Boxscore: Houston vs. Atlanta – February 26, 2009 | MLB.com: News
Dave Ross will occasionally hit a homer and did today. Freddie Freeman also homered. Brandon Jones had two hits; that and cab fare from Gwinnett will get him to Turner Field to start the season. Hanson had good stuff but was not particularly effective, and Campillo and Gonzalez both sucked.
Are the Dodgers just idiots for bidding against themselves for Manny?
Parish, I think they need Manny, and are hence playing chicken with him (and more afraid to lose at it than he and Boras are)… so they bid against themselves. It may be stupid… but it’s not a certain stupidity.
I think it’s obvious that Manny needs to be happy to perform. If he signs a contract he’s not happy with just because it’s the only thing out there, he might not be worth a damn.
Hanson’s stuff did look great. The curveball that struck out Newhan was ridiculous.
even with a lot of money, you’re not guaranteed to get and keep a happy Manny. The guy quit in Boston and that should matter
I don’t think Hanson “was not particularly effective”. Remember it was his first start, and none of the hits he allowed were big liners. Take away the walk or hit batter and one or both runs don’t score. Batters didn’t seem to be really locked in against him. He looked strong!
That curve was just plain filthy.
I love the Braves & I’m excited about the new season, but tonight I’m a little giddy about something else: The return of Martin Brodeur.
I say if you give up a run an inning, you’re not effective, even if you look good.
I don’t see how you can watch that game and not be excited for the Braves’ future.
He was effective at exacting retribution, though, which is something we don’t do enough. But it is easier to take the risk when the games don’t count.
Yeah, Oswalt wasn’t effective either.
Wasn’t it just great to see the Braves on TV?
Golf has passed hockey as the 4th sport.
As in:
1. Baseball
2. Football
3. Basketball
4. Golf
5. Everything else
“Developing arms hasn’t been this organization’s forte,” Jones said. “I’m glad I got to see one legitimate power starting pitcher come through this organization. The last one was probably [Kevin] Millwood, and I wouldn’t classify him as a power pitcher. Maybe Jason Schmidt, but that was 12 or 13 years ago.”
Love Chipper, he is absolutely right. We suck in developing pitchers…or we traded them all away (Wainwright, Devine, Feliz…boy it’s killing me).
Must a pitcher be “effective” in his first ST outing?
He showed great stuff…and nailed Tejeda in the back to make a point.
In case you missed it:
ST outings are all meaningless. Even JS jr looked great in ST.
ST starts are for mechanics…he showed great stuff. I’m content.
If we’re counting on him for significant innings this year…we might be in trouble.
IMO, he’s gonna be a good one…but he doesn’t have to be a good one yet.
I am just saying don’t rely on anything you see or read in ST.
ububba, yeah I was going to thank your Devils for bringing back Marty tonight against the Avs. Not that it would have mattered, Clemmensen or Weekes could have got the job done just fine. As usual, the only good thing about watching a Devils game on MSG is Doc Emerick.
I can usually only watch Spring Training games for a couple of innings–nice to see Hanson and some of the prospects–even better to await Mac’s write up.
As far power arms–the Braves have not valued them when they had them….lets hope that Wren will be different….
Coverage of that game was nauseating. I can usually enjoy Kruk and Phillips, and they had a few entertaining moments, but they checked out of the game in the 3rd or 4th inning. I understand it is ST, but they’re being paid to cover the damn game, you can at least put up a graphic that tells you who the new pitcher is.
@14: Sadly I think you’re giving baseball too much credit. I’m pretty certain it is:
1) Football
2) Baseball
3) Basketball
4) Everything else
Hanson wasn’t particularly effective, but as others have said it doesn’t really matter. Control issues were enough to solidify my conviction that I’m glad we’re not counting on him to step in from day one, but his stuff was just filthy… I can’t wait to see him up someday soon, and I’m real glad we didn’t even consider including him in a Peavy deal.
Manny rejects the 2yr/$45 offer…unbelievable
Oh, and Hanson wasn’t throwing at Tejada. He was throwing inside, and might not have been too worried about hitting him, but no one throws strike one the way he did, and then comes back and nails the batter.
@15: Once you develop Smoltz and Glavine it really cuts into the amount of spots available. Also should remember, for every Wainwright there was an Odalis Perez, for every Feliz there was a HoRam, and for every Devine there was a Jung Bong.
@24: Really!?! That’s hilarious… I guess he must have an excellent offer on the table from the Nippon Ham Fighters: something to the tune of 4 billion yen over two years. How do you say ManRam in Japanese?
Tadano.
*rimshot*
If I’m the Dodgers, my next offer is less.
