Show #143: The Lineup Debate Continues
Peter from capitolavenueclub.com joins the conversation on the lineup and Fredi Gonzalez’s start at the helm. Also, Freeman improves while Hanson and Beachy go the other way.
160 Responses to “Show #143: The Lineup Debate Continues”
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Pages: « 1 2 3 [4] 5 6 7 » Show All
April 20th, 2011 at 6:10 pm
I looked it up, and last year Jason had a .107 batting (3-28) average against the Dodgers and has obviously done nothing against them this year. Maybe they just aren’t his team. His only lower batting averages are against the White Sox and Tigers.
April 20th, 2011 at 6:21 pm
Kate drinks the kool-aide?
April 20th, 2011 at 6:23 pm
I love my country but there are things that need to be fixed. Can one love the Braves and still want to have things fixed? Or, have you been sold on loving everything?
April 20th, 2011 at 6:24 pm
If so, you must love the national debt, higher taxes and the Yankees too.
April 20th, 2011 at 6:55 pm
Ron, Derek Lowe has not performed like a $15 mil a year ace. Fair enough. But he has provided the team with 34 and 33 starts in his two season and nearly 200 innings both years. Any manager will tell you that kind of reliability provides value. So I think we can agree that Lowe has been overpaid, but not grossly, particularly considering his value as a veteran leader in the clubhouse on a young pitching staff.
Wren signed Javier Vazquez as a free agent, Roger McDowell coaxed the best season of his career out of him, then the Braves traded him for Melky Cabrera and, wait for it, Julio Teheran – the best pitching prospect in baseball. Since the trade, Vazquez has had an ERA of nearly 6.00. I think we can safely say that keeping Lowe and flipping Vazquez for Teheran is a huge win for the Braves and Frank Wren.
You mentioned the Ankiel deal without providing the context that we needed production in centerfield during a playoff chase in Bobby Cox’s final season. It was a desperation move to give Bobby any chance at all to go out with a bang. Not to mention that the Braves gave up virtually nothing – Gregor Blanco, a nice player whose upside is a utility outfielder, Tim Collins, a minor league reliever who will likely never make the majors, and Jesse Chavez, who is completely useless. And they got Farnsworth in the deal too. The Braves lost nothing and made a move worth making to give Bobby a shot.
The McLouth for Morton swap looked like a steal at the time, and well see how this season pans out. McLouth has shown signs of coming alive.
The Braves also gave up almost nothing for Mather, as well.
Frank Wren is working with a smallish budget, and has very little room for error. The biggest mistake he’s made so far is gambling on Kawakami. I think the Escobar trade was also a mistake, but, as has been discussed, he was unpopular in the locker room. All in all, Frank Wren has done a tremendous job keeping young talent in the farm system while improving the team. A good majority of his moves have benefited the Braves.
April 20th, 2011 at 7:05 pm
Eric we traded for Vasquez and when we traded him we got Arodys Vizcaino.
April 20th, 2011 at 7:12 pm
The worst two recent trades for the Braves were the Texiera debacle and the JD Drew trade. The Tex trade for the sheer volume of what you gave up to get nothing, even though at the time I think we universally supported the fact that they did something. Two all stars came out of the deal, obviously, for the Rangers, and Matt Harrison has started this season almost as hot as Charlie Morton has. The JD Drew trade was another one where the Braves felt like they needed one piece to get them over the top. The cost was again high, and Wainwright is a Cy Young guy. Neither seem great now because they didn’t result in a world championship. But if they had, what would we be saying now? I will add that both were made by Schuerholz.
Overall, I don’t think Wren has given up much at all. He’s made a couple of bad signings, but those were free agents. The trades, who have we lost? Charlie Morton has gone 9-21 as a Pirate with a ERA just below 5. He might be 2-0 this year, but it’s April. And if you take the 2-0 start out his ERA jumps to 6. Jason Schmidt, he is not. I too didn’t/don’t like the Escobar deal, but he isn’t killing it. He’s a nice player, but nothing like I expected him to be. And I think part of that is his own lack of effort, which you can’t coach.
April 20th, 2011 at 7:15 pm
The Braves also offered Tex something like $180 million to stay and he turned them down, so there was nothing more they could do to round that out.
