Well hello again baseball fans, as you should hopefully know by now with the thawing of ice from the winter months, the leading into baseball season must pass one through one last check point on the road to summer nirvana: Spring Training!
A few days ago pitchers and catchers for the Bravos headed down the road to sunny Florida where they will get re-acquainted with the season's regiment and with each other. This will be the first chance that many of them will have to be looked over by Manager Bobby Cox, pitching coach Roger McDowell and bullpen coach Eddie Perez.
With the trade of Javier Vazquez to the Yankees there have been some concerns about our starting rotation and with the acquisition of LHP Billy Wagner, 37, to be our closer and Takashi Saito, 40, as our RHP set-up man, how effective our hurlers will be. Here I am going to look down the pros and cons of what we have and what we can expect from the Bullpen.
Starting Rotation:
1: Tim Hudson
2: Derek Lowe
3: Jair Jurrjens
4: Tommy Hanson
5: Kenshin Kawakami
Bullpen:
Ok, so with the bullpen we have a bit of a log jam with what appears to be several good arms and only seven spots to fill. The way things look now is to have Wagner close, Saito and Moylan set-up, Chavez and Proctor take the middle relief job, O'Flahrety do the lefties but he's not just a lefty specialist and Medlen to do some middle relief and also handle the task of spot starter if an injury to the starting 5 happens.
CL: Billy Wagner (L) - The Atlanta Braves new closer is a 37 year old vet. Billy Wagner who has converted 385 saves in 15 seasons with the Astros, Phillies, Mets and Red Sox(0 saves with them, just a middle relief/mop-up kind of guy for the BoSox). Wager seems to have recovered fully and his 1.72 ERA in 2009 with the Red Sox and the Mets has given hope to the coaches that Billy will be able to regain his form. When right, this lefty has a plus fastball, change-up and plus-slider that has earned him a career ERA of 2.39. Braves Manager Bobby Cox has reportedly said that Wagner looks like the closer of old and that he has been throwing really impressive stuff during the sessions in Florida. If all goes according to plan, which it rarely does, Billy will be able to bring some much vaunted intimidation to the end of the bullpen. While departed Mike Gonzalez and Rafael Soriano were respected for their skills, Wagner has more dread associated with his name than the other two ever could. Mike was too wild and just tried to get the ball over the plate too much, while Soriano was just too inconsistent and didn't seem to care when he'd throw one of his patented fastballs down the heart of the plate to a dangerous hitter for a home run. I'll miss you Mike "Cobra" Gonzalez, Soriano on the other hand, I just plain never trusted you.
Set-up: Takashi Saito- This 40 year old Japanese set-up man is another new face in a Braves uniform. I am pretty excited about him for a few reasons, 1) he has closing experience in the NL with the Dodgers, so if something goes wrong with Billy's arm he can at least share the burden of closer, probably with Peter Moylan; 2) he's Japanese! Hear me out. For Kenshin Kawakami, I can tell you from my own experience that going to the other side of the world where everyone speaks a forigen language, it sucks not being able to talk to everyone around you, it must be worse when you can't really talk to your own teammates, therefore he will now have the ability to talk baseball, especially pitching with the newest fellow country man. Saito and Kawakami played for a long time in the Japanese baseball league before being lured to play for the MLB and honestly Kawakami's interpreter didn't seem like he was having fun sitting on the bench all game in a Braves warm-up. True Saito will be in the bullpen and KK on the bench when not pitching, but still, when you don't know the native tongue it's nice to be able to spend a lot of time with someone who knows exactly what you are going through. 3) He and Billy Wagner both played for the Red Sox last year. These guys have at least a little bit of experience together and hopefully that will make things better for the bullpen as a whole.
