Your thoughts on the Braves so far

[WraithSentinel]

Defense look solid so far this season. Pitching has been very good if not great. Hitting has been typical Braves. Just completely and utterly pathetic to say the least. We are back in the ballpark of wasting good pitching outings.

[CBAreject]

Defense look solid so far this season. Pitching has been very good if not great. Hitting has been typical Braves. Just completely and utterly pathetic to say the least. We are back in the ballpark of wasting good pitching outings.

I agree in all facets. We're pitching well enough to win almost every game, but the offense is so anemic that it hurts to watch. Reminds me of the second half of last year. Our starters basically have to pitch a 7 inning shut-out to win most nights. Thing is, this year was/is supposed to be different. Chilpper is back, hitting like old Chipper. 4-time allstar Uggla is effectively replacing Hinske in the lineup. McLouth is perhaps back to old McLouth. Heyward is over his thumb injury. Freeman will be an upgrade on injured Glaus. All this, but 10 games in, we have one of the worst offenses in the NL. It's only 10 games, though. I expect Uggla and Freeman to stop hitting .150. I expect Heyward to hit better than .250. Even so, I believe this team has some offensive holes that I knew were there but I thought would be covered up. Alex Gonzalez and Nate McLouth just make too many outs. A noobie Freeman makes a ton of outs, too, but I expect that to resolve by mid-year. I still think we will be a top-5 NL offense by season's end. Dunno if it's gonna be enough to give the Phils a race, though.

[Dexmethylphenidate]

Well the biggest acquisition is hitting below .200.

Weakness at the top of the order and the middle of the order (#2 and #5 spot) right now.

[jy23]

Well like most here I'm loving the pitching so far except for big red....but I expect that to get better. The hitting has been up and down and pretty much about what I expected early in the year besides the fact that I thought Uggla would be doing a little better. Chip is back to hitting pretty good and BMac looks great so far. I figured it was going to take a minute for Freddie to get in the groove but he should be ok. Nate is looking better at the plate and hopefully he starts having more success up there. Jason should get better as the season goes on and the same with Martin, he didnt start this year red hot like he did last year but he'll pick it up. My only real concern was defense going into the year and we've looked pretty good as far as that goes so Im happy so far, of course the record could be better but hey....its just 10 games

[APE]

They've got to pick it up. Last year they started slow too but erased it with a great May/June. Can't take those chances this year, they're expected to be up there with Philly now.

[frosgrim]

It's just 10 games. Nothing to worry about here.

Uggla is a typical poor April hitter. Wait til the summer heats up and so will his bat.

There are good signs in the offense, and some worrisome. I think it will come together sooner than latter and this will be a 94+ win team.

[CBAreject]

It will be interesting to see what Jurrjens does in the next few starts. As much as some people think Mike Minor can come in and pitch .500, I'm skeptical. Minor is probably going to be good, but I've only been impressed with 1 out of the 6 or so starts I've seen him. His pitches seemed to float a little...if that makes sense. Change doesn't seem to have the screwball bite most of the time...slow and straight. The one impressive start was against the Cubs when he had a great curve working and some sink on his fastball. I don't trust him to not give up 4+ runs in 60% of his starts with a few 3 inning meltdowns sprinkled in which exhaust the bullpen. Bad pitching has ripple effects, and I don't believe you can hide a bad starter. When the Phillies picked up Oswalt, the whole staff improved. If Jurrjens can pitch like we saw him do for 2 straight seasons until last year's injury, I like our chances to win 90+ games. If he can't regain form, or we find the oblique injury is as nagging as they can be and Minor has to step in, I'm a lot less confident in our chances.

Edited April 14, 2011 by CBAreject

[Dexmethylphenidate]

It's just 10 games. Nothing to worry about here.

Uggla is a typical poor April hitter. Wait til the summer heats up and so will his bat.

There are good signs in the offense, and some worrisome. I think it will come together sooner than latter and this will be a 94+ win team.

He's hitting .300 the past couple of seasons about 10 games into the season. :resent:

[AHF]

He's hitting .300 the past couple of seasons about 10 games into the season. :resent:

Career Splits:

March BA .125/ OPS .250

April BA .241/OPS .761

Those are the lowest two months for his career in both categories.

[APE]

Another thing I remember last year this club was very patient and took many walks, this year not so much as of yet.

[CBAreject]

Another thing I remember last year this club was very patient and took many walks, this year not so much as of yet.

This team's offensive impatience (outside of Chipper and now Heyward) over the years has frustrated me more than any other quality. It's the very thing that allowed them to get bowled over by Sterling Hitchcock in the NLCS in 1998. Last year, we led the majors in walks for much of the season, and I thought the organizational mentality was changing. The problem is, Wren didn't see the value in this, and he shipped off our patient, though aloof shortstop Escobar, who is now leading the AL in BA, last I checked along with a .500+ OBP for one of the most impatient offensive players in baseball. He traded a young stud lefty pitcher, who is now striking out 2 per inning for the big league club, for another of the most impatient players in baseball. Glaus declined because of injuries, and the patient lineup that ground down starting pitchers suddenly was hapless. Ankiel and Gonzalez, despite their above average defensive play, weren't just easy outs, they were quick outs. Now that Ankiel is mercifully gone, we still have to live with the after-effects of the Gonzalez-Escobar trade. I'm not sure how much TP and Parrish have to do with this. It seems to be more of an organizational philosophy. They've preached "aggressive" so much over the years, but aggression has nothing to do with hitting. It's about pitch selection. There's nothing wrong with swinging at the first pitch, but you should only do so when you've decided on a particular pitch in a particular location, based on your individual strengths and the pitcher's tendencies. If you wind up taking it, which you will the majority of the time based on this strategy, you will frequently be ahead in the count, in which case, you can be even more selective. A single flailing batter who hits a chopper back to pitcher on an off-balance swing on the first pitch cancels out the efforts of at least two patient hitters, and more if it's a double play. That is what Alex Gonzalez does to our team.

