There, I said it.  With John Smoltz and his bum shoulder pushing him to the bullpen (hopefully if he can heal), our starting rotation looks a wee bit tattered.  Think I’m kidding?  Take a look at the starting rotation.  Hudson has been the Ace so far, with six wins.  Jurrjens has been great with four wins and 41 strikeouts in eight starts.  And then we have Glavine, who is better than his record shows, deserving better than a 1-1 record, but concerning with a 4.41 ERA and a 1-1 strikeout to walk ratio.

Past that, it’s not a rotation.  It’s a random weekly game of bingo that decides between Chuck James, Jo-Jo Reyes, and Jeff Bennett and they rotate out as soon as one of them sucks it up.  And it’s not something that will let us compete into September.  At least Chuck’s out of the consideration for now, but that just leaves room for another Joe Somebody to try.

We had depth, supposedly.  But Smoltz has had shoulder issues – and he’s had those sporadically at the end of the season in seasons past.  And I can’t even discuss what happened to Hampton without feeling like I’d be suggesting he could heal.  And until he proves me wrong, I won’t believe it’s a possibility.  But can we make it to September?  I’m doubtful.  Something has to be done.

Sure, we’re first in the league in ERA and BAA, and second in OPS allowed and third in WHIP, but does that mean jack diddly when we have three starters?  It won’t last long, I tell you.  We’ll miss Smoltz as long as his shoulder keeps him pitching two innings late in the game.  We need a strong starter.  And unless Jo-Jo Reyes can keep it up and start pitching like he pitches in AAA ball, where there’s less pressure, or Jeff Bennett turns a page for the rest of the season, we’ll be a team with three consistent starters and two fillers.  It concerns me.

Do we make a move?  We have tons of young outfielders in the minor league system.   Do we bring up Charlie Morton from AAA and see if he is ready for the big time?  I’m just an armchair GM, sure, but I’m not the only one in Atlanta who is a little concerned about our rotation.

The Braves have brought up reliever Phil Stockman, a righty, in time for the series against the Oakland A’s that starts tonight.  Stockman was last up here in 2006 where he pitched four innings, walking four and striking out four and had a 2.25 ERA.

James said last night “I’ve just got to learn how to pitch again.”  Certainly an indictment against his recent performance, as if the numbers didn’t scream loud enough that he’s not cut out for the job.  James’ departure just shows us what we’ve denied for a while – that our rotation is thin.  Seriously, Jo-Jo Reyes now has a starting spot after pitching well in the minors.  And even though Jeff Bennett will likely move into James’ rotation slot, what happens if anyone else has any other issues?  Because I’m not convinced the current rotation can hold it out for the rest of the season.

James to Richmond, and let’s hope he picks up some magic fairy dust there or something, because we may need him before it’s all over.

Starting on the mound for the Braves was Chuck James, who had given up four home runs in 19 innings to date this year.  He gave up three homers and five runs in just four innings last night.  To quote him “I’ve just got to learn how to pitch again.”  I know that the Citizens Bank Ballpark is famous for being a hitters park, but the Braves have to get more out of their starters to compete in games like this.

Cole Hamels, on the other hand, was excellent.  He baffled Braves hitters all night long and ended with a four-hit shutout.  That makes the Braves’ road record 6-16 – and yes, that’s the worst in the majors.

James is likely out of the starting rotation for a bit here.  Who do you want to see replace him?  Jeff Bennett?  The AJC suggested Charlie Morton, a pitching prospect we saw in spring training but has been spending some time at Richmond before he comes to the majors.  Do you think it’s time to give Morton a go?

Games one and two of the series have proven to be somewhat of a disappointment. After another one-run loss on Monday after a strong 3-0 start, the Braves barely held on last night after a huge lead as the Phillies rallied at the end of the game.   This is not something that needs to continue.  If we can play .500 ball on the road and play at home like we have been, the Braves will start to look a lot like a 1995 team. Certainly after a strong start like last night, morale couldn’t have been low. Maybe we settled in and got a bit too comfortable.

Tonight, Chuck James (2-2, 7.58) faces Cole Hamels (4-3, 3.36). James pitched six innings on Saturday in Pittsburgh, but allowed five earned runs on five hits to gain his second loss. His second win was against the Marlins in late April where he allowed two runs in five innings until a two run home run.  Whereas this is not a very impressive statistic, James has a lot to prove as he was called up originally to replace Glavine while he was on the disabled list.

Watch for strikeouts from Hamel tonight.  He struck out 11 batters in Milwaukee in late April, and it was his 8th double-digit strikeout night. He also has walked three or fewer batters in his last eight starts. The Braves will need to be sure to keep their bats alive.

The Braves will be back in Atlanta tomorrow night facing the A’s.

