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from last thread… Wren has effectively said that Frenchy might not be our RF next year… what will go on around here if he’s traded?
Unrelated: the guy who writes the “Bottom 10” for ESPN.com is also obsessed with Hall & Oates.
The problem is the Braves think Francouer was good before. They might well decide that he won’t “bounce back” and do something else. But if they think he can get back to his 2006-2007 form, they won’t do anything and that is bad because even if he does, they need someone better. The Braves don’t recognize that, at his best, Francouer was no batter than average.
Parr making sneaky-quick impression
This cliché is starting to get annoying. It is everywhere now and Cox’s favorite go-to line for any pitcher whose fastball can’t reach 90 miles per hour.
Chuck James is sneaky quick. Mark Redman was sneaky quick. Jorge Campillo is sneaky quick. Now Parr is sneaky quick. All these are Braves’ pitchers I can specifically remember Cox having called “sneaky quick” at one time. This list does not include opposing pitchers like Moyer of the Phillies whom Cox has done the same thing.
What the heck does “sneaky-quick” even f***ing mean?
#1, huge celebrations?
#4, “sneaky-quick” means “sucks but got lucky and won.”
there is a big difference in Campillo’s sneaky-quickness (if there is such a thing) and Parr’s. Campillo has great control and a well-above average change up. His main issue is the hanging curve, but he really does have 4 pitches that he’ll throw at any time. He also gets a lot of weak grounders. I dont see Parr being anything more than a #5 at best and the fly ball to ground ball ratio is scary. When you cant hit 90 on the gun, you better be able to spot all of your pitches
@3 understanding they need at least league average from all outfielders is a positive step though isn’t it? or at least a positive sign. at the very least it implies that they realize ’08 Francouer isn’t going to cut it. What we need offensively, I think, is a powerish bat in one OF position, a Kotsay (little better than avg) in center, and then a piecemeal/average other OF spot. We also need a couple pitchers for the front of the rotation (and a couple for the tail-end too for that matter… which is where I think we pencil in the Smoltz/Glavine/give minor league guy a shot’s)…
Which means we may be packaging a couple of our random outfielders (take your pick from Francour, Diaz, Anderson, Blanco, Brandon Jones) to try and fill in the + bat spot, and then hoping who-ever is left is our average and crap-shoot other outfield spots. My best guess for how it would/will work is keep Anderson for the CF defense crapshoot role, hope two of Diaz/BJ/Blanco platooning left gives you average, and package the other with Francour and trade for your powerish bat. That leaves most of your money to be spent on the starting pitching that’s going to be harder to come by.
I don’t think it’s entirely bogus. Some pitchers are able to enhance the effectiveness of their fastballs by placement and deception. For example, in their primes, Maddux and Glavine were often able to throw what would seem to be hittable fastballs past hitters because they set them up for other pitches.
Unfortunately, Bobby uses this to describe any mediocre pitcher that either beats the Braves or pitches for the Braves.
There are basically three things which hurt pitchers: walks, home runs, and hits. The first two are under the pitcher’s control; the latter largely is not. Parr doesn’t seem to have great control, and the fly balls he allowed in his first start don’t argue much for his ability to stop the second. Moreover, the Braves have a really good infield defense (the strongest point on the team) and a very, very bad outfield defense (though it’s probably better with Anderson, who has played much better than Blanco or Kotsay), so there’s an added problem with allowing fly balls.
Seriously, Will Ohman is not even a Type B free agent?
What do we need to do with him over the last three weeks to get him there?
Also, what outfielders are free agents after the ’09 season? Maybe, we could trade for one of them.
If we cannot fill all of our holes in ’09, I think I would stand pat in RF. We need to give Francoeur a chance to regain value or perhaps prove he can turn the corner.
I think the front office plan needs to be able to expect .500 next year, and highly competitive in ’10 (edit: that said ’09 first… D’OH!). We have enough pieces coming through the system to expect them to start maturing in ’10 and beyond, so you don’t want to trade them all away on long contracts for FAs this year. I think the dollar cost averaging approach of buy a couple of FAs this year, and then look to fill the rest of the holes in ’10. Obviously don’t go into ’09 expecting to lose, but also don’t spend too much on FAs for ’09 and hamstring yourself for the long run by not having a place for your young guys to go to.
To that end, what Parish is saying about Francouer makes a bit of sense. If we’re in a position where most of our other holes are filled (boy that sounds BAD) it may not hurt us to give him another shot.
I say that center field should be Schafer’s to lose.