[APE]

Escobar's patience meant nothing if he was hitting as bad as he was last year here. And who would that lefty pitcher be? Mike Dunn I'm guessing?

[CBAreject]

Escobar's patience meant nothing if he was hitting as bad as he was last year here. And who would that lefty pitcher be? Mike Dunn I'm guessing?

Escobar had an awful season for us, but try to understand just how bad a philosophy it is that you trade or release young players with an established track record of success when they've had a bad half season. We did that with Kelly Johnson, too. Mid-20's players who've had one bad half season, tend to rebound to their career numbers the next year. It happens all the time. When you trade them, you're getting the absolute lowest return for fairly valuable players. Even with the 6 homers Gonzalez hit for us, he posted a lower OBP than Escobar did at his worst and played worse defense. Not only that, he tended to make errors on easy plays when the game was on tied in late innings. All the "professionalism" and "winner" talk was basically garbage. We were and still are a worse team with Gonzalez.

Now, the merits of the trade were never supposed to be that we got a better shortstop. It was that we got an above average middle infield prospect, Pastornicky, and a dynamite LH RP prospect in Tim Collins in exchange for downgrading at SS. We ultimately flipped Collins for the worthless Ankiel. And Collins is the LH RP I was referring to, as he is dominating for KC out of the pen at 21 years old, striking out 13 in 8 innings. We, meanwhile, had to waste a little over a million to sign Sherrill, a one-dimensional pitcher coming off an awful season. As for Dunn, I love that guy, but I think the trade for Uggla had to be made, given our miserable offensive situation. I loved trading Infante when his value was at an all-time high, which is a welcome change of pace to what we've been doing with other young players.

[Gray Mule]

Within 1 of :500 ball and facing the Mets @ home today.

Timely hitting - Not just hitting - has been where we hurt last season and most of this

season so far.

We get runners on and can't drive them in. Homer with the bases empty. Whenever

Braves get it all together, they will be very dangerous. Everything else seems to work well.

:newrussian:

[Eddielives]

Disappointed so far with the Braves. Much like the Hawks, they can't get their offense going. It's great that these guys all seem to like each other and have that sort of camaraderie like they could all go have beers together after the game and have a good time but I still feel like they're missing a key piece on offense. What this team needs and has lacked for years now is that prototypical leadoff guy who has speed, hits for average and can just basically get the offense going. I don't think Prado should be leading off and I don't think McLouth is worthy of a spot on this roster. The good news is that Wren has proven to be a very good gm and with this organization's wealth of good arms, they could make a trade as some point to address this need. I just hope they figure things out sooner than later before they dig a hole too big. Hovering 2-5 games under 500 is unacceptable for this team even at this early time in the season.

Edited April 21, 2011 by Eddielives

[Eddielives]

8-12 is their record now. Plus, they have to now face San Francisco for 3. I know it's early but if the bats don't start producing, this team is going to find itself in a hole too big to crawl out of unless they catch fire.

[CBAreject]

8-12 is their record now. Plus, they have to now face San Francisco for 3. I know it's early but if the bats don't start producing, this team is going to find itself in a hole too big to crawl out of unless they catch fire.

It doesn't help that Freddie doesn't know how to manage a bullpen. Rookie Kimbrel for a 2 inning save? Also, Linebrink should never have a roster spot when we have 2 better RH relievers dominating the minors. Sickening we wasted a couple mil on him. I guess "used to be good" is worth a lot to Braves brass.

[Dexmethylphenidate]

Jeez. Even Heyward is hitting a slump offensively. I didn't think that was possible. :Nail Biting:

[CBAreject]

Jeez. Even Heyward is hitting a slump offensively. I didn't think that was possible. :Nail Biting:

Heyward's struggles are very unexpected, but no player, save maybe Albert Pujols, is slump-proof. Isn't it baffling that our best offensive player right now is Freddie Freeman? Got to love what the kid is doing so far, especially after starting so poorly. He's already got his average up to .274 with a few dingers. That and Jurrjens' dominance through 2 starts are some of the few bright spots. Kimbrel and Venters are nasty as expected, too. Regardless, this team is still too good to play sub .500 ball. Actually, we have almost the same RS/RA as Florida, but we're 9-12 and they're 12-6. We're +5 runs but 3 games under .500. Even with a different manager, this team continues to perform well below its expected winning percentage. I do believe we had 6 straight years of -5 wins vs expected going into this season, which is by far the worst in the majors.

[Dexmethylphenidate]

Heyward's bat coming alive after my comment. :popcorn:

I like the new lineup where Heyward's hitting second and Freeman ahead of Gonzales.

Now if Uggla can get a hit once in a while the Braves can go streaking.