The spot for James on the roster was made by placing Buddy Carlyle on the 15-day disabled list after the collision that knocked him out of the game in Atlanta on Thursday.  Buddy has a strained neck and bruised temple and hopefully we’ll see him back in action after a little bit of rest.  Road games have been the weak point of the Braves so far this season.  With a road record of 4-12, the Braves have the fewest road wins in the majors so far this season.  You can’t make it to the postseason if you can’t win on the road.

Taking the mound for the Pirates will be Tom Gorzelanny (2-3, 6.91).  Gorzelanny has a tendency to give up runs, but the real key is whether or not the Braves can get the bats going early in the game.  We’ve had problems with McLouth and Nady patrolling the Pirates outfield and stealing hits away from us.  Hopefully we can get that changed tonight and put another win up on the board.

Chuck James replaced Hampton in the fourth inning, leading fans to believe that Jo-Jo Reyes will get the start against the Reds this weekend in place of the fifth starter. Reyes has been spectacular at Richmond, going 1-1 with 1.17 ERA in 23 innings, his most impressive stat might be that he has walked only eight hitters in the 23 innings pitched.

The offense has two positions – on and off.  They tore out of the gate yesterday – scoring five runs in the first inning while batting through the order.  That included a 2 RBI double from Francoeur and a massive fly ball from Chuck James – had he not gotten under it, we would have seen the first hit from a Braves pitcher be a home run.  Chipper added his own touch on his birthday, hitting his seventh bomb of the year in the second.  Francoeur knocked in McCann in the eighth with a sacrifice fly.  McCann had just tripled (with the most awkward slide in history into third) – had everyone laughing.  That’s right, McCann tripled – may be the only time in his career.

James pitched a good five innings of ball – he was solid, but not lights out.  Gave up four runs, struck out three, but walked five.  Campillo and Acosta each pitched two scoreless innings to finish the game out.  Great to see some solid relief out of the bullpen.  James got sent down to Richmond after the game in exchange for a fresh bullpen arm – we’ll find out who today.  Good to see the 7-4 win over the Marlins, who are at the top of the division.

Some great defense in center field yesterday for Gregor Blanco, who started in place of Mark Kotsay.  He had a great catch against the wall and made a second interesting catch going back towards the wall.  He’s fast – there were a couple he got to simply because of his speed.  He ran out a groundball at first base – and beat it out too.  Great to have him in the lineup.

It’s a good thing the offense was firing yesterday – we have to score runs as long as James and Bennett are starting – but can’t we get Smoltzie just a couple runs next time, fellas?

Guesses as to who may be called up are hard to formulate now, but I’d say Jo-Jo Reyes has a chance.  The roster doesn’t have room for more starters right now, but Jo-Jo is having a hot season for Richmond thus far. He has 24 strikeouts and only 6 walks in 21 innings thus far this season.  He’s also sitting with a 0.43 ERA.  It looks like the time spent on his mechanics thus far this season have been a big help for Jo-Jo who walked 11 in 11 innings in spring training.  We’ll let you know as soon as we hear about who’s getting called up.

 Chuck James pitched well against the Dodgers; let’s hope that he can keep that up tonight. James had a 1.19 ERA against the Marlins in the past, a clutch statistic we’d like to hold onto.

We’ll have to keep our eyes on Hermida, a Marietta native who gives strength to the Marlins. Also, keep your eyes on Jeff Francoeur who has been less than himself the past two games. After running back to first base after a fly-out by McCann, Jeff pulled up in seeming pain. The remainder of the game, Francoeur didn’t have the drive he usually exhibits letting multiple obtainable balls fall in front of him.

Tonight we’ll have to hope to break our 2 game losing streak and get back up in the NL East rankings.

And also: happy birthday, Mr. Jones.

It was a great afternoon for baseball as the Braves faced off against the Dodgers in the second game of the three-game series.  Chuck James took the hill for the Braves in place of Tom Glavine, who finds himself on the disabled llist for the first time in his 22-year career.  After a not so stellar first appearance of the season, James didn’t look bad at all today.  He threw for 5 innings, giving up 4 hits and 1 run.  That run came on an Andruw Jones solo home run that landed deep in the left field seats.  This also amounted to all of the run production to Dodgers would have on the day.

The Braves’ offense was held pretty stagnant with the exception of the 5th inning when they beat up on Chad Billingsley, who struck out 9 batters through 5 innings.  Johnson,  Escobar, Chipper and Teixeira all came across the plate to create a 4-run 5th inning, and enough offense for the Braves to win 4-1.

The Braves face off against the Dodgers in the final game of the series tomorrow afternoon, looking for their first true sweep of the season and to get back to .500 on the season.  Jair Jurrjens will be up against Hiroki Kuroda for the Dodgers.