Gadfly, sure looked like he intentionally plunked him to me. The ball didn’t slip out of his hand, the ball was well into Tejada’s back rather than just off the plate, he never missed by anything close to that much with any other pitch, he didn’t look apologetic, Tejada is Yunel’s opposite number, it was the half-inning immediately following Yunel’s HBP… both logic and my own eyes told me he meant to do it. The announcers saw it the same way, but since it was John Kruk and Steve Phillips, I’d be willing to go against them if I saw something different. However, in this case, it looked pretty open and shut to me.
jj3bag,
Yes, Emerick is the sport’s best announcer, IMO.
But you also get to watch Zach Parise, who’s the most talented forward the Devils have ever had. See that highlight-film goal he had tonight?
Marty was great, but the Avs admittedly were running on fumes & didn’t offer much resistance tonight. I think they’re in the middle of some ultralong East Coast deathmarch & the Devils haven’t played since Saturday. Perfect situation to bring back a goalie who had surgery 16 weeks ago.
BTW, if you want a goalie, Clemmensen will be available at the trade deadline. Personally, I’m hoping the Devils pick up a puck-moving D from Anaheim, who may be having a fire sale. Scott Niedermayer, come back home.
Wow, how can Manny reject that? I mean…wow…
ububba, I would put Emerick in my Top 10 announcers of my lifetime list, any sport, he is always such a joy to listen to.
I know Parise’s solid, I was just giving you a hard time. ZZ Pop is one of the best line names in recent memory. The Avs need to move anything that’s not named Sakic, Foote, Stastny, Liles and young cheap offensive guys (Stewart, Hensick, McLeod, Svatos.) Anything else can go as far as I’m concerned.
With the Ducks trading Kunitz today, I’m sure more moves are to follow. Anyway, just about every Avs D-Men (a lone somewhat bright spot this year) is up for sale, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the Devils ended up with one of ’em.
http://www.ajc.com/braves/content/sports/braves/stories/2009/02/26/braves_royals_davies.html
Am I the only one who was seriously cracked up by this article??
I for some reason was very amused by Kyle Davies being referred to as: ‘Davies could emerge as the No. 3 starter.’ Wow, seriously ? That would blow my mind.
But here’s the one that got me: “I think every person in this clubhouse is the key to us winning the division and going on and winning the championship.”
Settle down with the title talk there slugger, it’s only the second day of Spring Training.
Kyle Davies is the exact reason why we should not be so excited by Hanson.
Yeah, these are not the classic Nordique/Avs of old. Always been a huge Sakic fan, though—so talented, so classy.
It’s ironic that the Devils have the sport’s very best TV announcer (Emerick), but its very worst radio announcer (Matt Loughlin).
Got my fingers crossed with the Brodeur return, but I gotta admit that I’m starting to get a little excited about this team. It’s the best one we’ve had since ’03 and, in some ways, it appears to be better.
The Bruins & Caps are gonna be tough in the East—and bring on the Rangers, please—but that’s what makes the NHL playoffs so great.
KC–Fortunately, I think that DAvies (and Frenchy) are among the reasons that the Braves will not rush Hanson, Schafer, Heyward, etc. At least this is what I hope….
I don’t mind rushing position players as long as they have good plate discipline. McCann was rushed like Frenchy.
Personally, I’m thrilled by what I sat out of Hanson today. As some of the commenters have noted, Spring Training is about mechanics…although, as good as Hanson’s AFL performance was, does anybody else have concerns about giving such a young arm so much work in one calendar year?
Other concerns….Gonzo did not look so great today. I know that closers feed off of adrenaline…but… I’m also bummed that the rocking back and forth is gone. I know he considered it a temporary step of his recovery process, but I think it had an awesome mental effect on hitters as well as assisting with delivery deception.
Last concern I will mention here is Campillo. Do you think that last year was just people being unfamiliar with him and now that the book/tape is out on him, his Mexican junkball won’t be succesful anymore, or do you think he can still pitch as successfuly as he did last year? I remember Bobby comparing him to Maddux after one game…. If you ever watched Campillo on Gameday, it was amazing how pitch after pitch he would hit the same spot, right on the outside corner….
Ben,
It was one game.
Manny is nuts, but we all knew that. I say we offer him 1/$4 million. He is so nuts, he might take it.
Yes, it was one game, and it was a spring training game. Let’s just don’t put any weight onto this game.
Manny just wants to miss spring training and this is a good way to do it. He’ll sign a week before Opening Day. It wouldn’t kill me though if he got no other offers and had to go home.
I have decided that in future non-recaps I will just make something up and put it in the middle. Anything to make spring training interesting.