#12
This is Cot’s list of potential free agent OFs. As far as I know, it’s comprehensive:
Bobby Abreu NYY
Moises Alou NYM
Garret Anderson * LAA
Rocco Baldelli TB
Willie Bloomquist SEA
Emil Brown OAK
Pat Burrell PHI
Endy Chavez NYM
Carl Crawford * TB
Adam Dunn ARZ
Jim Edmonds CHC
Cliff Floyd TB
Brian Giles * SD
Ken Griffey Jr. * CWS
Vladimir Guerrero * LAA
Raul Ibanez SEA
Jacque Jones FLA
Mark Kotsay ATL
Rob Mackowiak WAS
Kevin Mench TOR
Jason Michaels * CLE
Craig Monroe MIN
Jay Payton BAL
Scott Podsednik COL
Manny Ramirez * LAD
Juan Rivera LAA
Rondell White MIN
An unusual arm angle or delivery can make a pitcher “sneaky quick”. Sid Fernandez in the 80s was a good example – he could get a ton of strikeouts with a high-80s fastball because of a unique rising angle on his pitches.
Chuck James originally had some of this kind of action on his fastball when he was getting lots of Ks and popups a couple of years ago. At some point (due to injury or instruction) he lost some of that rise, so his fastball went from rising to flat, converting those popups into home runs.
I’d send Schafer to AAA for the first couple of months to continue his development and suck up having Anderson/Blanco there for the interim.
Not exactly an encouraging free agent list. I wonder if we could trade some of our AAAA players for someone.
I’d kick the tyres on Harang and Peavy (due to the Padres cost cutting) too.
By the way, those asterisks in the list @15 mean there’s a 2009 option of some sort in the contract.
or at least a positive sign. at the very least it implies that they realize ‘08 Francouer isn’t going to cut it. What we need offensively
Well yeah, you’d hope they would realize that if a meteor hit Turner Field it would hurt attendance too. I would assume any sane person would understand this year’s flavor of Francouer hurt the team. The more important question, as someone else said, is do they understand that last year’s flavor wasn’t helping us win either.
An unusual arm angle or delivery can make a pitcher “sneaky quick”.
This isn’t the way Bobby uses the term, but I always thought that Mark Wohlers was sneaky quick. He had such a simple, easy motion and the ball would come zipping in there in the mid-90s.
I’m with Mac on Schafer. Avoid spending any resources on another stopgap if at all possible. We know Schafer’s ready defensively, and unless he proves that he can’t hit next Spring (which I think is unlikely), plug him in the starting lineup and worry about all of the other holes.
@19, but I was under the impression that many here felt the front office didn’t think he was that much of a problem. If you have ’07 or ’06 Frenchy out there it may not be “helping us win”, but it isn’t actively hurting us either… if we still had either of those years we’d be able to pencil him in as our league average-ish guy who hits 7th in the lineup.
In ’06 for instance, we had Andruw as our power OF (wow it wasn’t long ago that he was kinda good), LF was our committee crap-shoot, and Francour was vaguely close to average (not as high BA, a bit more power than average, etc). While that outfield wasn’t going to be the best in the league, it was passable if the other pieces are in place (it wasn’t offense that killed us that year as I recall).
With our pitching needs and financial limitation it seems nigh impossible to put out a whole new top tier outfield next year. The year after maybe, but in one year fixing 3 OF slots plus a couple starting pitching slots gets really dicey.
I have no doubt Schafer can hit right handed ML pitching now. Plu, he is a better fielder / thrower than probably anybody we have had since early 00’s Andruw (Anderson may be close).
It is Schafer hitting lefties I am worrying about. He probably needs AB’s against lefties to fix the problem. Therefore, you either have to let him play ineffectively at the ML level to develop that skill (you can’t platoon him out against lefties) or send him to AAA.
We missed a good one to pick up when Toronto released Reed Johnson. He could be right handed balance all over the place for us.
It’s not like any of the other outfielders can hit lefties. We aren’t going to win without Hudson, let’s just take our lumps and get ready for 2010.
I do not think putting Schafer in the big leagues is a good idea. Yes, his defense is good enough, but if he struggles on offense his confidence takes a huge hit. I don’t have the link to it but over at BA there is a very good interview of Schafer.It seems to me from reading that that confidence plays a big role with him. It might be tougher for him to come back from struggling.
EDIT: here is the link: http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/prospects/prospect-q-and-a/2008/266722.html
A lot of players, in contrast, get frustrated when they get stuck in the minors and their play suffers. It’s not clear what is better.
