Hudson Looks To Right The Ship

Written by Jonathan on April 16, 2008 – 5:55 pm

After falling hard to the Marlins (8-5) last night, the Braves (5-8) look to Tim Hudson (2-0, 2.14) to get them back on track with a mark in the win column.  The big question is, however, can the Braves get their offense going against Mark Hendrickson (2-1, 4.15) tonight?  As seen against the Marlins last night, the Braves’ lack of offensive production can doom a game no matter how good of an outing your pitching staff has.

Hudson has looked strong thus far this year, winning his only two decisions in three outings.   The game tonight starts at 7:10 and hopefully the Braves have long forgotten about their lack of production last night.  I certainly haven’t, but that’s besides the point.  I look for Hudson to go deep into the game to keep the ball out of the hands of our severely depleted bullpen.

Can the Braves please get some semblance of an offense going tonight? I sure hope so.


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Braves Dominated By Marlins

Written by Smitty on April 16, 2008 – 9:14 am

I’d like to consider myself a good sport.  Sure, I can trash-talk with the best of them. Especially if it’s about giving the Mets a hard time.  But generally, I am good about recognizing excellence, even when it comes in the guise of a non-Braves uniform.

And I’d like to be able to tip my hat, in a gentlemanly manner, to Marlins starter Scott Olsen. Sure, he went seven innings without walking a guy or giving up a run. I’d like to say our team just knuckled under to his superior talents and couldn’t score on his pitching wizardry.

But I can’t. Because he stinks.

Not as a person, maybe, but as a pitcher. Every number he had last year was considerably worse than the year before. In fact, the fish, as a team, had one of the worst ERA’s in baseball headed into tonight.

So what happened? Simply put: the Braves stunk worse.

At every turn, we (and yes, I will continue to say “we” when the team loses) gave up opportunities, failed to wake up the offense, and above all, really let down Jair Jurrjens’ solid showing. To be honest, Jurrjens has not pitched a bad game this season.

The Braves went down to Florida hoping to compensate for the recent spat of pitching injuries by busting out some offense on one of the WORST pitching staffs in baseball.  Alas, it was not to be so.

Want to know how bad? You sure? Ok, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Six hits-with two apiece coming from two different players.  Never mind that Jurrjens went six and gave up only two earned runs.  And the two that Ohman walked in didn’t improve matters any. But say he hadn’t walked in two. That would leave us still with a big fresh goose egg in the offensive column.

Yes, I am a “homer.” I drink from the Braves KoolaidTM 24/7. But I also pride myself on calling a black cat black. And the Braves just stunk tonight.  We’ve got to find that one thing that can turn this around. Any suggestions?

Well, on the bright side, Kelly Johnson’s hitting streak was extended to 11 games.


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Braves Face First-Place Marlins

Written by Jonathan on April 15, 2008 – 6:43 pm

It’s only a dozen games into the season, but I don’t think many people had the Marlins at the top of the potent NL East at any point this season.  Nevertheless, as the Braves (5-7) head into Florida to start a three-game series against the Marlins (7-5), that’s exactly the case.  The Braves currently find themselves in fourth place with only the Washington Nationals behind them.

The Miami weather will be a nice change for the Braves who have played their last two series in Colorado and Washington.  Tonight, Jair Jurrjens (1-1, 4.38) faces off against Scott Olsen (1-0, 4.61) in the series opener.  It will be interesting to see how the bullpen fairs after today’s events where we lost yet another reliever.  Peter Moylan was placed on the 15-day disabled list with an elbow strain and is back in Atlanta for an MRI.  Hopefully he won’t be gone long.  Buddy Carlyle has taken his place for the time being.

The Braves have faired well against Scott Olsen in the past, scoring 10 runs in 4 innings against him in the last outing between the two.  The offense has been streaky at best lately so hopefully they can find their stride tonight and we can see Jair go deep into the game to take a little stress off our bullpen tonight.  Sidenote: it’s Jackie Robinson Day (Mark Kotsay will be sporting the #42 tonight; Bo Porter is doing so for the Marlins).