It’s OK. It’s going to be OK. He’s got it figured out. We’re good. Really. It’s fine. So good. Really. So. OK.
http://www.ajc.com/sports/content/sports/braves/stories/2009/02/26/jeff_francoeur_news.html
Jason,
best line the the article, “Now, the Braves would like to see something as impressive in games.”
The AJC’s daily article celebrating the triumphant return of a useful Francouer is Pravda-esque.
Hey, Jeff – speak softly and swing a big stick and the world will love you. Until then, just do the work.
On a happier note, a debate topic:
Resolved: when you’re letting the first sunflakes of the Atlanta Spring wash over you, “Eat A Peach” is clearly the best album ever recorded.
Hank, in fairness, Pravda printed falsehoods about the Soviet government because it was the organ for a prevaricating autocracy. The AJC is just trying to blithely present everything Jeff does in the most positive possible light, because he’s unfortunately one of the faces of one of the only things in Atlanta that the AJC still has the budget to write about any more.
If I start talking about newspapers, I’m going to tread close to politics, so I’ll stop now. Just remember to subscribe to your local newspaper, everyone. It costs pennies a day and it’s one of the most important investments in your civic consciousness you can make.
Oh man, but the AJC blows! Now I feel guilty for not buying it.
blithely – perfect word.
Kinda means “whistling past a graveyard” in a way …
AAR,
I hear you, bro. I read that the Rocky Mountain News is going down, too.
hank,
Re: Eat a Peach
It’s funny. The Allmans were very much a cultural soundtrack of my youth—liking the Bruthas was almost the law in Columbus, Ga.—but I’d sort of “retired” from them. (Things like “Mountain Jam” made The Ramones sound like a gift from above.)
But I recently read “Skydog,” a really good Duane Allman bio & I had to go back to the Allmans a bit & I’m glad I did. I gotta say that “Blue Sky” is still one of the most optimistic songs ever.
“Eat a Peach,” of course, is the “Duane death album,” so it’s always going to have extra resonance for original Allman fans, but a lot of it really does stand the test of time.
That said, stand back for a statement of Southern-Rock heresy: I liked Lynyrd Skynyrd better.
@38
Gonzo worried me too. His line after the game reminded me of Mark Prior a few years ago with the Cubs when he was throwing 86 MPH in spring training and said he had to line up his body and it would come. Hopefully this is different, but they struck me as similar.
@46
Couldn’t agree more. Makes me sick hearing all the stories of newspapers closing.
Manny boggles my mind. As does Daniel Snyder. I really hope they can get a cap in for 2010 so he is FUBAR
#42–I am sure that it will be a challenge–Good Luck!
Yep, the Rocky Mountain News is no more, and a lot of other second newspapers in two-newspaper towns are looking like they’re about to go under: the Philadelphia Daily News, St. Paul Pioneer Press, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Detroit News, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which for the past several decades usually beat the Seattle Times. The Miami Herald, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle are also looking perilously close to sinking altogether, and if they fold, there really is no other news organization that can step into that gaping void in three of the biggest cities in our country.
Television can cover a few stories a night, out of all of the hundreds and thousands of things that can happen. A 22-minute nightly news broadcast contains about as many words as are on the front page of a newspaper — everything on the inside gets missed.
The Rocky Mountain News already is missed.
I thought DOB was maybe chafing at the Politburo prescriptions a bit when he wrote about the “surprised group of pictures”, whose surprise seemed to consist entirely of Francoeur’s ability to hit a ball over the right-field fence in batting practice.
He’s not tripping over himself as much as we remember either they added with supportive shock!
Hey, is there any way to watch today’s game online for free?
Hate what’s happening to newspapers but I’m not sure individuals subscribing to their local paper is going to change things. The trend is based on changes in economics, technology, demographics, etc, and I am skeptical it can be reversed. Not to say it’s good; I don’t think blogging can replace professional journalists, but I hope that newspapers (or some facsimile) can adjust to meet the changing times rather than trying to turn the clock back. Apparently, a large segment of the public thinks that newspapers are a “threat to democracy.” I guess ignorance would be less of a threat. Also, AAR, your complaint sort of crosses political boundaries since both the left and the right complain about the MSM.
Unfortunately, Francoeur will be around for years.
Chipper sporting the .000 BA this spring… oh noes! He’s lost it! He’ll never hit again!
holy crap, francouer walked?!?! Can he do that? is that allowed?
*yes, I should be working.
I love what’s happening to the newspapers. It’s a sign that as a society, we’ve figured out a better way of doing something.
Also, spring training means even less than normal before March.