The Braves are coming off of two straight strong offensive showings and looking for a third consecutive win.  They seem to be happy to be back home and Chipper Jones is on fire with 4 home runs in his last two games.  It’s time to get a good win streak going and inch our way back towards .500 baseball.  Most of the BravesBlast staff will be at the game today, but I’ll be sure to keep this game thread updated via BlackBerry as best I can.

Glavine joins the long list of Braves pitchers already on the DL. Moylan, Soriano and Mike Gonzalez out of the bullpen to go with starter Mike Hampton, who now makes the disables list his vacation home during the season.

Glavine finished last season in the top three in the NL in quality starts (along with Smoltz and Hudson) and was well on his way to getting there again. He had allowed just one earned run in 11 1/3 innings before the Washington start.

Barring further injury, Glavine will be eligible to come off the DL  Tuesda, May 29 with his placement on the DL retroactive to the 14th.

Starting tomorrow, Chuck James makes his second return to the bigs this season and will take the mound on Saturday against the Dodgers. Hopefully it will be better than his first where he allowed the Rockies to get ahead before the Braves were able to put some runs on the board. If James is ineffective, Jojo Reyes would also be available.

James has had issues with a partially torn rotator cuff and didn’t pitch until the last three weeks in spring training.  Then with his DL stint, the first real action he saw was last night.  He mentioned after the start that he needed to get more innings in somewhere in order to improve his control (kind of evident when you hit three batters and walk one in three innings).

One encouraging thing about James last night was that he struck out five.  Good to see that number, if we can just cut down on the hits and runs given up, he’ll be good.

At least we didn’t see Jo-Jo come back up in his place.  I think Jo-Jo needs more time before he’s majors-ready.

Chuck James was activated from the disabled list to make the start in place of the injured Mike Hampton and was feeling a bit under the weather.  His first time through the Rockies’ lineup went pretty smoothly, but the second time around he just got beat up on, giving up 6 runs in the third inning.  James left the game after the third having given up 6 runs on 5 hits, as well as striking out 5 and hitting 3 batters.  Hopefully this was just a rough start for him being sick and coming off of the disabled list and he can regroup as we head further into the season.

The offense put together a slightly better outing, but still ran into a few problems.  Two double plays and a lack of clutch hitting took away a number of the run threats that we had during the game.   Brian McCann was 3-4 with 3 RBI, including a two-run home run in the top of the 8th inning.

For the Rockies,  a pair of three-run home runs from Torrealba and Spilborghs didn’t help the Braves’ cause any in trying to snag a victory.  Chris Resop came in to pitch the last two innings for the Braves and looked awful.  5 runs on 5 hits in two innings is not something you want to see out of a pitcher in your bullpen.

The Braves and Rockies face off this afternoon in the last game of the four-game series. as the Braves try to avoid the sweep.  The Braves once again have an under the weather pitcher in Tim Hudson, who has been fighting the flu this week.  Hudson will face off against Jeff Francis for the Rockies at 3:05pm EST.

Chuck James comes off of the disabled list tonight to make the start in the place of the injured Mike Hampton.  James faces off against former-Brave Mark Redman.  Redman left halfway through last season for the Rockies.  He didn’t find much success in a Braves uniform and we can only hope he has the same struggles tonight.

During pregame warmups to make his first big league start since August 19th, 2005 last night, Hampton felt some tightness and discomfort in his left pectoral muscle on his 23rd warm up pitch.  He tried to make a couple of more pitches before the Braves made the decision to scratch him to try to avoid further injury.  Hampton apparently had a ton of family and friends in the stands to see his start.  My question to them……Why?

Chuck James, whose shoulder has not been bothering him lately, is the likely candidate to fill the spot in the starting rotation.  The Braves have also made the decision to call up Jo-Jo Reyes from Richmond to take the long reliever start; a move that I’m sure more than just I could agree would have been better filled by Buddy Carlyle.  I’m far from high on Jo-Jo’s abilities to pitch in the big leagues yet.  Maybe he’ll prove us wrong.  Hopefully we’ll see Hampton back soon.

Chuck James, recovering from a partially torn rotator cuff, pitched two scoreless innings in which he gave up one hit.  He’ll likely start the season in Richmond, unless Hampton hurts himself again (knock on wood.  I’m not going to be responsible for Hampton’s injury…twice).  Following James’ outing, Jo-Jo Reyes pitched three innings and gave up five earned runs.  Reyes isn’t looking good this spring - He now has a 9.00 ERA. 

Some argue that stats mean nothing since the players aren’t all big-leaguers.  I agree that good stats can be misleading, but if a player is not doing well against a mixed staff of major leaguers and minor leaguers, they are not likely to get better against JUST big leaguers.  Jo-Jo fits in this last category and needs more time to develop his stuff – he has to find his confidence and get a grip on his game.  He doesn’t look ready for the big time to me.