He’ll be halfway to his 23rd birthday at the beginning of next season. While I see Cliff’s argument about lefties, I don’t think facing them now will retard his progress in the long run — and as for the short run, the stakes are virtually nil.
There’s the arb clock factor, but I wonder about that too. If you wait until you’re absolutely sure he’s ready before bringing him up, you’re going to get a lot better production right off the bat, and then you’ll just owe him more $$$ when arbitration comes around. I say let him come up and post some crappy numbers for a while! 🙂
Schafer had an .849 OPS in his short season — good, but not outstanding. I’d give him until at least June 09 before bringing him up.
Liking the strikeouts from Parr. Not liking the long fly balls.
I agree with braves14, except that I might keep Schafer in Gwinnett until September. I don’t think spending most of one season in AAA would embitter him- I’ve seen the effect you’re talking about, Mac, and it really seems to start in second or especially third seasons at AAA.
I don’t think you can take his season as a whole as he had a horrible start and has been killing it over the past month after taking a while to get over his suspension.
Anyone think we’ll ever get the whole story on that? Him and his dad have been implied there’s a lot more to it, but can’t say more for legal reasons.
Wait, when did Livan join the Rockies?
This is his 6th start with Colorado, after leaving Minnesota. He was DFA’d on August 1 and picked up by the Rockies on August 6. 10.12 ERA in Denver.
What’s weird is that the season is almost over (Thank God!) and the team is long out of it, but the offense finally is starting to seem semi-functional. Chipper and McCann are hitting again, Escobar finally seems to be healthy, KJ is in one of his hot streaks. The outfield is still pretty lousy, of course, but the parts that should work are getting there.
And, if nothing else, seeing the miserable presumed end of Livan Hernandez’s career has cheered me up. Yes, I’m still angry.
Well, there’s one part of the offense that stays reliably functionless.
As for Jeffy, it’s almost like someone has replaced his bat with one made out of pine or some other soft wood. Great big swing, little bitty fly ball. It keeps happening.
Well, the 5-0 K/BB ratio is a big improvement from Parr, but that 4 GB/ 9 FB is still kinda annoying.
The 12 scoreless innings to start a major league career is really nice. And a good career move- a few more good September starts will be enough to get him in the mix for 2009 and beyond.
Please, please, please shut Boyer down.
Can we not just shut Boyer down for the year? Do we really need more evidence that he’s done?
Chipper now has a 2 point lead in the batting race btw.
Ah, I get it, we’re just trying to get a 1-2 in the appearance record.
To be fair to Bobby, he must look at the pen and think “Yeah, let’s hope I get lucky with who I pick”
Does Bobby not know what happens when these guys pitch, or is he just going through the motions now that we’re in garbage time? In other words, is this ignorance or apathy from Bobby? I suspect he doesn’t know and doesn’t care.
Wow, Vizcaino is turning in a Dessens-level performance for the Rox tonight.
what a crappy pen–no lead is safe with that pack of clowns, dead arms, and retreads–Parr should be pissed
glad to see KJ finishing strong–maybe it’ll keep him from being dealt in the offseason–but even a 2 HR game probably won’t keep him from having Prado or Infante playing at 2B tomorrow
If the Braves hold on for the win here, Parr should hit Bennett with a bat and take the win from him.
Given the way we’re hitting I got ahead of myself and thought how nice it would be to sweep our way out of Shea this weekend.
Then I saw the matchups:
Hampton vs. Santana
Reyes vs. Pedro
Campillo vs. Perez
He should tag Boyer and Ohman too, for completeness’ sake. Seriously, this is one of the reasons why the discretion given to official scorers to determine wins should extend to all games, not just those where the starter doesn’t pitch 5 innings.
This is Tavarez’s 27th appearance in an Atlanta uniform, which seems like a lot since he just got here last week.
and he’s actually pitched reasonably well since his awful debut in LA
I think the real question is: Who do I go as for Athens’ Halloween Party?
John Parr or Billy Hixx?
John Parr’s hair is some afro/hockey hair hybrid the likes of which I’ve never seen.
Of all of our wins, this was definitely the most… recent.
We’re now more than 90% done with this season, Mac. You can make it. And then, it’ll be over until next year.
Over?
These Braves have not yet begun to suck. I’m not looking forward to our offseason being run by the same bozos that saw fit to give large swaths of playing time to Corky and Jeffy.
Recap is up.