The Boxscore says Garret is leading off and playing center. I’m assuming they mean Josh. I hope they mean Josh…
Wow. I was just looking at yesterday’s box scores and while D.Ross had a nice day for us, Corky Miller was 3 for 3 with the White Sox. Isn’t that more hits than he had all of last year for us?
@29: All good points AAR, and obviously I’m not in Tommy’s head. I’m quite certain Bobby didn’t call for it (he wouldn’t in a ST game, and Oswalt’s hitting Esco didn’t look intentional to me either,) and I really find it hard to believe that Tommy would choose to start his first, and only nationally televised, appearance of the Spring with runners on 1st and 2nd. Certainly not after throwing a first pitch strike… if it were me, and I wanted to exact retribution, I’d have plunked Berkman when I was already down 3 balls and the bases were empty (though, sadly, I wouldn’t have clocked it in there at 96mph.) Then again, I’m imputing rationality on a 22-year-old, so maybe you’re right.
Also, his control was a little spotty most of the outing (see Berkman’s walk,) and as I said above I’m certain he was pitching him hard and inside with intent, so one getting away wouldn’t surprise me. I can see good points on either side.
Either way the kid has a bright future.
My Braves Preview for RBI Magazine:
http://www.rbimagazine.com/2009/02/2009-braves-preview/
Warning: I’m a little pessimistic in my prediction…
Really, are most blogs even news? They don’t report on really anything. Most just post stories/links from the Associated Press or one of those dreaded newspapers they mock and put their political spin on it and call it news and journalism.
I’ve been buying a copy of either the AJC or USA Today every weekday for years now, for the record.
I guess this is a bad time to remind people that for the duration of spring training I will be making things up.
I think it’s safe to say that McCann can still take a walk.
I don’t get it…
But speaking of news, Francouer left the bases loaded!
It’s OK. It’s going to be OK. He’s got it figured out. We’re good. Really. It’s fine. So good. Really. So. OK.
Yep, just another 2,000 major league at-bats and it’ll all be figured out!
My friend is a reporter, journalism professor right now too if memory serves, and works at an online “newspaper”/citizen journalism bloggy thing: http://millburn.patch.com/ this seems to be the direction at least some portion of the journalism industry will take, more localized, more “hometown” and more on-line.
You don’t see five walks in four innings of a spring training game that often.
so how did Kawakami look?
Best line in a blog post advocating somebody signing Oil Can:
http://sullybaseball.blogspot.com/2009/02/bring-back-oil-can.html
Marc, I don’t mean to say that the death of newspapers is a left-right thing. Obviously, some news outlets self-identify with one side of the aisle; others, like mine, try to straddle it. My aversion to talking politics here is more along the lines of policy prescriptions. We can bail out the automakers and banks. But we can’t really bail out newspapers, because they’re supposed to be writing about government — hard to do that when you’re getting billion-dollar checks in the mail.
Newspapers are failing, in part, because we’ve found other, cheaper ways of doing some of the things that made papers the most money: classified ads. Craigslist is killing newspapers. More than blogs, more than free online newspaper websites, more than the anti-MSM campaign that’s been going on for decades, more than the ignorant belief that the media is actively conspiring to hurt America. Advertising is what pays for the news, and advertisers don’t want to pay as much any more. Now that the economy’s in the toilet, they can’t afford to. That leaves the places where they used to advertise SOL.
However, newspapers aren’t failing because they’re no longer good at reporting the news, or because we have found better, cheaper, more efficient ways of reporting the news. If these newspapers die, other local news outlets — blogs, local television and radio news, community broadsheets — will not be able to fill the news void.
And as the blogs do increasingly attempt to fill the void with citizen journalism, like everything on the internet, that content is less well-vetted and less well-checked. Journalists take a lot of lumps for getting stuff wrong — and rightfully so — but as professionals, they develop instincts about the news that help them contextualize a story, to find the narrative amid a cloud of data and imperfect first-person accounts. As professional journalists increasingly lose their jobs and leave the industry, journalism is both diminished and weakened — there’s less of it out there, and what there is, is not always as high-quality.
And after all, the paper’s only 50 cents or a dollar. It’s a third the cost of a coffee at Caribou.
the big problem will be getting Berman to stop talking.
AAR,
You beat me to it.
#58
A better way of doing what? Offering less qualified reporting, due to budget constraints?
Just because you can access information quicker doesn’t mean that there’s a business model that fully supports & sustains it—because at this point, it’s not really happening.
For consumers, the web is awesome. For many publications, it’s not profitable. It’s just part of the cost of doing business. Lots of effort, little return.
And less return for media outlets means less pay. Less pay means two things: 1) Inferior content, usually, 2) Fewer talented people entering the profession.
