andruw Jones sure is popular.
http://atlanta.braves.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article.jsp?ymd=20060704&content_id=1539063&vkey=news_atl&fext=.jsp&c_id=atl
Jeffrey needs to start going Andres Galarraga on people..
It would take only one Francoeur-lays-out-the-pitcher-Clemson-safety-style event for teams to get the message, I think.
I would love to see Frenchy take down Reyes. Lets see some of those football skills. Hopefully, Reyes isn’t like Nolan Ryan!
1. If you can’t do anything with balls up and in, you’re going to expect to see a lot of pitches there…especially since you swing at them.
2. Give up the lunge for the low and away pitch.
3. Quit whining. Put on some Mary Kay and talk some trash to the pitcher.
It was Thompson vs Carpenter. A loss was to be expected. The important thing is for Thompson to show he is over the blister so the Braves can trade him asap. And yes there will be plenty of stupid AL GMs who will be willing to trade for him because their staffs are even worse.
Part of me wants to hope for another 2nd half miracle that gets the Braves back in the postseason. Certainly the teams ahead of the Braves in the wildcard race at least are quite beatable. But the logical part of me thinks that would be the worst thing imaginable. The Braves have really been mediocre for at least the last 3 years. It will take the end of the overhyped streak for them to start making the needed changes to get this team back to being a championship contender and not just a perenniel first round loser.
I’m with you Ron. I watch the games and hope we win everyday, but deep down I know it would be better if we regrouped and didn’t settle for only getting to the postseason. This team needs a shake up in order to get back to championship caliber.
If the streak is overhyped, then I’ll take overhyped.
anyone have any thoughts about Chipper? Can we continue to pay him $10-11 mil to play only 100-110 games. I think its past time to move him to 1st, but if he wont then what do we do. HIs defense is very average at best and he’s starting to get his swing back, but he’ll probably go on the DL again. It seems like as soon as he gets in a groove he gets injured, what are your thoughts?
What about letting Barry start and putting Thomson in the pen? Either trade Thomson or move him at this point..
I think we’re bette off just trading Thomson at this point
better off*
I’m not sure how Thomson will demand any value. Y’all are right – there are some stupid GMs – but they usually err on the side of hype or trends. Right now Thomson has no hype (like all of Florida’s pitchers last season) and is in a terrible slump. I’ll be very suprised if JS can get anything for him, but I’ve been surprised before. In the meantime, there’s simply nothing left to do but put Thomson in the pen… he’s turing into the Reitsma of the rotation, in that every time he’s well enough to pitch the game is over before 3 innings.
Carpenter didn’t have his best stuff last night and a rain delay knocked him out after 5 innings. The Braves need to pull those kinds of games out; that’s what they’ve done for 15 years, and that’s what they’ve failed to do this season.
A little convo between Bobby and Roger…
Huddy to LA for Jered Weaver and Chone Figgins
or Scot Shields and Chone Figgins
It would be great if we could somehow land Weaver…but Anaheim would be stupid to do that considering how Huddy is pitching right now..
“Overhyped” streak? No we may need a year like we’re currently having not to get back to championship caliber, but to make people finally APPRECIATE the “overhyped” streak.
Trust me, you’ll want a first round exit if we’re 25 games out in September! Then you want be talking about the streak being “overhyped!” The people who say they’d rather miss the playoffs, well you obviously weren’t around back in the 80’s.
And your missing the point! If the Braves are ever to capture their 4th WS championship in franchise history, well we got to make the playoffs! You got to get there first and you still don’t have a REAL shot until you get to the WS. We haven’t even had a real shot since ’99!
All I know is that what’s going on this year stinks(as far as the losing goes), but the Braves have still come to play every night and that you got to respect about this team. I mean, over half our losses have been by 2 runs or less and 21(?) of those have been by a single run! If we win just half of those we’re 47-36 or something and we’d be leading the wildcard and right in the thick of the NL East race.
— Bravesfan1
anyone have a feeling Fredi G. is going to the Chicago Cubs if Dusty is canned?
we cant get anything for thomson so no use in bringing the “trade thomson” post up, but i would like to see him in the bullpen. i would like to see a smoltz, hudson, ramirez, james, and mr. x in the rotation (with mr. x not being thomson or cormier). looks like betemit or giles will not be going anywhere considering chipper will be gimpy for quite some time.