Set-up: Peter Moylan- This Aussie is coming off of a career high 87 appearances, one behind the most in 2009 (that was held by Pedro Feliciano of the Mets). Side note, of the top 10 in relief appearances for the NL, 4 were from ATL, Moylan, 87, Gonzalez, 80, O'Flahrety, 78 and Soriano, 70. Over the last 3 years Peter Moylan has been outstanding posting an ERA of 2.24 over 168.2 innings. That's 129 strike outs and 67 walks. Yes, two years ago, before his arm surgery, he posted a 1.80 ERA and had a couple of big game meltdowns, most remembered by me was game 3 last year, opening week against the Phillies where we lost a 10-3 lead thanks in large part to him. However, he spent the rest of
the year filling in that pit of non-confidence and made me remember how good he really can be. His submarine arm throw and his nasty sinker will go a long way to helping us out again. The main thing I want to see from Peter, who will probably serve as the main closer is Wagner is injured, will be to keep him out of as many games as he has been. If the rest of the bullpen can show it doesn't need Peter every other game, yes folks, for practical purposes, he got warmed up, did his stretching, threw in the 'pen, got a call from Bobby, ran out and pitched every other night for the entire year.
MR: Eric O'Flahrety (L) - Here's a kid (25 years old from Walla Walla, WA) who just finished his first tour with the Braves in 2009. He appeared in 79 games and faced 236 batters. 116 were lefties who hit .215 against him, gave up 2 home runs, struck out 24 and walked 6. Lefties slugged .290 and had an OPS of .559. 120 righties had plate appearances against him, they hit .282, so they got 6 more hits off of him, gave up 0 home runs, had a slugging % against of .301 and an OPS of .676, walked 12(4 IBB struck out 15. My overall take on this guy is he is a solid relief pitcher, he can seriously help and I can see him hopefully keeping his innings from 2009, 56.1, around the same because if the rest of the MR guys can pull their weight we can keep him fresh for the big lefty bats the NL East has- Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Adam Dunn, etc.
MR: Jesse Chavez- New kid on the block who has really been throwing gas in the sessions in Florida and has a pretty big chance to come up with the Braves to the Show at the start of the season. Traded from the Rays on December 10th to us when Rafael Soriano tried to squeeze us for more than he's worth. Spent all of his big league time with the Pirates and pitched against the Braves last year actually. Don't know too much about him but I can only hope he is good enough to take enough innings to make sure Moylan and Saito don't pitch every other day. If there are enough days where maybe he can take the 7th or if the MR guys can just handle more of the load, that'd be a really nice thing to see, because if you think about it, Wagner is coming off of injury, Saito is 40 and last year was Moylan's bounce back from Tommy John surgery and pitched in less than a full calendar year from when he had the operation. Just saying...
MR: Scott Proctor* (once he's done with rehabbing his arm)- Scott has been a workhorse before and hopefully he'll be once again ready to take that mantle. Bobby loves to use the bullpen, it's a scientific fact. The AT&T "Call to the Bullpen" keeps them in business in the vast number of minutes he racks up on the dugout phone. I can only hope that as Scotty rehabs, he'll be able to make the kind of bounce back that Moylan did and that Wager showed glimpses of last year.
Spot-start/LR: Kris Medlen- Kris is the oddest piece of all to me in the bullpen. Of course everyone needs a long reliever or a spot starter, but Kris is in my mind just too good to be used as infrequent as the position is allowed. He needs to always be fresh in case someone goes down in the rotation or if Derek Lowe has another episode like he did last year against the Mets and only goes 2 innings. He has to be able to go over scouting reports every day and be ready to face the entire line up that day perhaps more than just once. He's 24 and
was brought up lastyear to allow Tommy Hanson to not start his arbitration-eligible clock to allow him to not become a "Super 2" player. Kris started 4 games and made 33 relief appearances striking out 72 and walking 30. His ERA was a pretty high 4.26, but high bullpen ERAs can easily be misleading considering that he gave up 9 earned runs in 8.1 innings his first two started games and then had a consistently declining ERA except for a hiccup against the Orioles and Yankees(6.2 innings and 7 earned runs combined). After his last start on July 12th against the Rockies, he made 26 appearances, finished 7 games had 39 K's and 10 walks in 35.1 innings with an ERA of 2.80. So long story short, the kid is good, but can still start somewhat. As long as we have our rotation in place as is, he'll be forced to sharpen his skills in the bullpen and maybe can turn into an anchor back there that we have sorely lacked since John Smoltz was closing.
So until later when we go over the starting rotation, pray for pitching, be proud of the Tomahawk Chop and if you need a smile, just remember when Sid Slid.
