A team that won 85 last year despite their run totals projecting a better mark. A crackling good lineup with the only notable hole wearing a mask and various ignorant tools made of plastic.
No jokes about me being worn by John Estrada, please. A shaky rotation. Haven't we heard this song and dance before?
Well, yeah, so I'll limit this little ditty on the
Woo-Woo Braves to a short medley. Just like
Philadelphia, this club can pound that little white pill the same as the boys from
Ball Four pounded the ol' Budweiser.
Ryan Klesko, coming on for many millions, will only help the cause, at least this year.
Raffy Furcal is the catalyst, and his DP partner, 27 year old
Jake Gautreau, hit .330 last year and won Rookie of the Year honors. Even if the two don't combine for 350 hits again, an outfield of
Chipper Jones,
Carlos Beltran, and
J.D. Drew is as formidable as you'd expect from hearing those names.
Aramis Ramirez finishes a frightening front seven off, and only the aforementioned catcher
Estrada won't do serious damage with the bat. He won't need to. The only worry is the outfield depth, but most every team is a little lacking
somewhere.
The real worry for this club is pitching.
Philadelphia has a deep, solid bullpen, but a rotation that leaves a little wanting.
Atlanta's entire pitching staff leaves a little wanting, and instead of Leo Mazzone, this club has Ben Stroup, whose surname sounds like some disease you'd acquire in the jungles of South America.
Stroup the Medicine Man and his magic potions have worked on the nomadic
Dan Miceli, who's thrown 180 innings over the past two years with a fine ERA around three, but the veteran is 36 years old this season -- and slated to be the team's closer. That should be a big tell as to the rest of the 'pen's quality, and even though the numbers aren't terrible, per se, there are pitchers with noticeable flaws everywhere you look.
Kevin Gryboski and
Andy "
holyroller"
Brown constantly fight the strike zone, rather than embrance it.
Buddy Hernandez, a stathead favorite, can't strike anybody out. And setup man
Will Cunnane is...well, he's
Will Cunnane. His career ERA's 4.65 for a reason. One run game, one man out in the eighth and
Carlos Zambrano's out of gas. Are these the kind of guys you really want to turn to?
But while
Philly has a chasmic edge in the bullpen,
Atlanta's rotation isn't quite a nuclear waste dump. It's not straight out of the mid-90's, either, but how can you expect that?
The Good Zambrano, acquired two offseasons ago for
Andruw Jones, resembles
Victor somewhat in that he fights his control -- but not constantly, and this
Zambrano can certainly dial it up on the radar gun. Best of all, he's 25 and signed for a mere $5 million a year for the next four seasons.
Brett Evert will be around 'til then, too, though the major league sophomore is actually a year
Zambrano's senior. He won 16 last year with an ERA just shy of league average, and the
Braves will need a repeat performance to seriously contend. To do that,
Evert will probably have to cut out the long ball from his diet, as he gorged on 33 of those last year.
Beyond that, things are rather icky, but that's still better than the
Phils.
Lance Cormier, another youngster, went 5-12 in his rookie campaign, but, hell, Glavine probably did, too.
Cormier's 26, though. He probably ain't even
Pete Smith.
Josh Fogg went a sparkling 14-5 last year with a nice 3.41 ERA, but my scout thinks he should be trampled by wild boars. Why he hates a guy with 49 career wins and an OK 4.26 ERA is beyond my scope of vision, but it'll be something to keep an eye on. The fifth starter appears to be
Steve "The Trash"
Trachsel, but he's garbage. There are some sort-of recognizable, sort-of possibly passable guys in AAA, though, and last year's first rounder, 18 year old Dan Stanley, might just pull a
Zack Greinke on the league if he finds out he's actually left-handed and has been conned all this time. Or maybe not.
As down on
Philly as I irrationally am, that same part of me likes this team. Maybe it's the Mazzone effect, or maybe it's that I wrote so much, I don't know. But so much for a short medley. So, Mr. Fish, what do
you think of this bunch?