I really believe this team would be well over .500 if not for Schuerholz signing Reitsma as closer or making a trade back in May when it became obvious Reitsma couldn’t do it.
Everyone on BravesJournal knew before the season Reitsma couldn’t close. So how come Schuerholz didn’t, he knows this things better, right?
I’d trade Thomson if I could, but he’s a #3 or #4 starter when he’s going good, and won’t fetch much even in a thin market.
Giles should be going somewhere, but Betemit won’t. Chipper’s fallen below the point where he can stay healthy at 3B (he was never a good fiedling 3B). The outfield is already full- indeed, overfull- so he’s going to solve the 1B problem. Betemit should be the Braves’ starting 3B hopefully as soon as LaRoche can be moved, or at least on Opening Day 2007.
Giles needs to go somewhere; at this point, bringing up Tony Pena Jr. wouldn’t cost the Braves much money or ability.
So that’s LaRoche, Giles, THomson, and one of Smoltz or Hudson we have as expendable, and a bat or bullpen arms as targets.
It doesn’t matter if we get anything from Thompson. Just getting rid of him, his crappy pitching, and his salary will be an addition by subtraction.
Hey I’ve loved the streak. It’s been a great 14 years (15 if you count ’94) to be a Braves fan. But think about the last 2 years and this year. The team simply wasn’t championship quality. They got to the playoffs thanks to Bobby Cox’s magic at motivating players then fell flat due to inferior talent. It would be the same way if they backed into the wildcard this year. They would play St. Louis/Houston in the first round and lose, probably in embarassing fashion. I’ve seen that show enough. I want my team to get to the playoffs with a real chance to go all the way. Just getting there is nice for putting up banners on the outfield wall but it’s not enough. I want to see this team get out of its stagnation that has seen it lose in the first round the last few years, get to the NLCS, get to the World Series, and win championships. That isn’t going to happen if they win the wild card with, say, 86 wins this year giving JS another offseason where he can ignore fixing the bullpen and offense.
Just read this on ESPN:
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=kurkjian_tim&id=2508492
Schuerholz clearly has the mind-set of a buyer, not a seller, as the trade deadline approaches. He has no interest in trading off his best, most experienced players, and abandoning a season that is just barely halfway over. That includes ace John Smoltz, who recently acknowledged, when asked, that he would entertain the thought of being traded if the deal could make the Braves better.
I just hope we dont mortgage our future for our hopes of this year. If we can buy to build for next season, fine, but usually you have to sell to do that…
Well JS pretty much nailed the dilemna. We need bullpen help in order to be a better team and every other team in the majors is looking for bullpen help. I hope JS is smart enough to know it is not worth overpaying with prospects for any kind of gamble this year.
I’ll never apologize for winning & I’ll never understand the mindset that says “just getting to the playoffs isn’t enough.”
Getting to the playoffs is an enormous step that 22 other teams don’t make. It’s not a failure to make the post-season; it’s always a success.
Unfortunately, it seems to be something that can be taken for granted. I don’t. I never do.
Blowing up this team might be the right move & it might be a disastrous move, but putting that conversation through a prism that denigrates this franchise’s successes strikes me as silly.
As usual, I’m in agreement with what ububba has said.
I agree that the streak is not “overhyped,” but the points made by some others on this thread are quite valid. Maintaining a team that can barely make the playoffs for the purpose of extending this remarkable streak may have prevented the team from reloading under the conditions of their new economic reality.
I think it would be an easy decision to reload for next year if not for the streak. As things stand, I think we have to wait before we make any drastic moves – minor league promotions. waiver wires, trading “C” level prospects.
The outcome of the post season is significantly influenced by a factor of randomness. It’s not a total crapshoot as some teams come into October with a clear advantage over the others. That said, if the Braves eek into the playoffs, even with this team, they have a chance.
Tough frackin’ year for the ATL, first our Braves, now this:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/07/05/coke.secrets.ap/index.html
Three Charged With Stealing Coca-Cola Secrets