As AAR pointed out though, their main income comes from advertising (especially classified) and even if you buy your local paper it’s not going to help them all that much in regards to staying in business. The brass tacks are that most newspapers (especially the large ones that have had bureaus all around the country and such) are going to have to come up with a better business model. Much in the way the music industry has had to figure out how to deal with the internet the newspaper/magazine industry has to adapt or die. I hope they don’t die, but there will have to be something that they do better than everybody else AND that gives enough value to somebody to make them profitable. It seems from some of the reporters I’ve read on the subject that a lot of the problem is that so many of the papers are so reluctant to change.
I don’t think they’ll go away entirely, but I think that if the big boys out there now don’t adapt and innovate in their reporting methodology (figure out a way to use the internet to their advantage) AND business plans then somebody else will.
Wait, Francouer walked TWICE?!?!? in one year?! I mean one game?!?!
Armageddon is nigh!
Why is Alvarez DHing? I mean, they know he can hit, they just need to know where to play him. Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to DH LaRoche (they know he can field, if he’s on his Ritalin) and see if Alvarez can handle first?
“Why is Alvarez DHing? I mean, they know he can hit, they just need to know where to play him. Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to DH LaRoche (they know he can field, if he’s on his Ritalin) and see if Alvarez can handle first?”
How does it make you feel to know that you could run the Pirates better than the Pirates can run the Pirates?
@bfan, like everybody else who’s ever watched a baseball game is my answer.
The box score does now say that Janderson, not Ganderson, started and led off.
There aren’t any good answers. The thing is, a lot of news costs a lot more than people would be willing to pay for it. That’s why newspapers are such huge hulking amalgams.
There’s the really profitable stuff — the stuff that brings people in — like comics, crosswords, sports, and entertainment news.
There’s the really unprofitable stuff like international and national news, where you have to send journalists to live far away on the paper’s dime, or covering the president, which requires nearly nonstop hotel bills and airplane fares. Or investigative journalism, where you allow journalists to take months, up to a year, digging through documents to find a story. Because of their scope and breadth, investigations are often the stories that make the most difference, like The Post’s series on terrible conditions for injured soldiers at the Walter Reed hospital. But it’s a very long preparation for a relatively short payoff, a year’s pay for a few long Page 1 stories.
The profitable stuff is probably sustainable through subscriptions and advertising. ESPN, after all, isn’t in danger of contracting. The unprofitable stuff is the stuff that matters, and the only way to carry it is to make enough money off the former to be able to underwrite the costs. But profit margins are down across the board, circulation’s falling, and advertisers are jumping ship both because of the falling circulation and because of their own plummeting bottom line.
No one knows what’s next.
AAR,
Maybe the Post should hire Gene Simmons as its Executive Editor and just brand everything from coffee cups to coffins.
Imagine: A Washington Post Zone restaurant/bar in Dupont Circle. Umbrella drinks for $15 with fried food & video games for the kids. Now that’s a business model.
79 — ha!
AAR — I’m not saying they’re exactly the same sort of thing, but it all sounds a bit familiar as I’m getting closer to completing an advanced degree in a field of the Humanities.
And as you pointed out, part of the problem is that (unlike Science) it’s something that’s for the public good, necessary for the public good even, but unable to be funded by the public coffers or it won’t be serving the purpose it needs to.
In much the way that they (for lack of a better word) leached on the funds derived from classifieds and other adverts, they need to come up with another funding source which will pay for the less profitable parts. The secondary part of that is probably that they need to work up a more co-operative relationship with one another to cut down on expenses (everybody shouldn’t need to send somebody to France/Iraq/DC). This is probably something like extending AP, but I’m not sure how that would look.
DOB said kawakami looked very good
Terrible recap is up.
AAR,
Understood that you weren’t making it a partisan thing, but, in addition to the economic issues you mentioned, newspapers are bashed by both sides that don’t like the way they cover news. Journalists, generally, are in almost as low repute as politicians.
(And, frankly, in some cases they deserve the be. As someone that works in a federal agency and has seen how wrong journalists can get things wrong, I frankly am skeptical of much that I read in newspapers. In particular, columnists seem to write whatever they want without worrying about the accuracy. Nevertheless, the alternative–which seems to be blogs that are even less responsible–is even worse.)
I sort of digressed here but the point is the public generally has a dim view of the “press” (old school term I know)and aren’t really bemoaning its decline. Unfortunately, this seems to bespeak a public that has little time or interest in actually reading in-depth news coverage and analysis but it also represents the rise of interest groups of both left and right that find it in their interest to bash the press.
AJ for 2009:
0-5 5K’s
Maybe not so much…