Next up, Tim Hudson starts against the Phillies today at 1:05 PM.  He’ll face off against Francisco Rosario.

On the mound, the Braves started Buddy Carlyle, who looked decent early, but gave up three solo home runs when he seemed to think he was throwing batting practice.  Besides Boyer beating up on the Indians’ pitching staff, he pitched two scoreless innings with three strikeouts.  Tyler Yates got an inning in as well, where he walked two and struck out one.

Good to see Teixeira and McCann come out of their slow starts for a night and knock in some runs.  Both were very confident and solid at the plate.  We’ll need to rely on these guys all year to be competitive offensively.

In other news, Hampton pitched a successful simulation game, in which he pitched four innings and 59 pitches.  And he refrained from hurting his groin, breaking his elbow, or creating some other freak injury nobody has ever had before.  Good news is he had good movement on his curveball during the session.  He should see action early next week.

Next up is Chuck James in his spring debut against the Tigers.  He’ll pitch two innings and test his rotator cuff.  We’ll bring you the latest on that, too.

Being that we have two old guys (Glavine and Smoltz), Mike Hampton who is heading into the last year of his contract and has serious health risks….What are the chances that our young arms like Jair, Chuck James, Morton, Reyes, etc will be able to carry our rotation of the future? Hoping that Tim Hudson will be around to hold down the 1 slot.

Great question, Eric. Our rotation may be dangerous this year and maybe even some of the guys last into next year, but your question is very valid – John Smoltz even said in November that “You can’t have a whole staff of old farts.”  So what will the rotation of the future look like?

Tim Hudson is signed at least through 2009 with an option for 2010, so we’ve got him here for another year or two, at least.  He likes it here and has been shown in the past to be open to contract extensions during the year, which is good.

Let’s break it down and look at the players and the consensus scouting reports.

Jair Jurrjens – Not only does Jurrjens come into spring training as one of the top prospects for this year’s rotation, he has promise for the future, too.  He throws strikes, keeps the ball low, and I’ve seen projections that he could be a future #2 starter.  He’s the Braves’ top pitching prospect according to multiple sources.

Jo-Jo Reyes – Jo-Jo doesn’t crack any top prospect lists, but that’s probably because he’s already played in the big leagues some last year.  It was a bit rocky, but Frank Wren remains confident in Reyes and his stuff – and scouting estimates are that his raw talent is on the same level as or slightly better than Jurrjens.  He needs a bit more development, but we’ll probably see him a bit in years to come.

Chuck James – James has been dealing with some rotator cuff issues that I think are somewhat related to his unorthodox delivery.  That said, James will likely benefit from another year making a run at the rotation (Cox seems to like him for the fifth rotation spot, if he’s healthy), as well as being around Tom Glavine – who has had very positive effects on young left-handers before.  If James has recurring health issues, there are some concerns, but he has potential to eat up innings in the future.

Julio Teheran - This kid won’t be in the big leagues for a while now, but he’s listed as the second best pitching prospect in the organization.  He has a mid-90s fastball, a high 70s late biting curve, and a nice changeup.  Three solid pitches, signed very recently as the top international pitching prospect, and a future so bright he’s probably wearing sunglasses all the time.  Oh, and he’s only 16.

Cole Rohrbough – The six foot three, 220 pound southpaw is entering his second year in the Braves’ farm system.  His control is apparently impeccable and he had great stuff in college, 10-3 in 17 games with a 1.34 ERA.  He’s only at Myrtle Beach now, but give him 2-3 years and I think we’ll see him crack the major league level.

Anthony Lerew – Lerew pitched a couple games at the big league level last year before sitting our the remainder of the season with Tommy John surgery.  We may see him in 2009 in a starting role, but some sources pin him as an ideal reliever.  Not sure yet what to expect here, but we wish him the best during his recovery.

Jeff Locke – Locke is still pitching at Danville right now, so he’s a ways off – but he was 7-1 with a 2.66 ERA last year.  Low to mid 90’s fastball, inconsistent breaking stuff, and apparently very good confidence on the mound.  Pair that with good control and I think we’ll see him capable at the big league level in the next few years.  Oh, he was also the top prospect out of the northeast in 2006.

There you have it, Eric – a brief overview of the starting rotation of the future.  Baseball America published their expected starting rotation in 2011 as follows: Tim Hudson, Jair Jurrjens, Cole Rohrbough, Jeff Locke, and Jo-Jo Reyes.  I think that’s a fair assumption, and that’s without our young Julio Tehran.  Familiarize yourself with these guys – we’ll keep everyone updated on their progress through the minors.  If at any point we need more pitching, look for us to move some of our outfielders – we have tons of top OF prospects other teams will be interested in.

Smoltz and Glavine may be nearing retirement, but it’s far from the end of Braves pitching dominance.  The future is very bright.