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NL East Power Rankings

Written by Colin on April 7, 2008 – 10:49 am

It’s time for our first series of NL East Power Rankings. Power Rankings indicate who has the power and momentum in the division and with three contenders this year, they’ll change weekly. So who is at the top? Who is at the bottom? And why do the Marlins have the same record as the Braves?

#1 - The Atlanta Braves
The Braves (3-3) have come out of the gate with their offense firing on most cylinders. The scary part of that is they’re still 2nd in the NL in average (.292), runs (40), slugging percentage (.470) and OPS (.822). They’ve already shown their ability to battle back and put games into extra innings, as well as outscore the Mets 14-6 in the last two games. Their pitching staff is not working as it should yet - the bullpen is recovering from early jitters and Mike Hampton is back on the DL (Surprise? Hardly). But solid starts from both John Smoltz and Jair Jurrjens have put the Braves in a good spot to be - at the top of the division early.

#2 - Florida Marlins
How are these guys able to be 3-3? They’ve taken it to the Pirates. I don’t think they’ll be in the #2 position long, so don’t get used to it. They’ll begin climbing the ranks downward.

#3 - New York Mets
These guys would be in the two position were it not for the Marlins’ strong start. Santana is looking good, Pedro is hurt and their offense wasn’t clicking during their last series against the Braves. The Mets’ bullpen hasn’t been stellar so far either. But they’re the Mets, and they’ll surely rebound strong. Can’t discount them.

#4 - Philadelphia Phillies
The Phillies may be in the cellar right now as far as standings go, but they’re not completely dead yet. However, they’ve had issues with the starting pitching and relief corps. And their highly touted offense has had a slow start - scoring only 27 runs so far - that’s fourth in the NL East.

#5 - Washington Nationals
The Nationals have issues. They just lost a series - the entire series - to Cardinals. The Nationals did eek out a win against the Braves to start the season (lucky break on that Moylan pitch), but they’re going to need to start winning the easy games against the teams that are worse than them. Thus, they’re in the basement, at least for the first week of the power rankings.

Did I mis-rank the teams? Any of the 12 Marlins fans that are young enough to own computers want to whine about them not being at the top? Leave us a comment and we’ll hash it out.


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2008 Preseason Awards

Written by Colin on February 25, 2008 – 7:48 am

We’re going to dig into this year’s preseason and hand out some of our own awards and make predictions as to the end of season awards.

Preseason Team Awards

Best AL Team: Detroit Tigers
Best NL Team: New York Mets (I said it, but I’m not happy about it.)
Most Hyped Team: New York Mets
Worst AL Team: Tampa Bay Devil Rays
Worst NL Team: Florida Marlins (this was a no-brainer.  The state of Florida is apparently cursed.)
Best AL Division: The AL East beats out the Central for this title with the Blue Jays being the determining factor.
Best NL Division: The East is strong (and beats out the West) with the Mets, Phillies, and Braves all looking for the division title.  We should see some great baseball out of this division all season long.
Worst AL Division:  The West is going to be ugly with Oakland, Seattle, and Texas.  Texas should be on the rise, but Oakland completely disassembled whatever they had last year in their fire sale.
Worst NL Division:  The NL Central has a couple teams that are decent (Chicago and Milwaukee), but Cincinnati, Houston, and Pittsburgh bring the division down to the worst in the NL.

This year is going to be fun to watch in several divisions - the AL East and Central promise to be intriguing, as do the NL East and West.  The Tigers and Indians are going to create some great story lines, and we’re all familiar with the NL East and the competition we’ll see there this year.

Preseason Individual Awards

AL MVP: Alex Rodriguez
NL MVP: Matt Holliday
AL Cy Young: C.C. Sabathia
NL Cy Young: Jake Peavy
AL Batting Title: Ichiro Suzuki
NL Batting Title: Matt Holliday
AL HR Title: Alex Rodriguez
NL HR Title: Ryan Howard

There we go - our projections for the individual awards in 2008.  No, we don’t think Johan Santana will win the NL Cy Young award this year - he’s a great pitcher, but I think Peavy will pull it out this year.  The others don’t have many surprises - Matt Holliday is a very solid hitter that is only helped by the fact that he plays in Colorado.


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