April 20th, 2011 at 7:26 pm
@Curt
JD Drew probably had the best year of his career in 2004 and we probably don’t got to the playoffs that year without him. We won the division by 10 games and Drew had a WAR of 7.5 and he protected Chipper. It was a good trade.
We gave up a lot of players for Teixera but I really don’t want anybody back but Neftali Feliz. I thought we would always have Yunel so I didn’t care about Andrus. And if we didn’t trade for him we would always be wondering what if. Remember we had him for parts of two seasons. We really should have gotten more when we traded him to the Angels.
April 20th, 2011 at 8:42 pm
Walker, I agree with some of that, and was trying to make the point that the 2 worst trades, in retrospect, were moves that at the time probably seemed worth it. The Braves offered Drew a contract that he rejected too.
But the fact that neither of those trades brought the return to the team that the McGriff one did makes them bigger failures to people.
I would not go as far as to say they were good trades, though
April 20th, 2011 at 9:25 pm
And, please, please, please – no revisionist history on Frenchie. What he’s doing in 2011 in KC is completely immaterial. Go back and look at his last 12 months + in Atlanta. He was absolutely KILLING the offensive production. Not just a horrible BA, but lots of strikeouts and lots of double plays. A black hole of McLouthian (2010) levels. He had to go.
April 20th, 2011 at 9:53 pm
Please tell me Lowdemort isn’t making a reappearance.
April 20th, 2011 at 9:58 pm
Lot’s of good points. Good to see this site fired up!!
April 20th, 2011 at 10:04 pm
Not looking for a bottomless pit of money from the owners but it will be good when new ownership surfaces so that management can work on keeping the picks of the litter while mixing in a hired gun here and there. They need to be able to take full advantage of their great farm system.
April 20th, 2011 at 11:29 pm
Another game, another day the Braves get dominated by a league average starter.
April 20th, 2011 at 11:30 pm
I hope you guys didn’t stay up for this one. Garland complete game. Ugly.
April 20th, 2011 at 11:55 pm
Are we really doing a recall on the Charlie Morton and Jeff Francoeuer trades? Are u guys serious? Wow. Look at Charlie Morton’s and Frenchy’s stats other than April 2011. This is really worse than last year when KJ blew up in April and everyone thought we should have kept him. People are losing their minds.
April 20th, 2011 at 11:56 pm
It’s April.
April 20th, 2011 at 11:59 pm
Maybe this is why Atlanta teams never win. It’s karma for reactions such as those seen on the last 2 pages of this blog after a 7-11 start in a 162 game season. Get a grip. The sky is not falling. You guys get more angry over our struggling 21 year olds than our struggling 30 year old veterans. it just doesn’t make sense.
April 21st, 2011 at 12:02 am
Budget posts already? How much higher was the Giants’ payroll than the Braves’ last year? Same negative, complaining posts. New year.
April 21st, 2011 at 6:54 am
Charlie Morton got blasted by the Marlins last night.
April 21st, 2011 at 7:24 am
Don’t think it is the fact that you lose last night, Lowe was due for an off night, but don’t get beat up by Lackey and Uribe. It’s like Loney and Lilly getting you in game 1. Don’t let the guy batting .140 have 2 2-run 2 out singles against you. Drives me crazy. And then to get shut down by Lackey, he of the 10+ ERA.
April 21st, 2011 at 7:54 am
re #79 – Yes, that’s exactly what I meant.
April 21st, 2011 at 11:50 am
The past is the past and can’t undo it. The facts are that the Braves have good pitching and great catching but several question marks in the line up and on the bench. Certainly everyone saw the questions before the season started. These were mine: Can Freeman hit? Can McLouth hit? How many games can Chipper play? Can Prado and Heyward get even better? Can Prado take one for the team and hunker down in left field (remember when Chipper did it and played LF?)? Can Young, Hicks, and Conrad hit off the bench and fill in on the field? Will Sherrill and Linebrink contribute? Will Jurrjens flourish this year? Who will lock up 5th starter position? Will Uggla be worth money? It’s early so we don’t have all the answers!! But there are some trends developing.
April 21st, 2011 at 2:58 pm
@Ron
You’re right. We by far have one of the weakest benches in MLB. This will be easy to improve at the deadline. It’s weird because our defense was supposed to be the question coming into the season not the offense. Prado and Jason aren’t great right now. Uggla looks bad. But all of these guys cannot have all down years.